There are only a few statewide races I wish to touch on: Split of the Jordan School District, Heber City Referendum, Ogden Mayor, and Bountiful City Council.

First off the splitting of the Jordan School District. I have said before that school districts are destined to split as the district, region, and state grow. I have also said that people tend to be selfish and not put the big picture into perspective. Sure enough we saw this mode of thinking come into fruition on election day.

With every single city East of the Jordan River voting to split off into a new school district, it became abundantly clear that people were sick of paying for the education of the people for whom they can see when they look west from their respective balconies.

Now if everyone in the district had the opportunity to vote my tone would be very different, however almost every city West of the Jordan did not have the chance to weigh in at the ballot box, and the one that did rejected the creation of a new school district. This kind of behavior smacks of elitism and, in my mind at least, must violate some equal protection clause. I know the creation of school districts are a little bit different, however it certainly does not look like democracy was served in this one.

Next: the Heber City Referendum. Basically this was a referendum placed on the ballot to allow big box stores (in this case a Wal-Mart) to set up shop in the town of Heber. Now I will admit that I have always had a bit of a beef with Sprawl-Marts, but in this particular instance I don’t particularly care if they set up shop or not. What I do care about is the big money that went into the particular campaign. Companies such as the Boyer Company and Wal-Mart pumped a lot of money into the campaign to narrowly gain victory.

I know that this was a complex issue, and it is very well possible that the people of Heber City would have chosen to approve this issue regardless of how much money went into the campaign, however I have always been disgusted by how much money is involved in any sort of political campaign.

Now the race for Ogden City Mayor is an interesting one. The boy mayor, Matt Godfrey, has never seemed entirely on the up and up in my book, and Election Day shenanigans did little to change my opinion of that. For those of you who have not heard, Godfrey supporters questioned the residential status of many Susan Van Hooser (Godfrey’s opponent) supporters. Problem is that this little campaign tactic may very well bite Godfrey in the ass.

You see Godfrey won by only 181 votes, and it is estimated that Godfrey challenged over 200 votes. It is very possible that Godfrey simply delayed his defeat. We will find out later today when the Weber County Clerk releases the results of these provisional ballots as well as outstanding mail in ballots…This may turn out to be a fun one to watch.

Finally, Bountiful City Council. Nothing of any major importance happened here except for the fact that Beth Holbrook won her bid. Mostly this is a personal shout out as Beth gave me my first real break in politics. Congratulations Beth!