West Valley City Mayor Mike Winder and U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch spent their Friday afternoon in Salt Lake City fund raising for Mark Crockett, the Republican nominee for Salt Lake County Mayor and also Winder's former opponent in the primary election. Crockett, a former Salt Lake County Councilman now faces Democratic Senator Ben McAdams in the race to replace Democrat Peter Corroon, who is retiring.
About forty guests attended the Alta Club event, paying $250 a plate to support Mark Crockett's campaign. Senator Orrin Hatch co-hosted the event with Winder, saying either Winder or Crockett would run a tight ship as Salt Lake County Mayor. But Winder said GOP voters have spoken, and this is his chance to see that a Republican takes office, even if it's not him.
“The county has some big budget decisions they're going to be faced with in years ahead," Winder said. "We need someone with some good conservative principles like Mark Crockett, who has experience managing large organizations.And I think he's the best man for the job.”
Crockett says the fundraiser was a kickoff for his finance committee.
His plan is to reform the county's budget by focusing on human and regional services instead of putting money into parks, recreation and public transportation. He questioned whether or not McAdam's has such a plan.
“Ben's billboards are funny and it's entertaining," Crockett said. "But hopefully what we can really talk about are how do we actually figure out the budget when federal and state dollars coming into the state for core county programs are only going to go down?”
Crockett is referring to several of McAdams' campaign billboards that include phrases like “Eagle Scout, Not Eagle Forum” with the tag “Yeah, he's different.”
McAdams says Crockett is right about improving human services, but not about drastically cutting other areas of the budget or forgoing other projects that he says are important to the community.
“We have some grave challenges on our horizon, whether it's human services, the growth that we're looking at that will be coming to Salt Lake County and how we're going to manage that growth," Mcadams said. "And we are not going to overcome those challenges unless we can work collaboratively with stakeholders from across the spectrum.”
McAdams touts his support from a majority of Republican Mayor's in Salt Lake County as evidence of his cooperative nature.