Skip to main content

The Better Of Two Goods: Van Turner Vs. Kyle LaMalfa For SLC Council District 2

Image
By


Van Turner (L) and Kyle LaMalfa (R) - Image via KCPW
I had the good fortune to tune into KCPW this morning just in time to catch most of the debate between Salt Lake City Council candidates Van Turner (incumbent) and Kyle LaMalfa (challenger), who are competing for District 2's seat next week.

The debate was moderated by much-beloved local radio Muppet Jeff Robinson, who sounds so much like Glenn Beck's "dumb guy voice" that it's kind of unsettling. You can hear the whole thing  here  .

The race in District 2, which encompasses Salt Lake City's West Side, is a two-way contest between LaMalfa, a local community activist who finished first in primary voting, and Turner, a small business owner who is an incumbent 4-term Councilman. I have the good fortune to know both men a little from my days working in northwest SLC with the University of Utah's Political Science department and then later with Americorps (full disclosure: LaMalfa mentions the Westside Leadership Institute and the People's Market in his opening remarks - I have worked with both organizations personally). 

Knowing both men as I do, I think it's safe to say that we have the rarest of rare political situations in District 2 this year - a difficult choice between the better of two goods. Most of us are far more familiar with the depressingly common "lesser of two evils" scenario when it comes to politics; confronted with two good candidates, both of whom are relatively civil to each other, how are we to choose?

First off, I acknowledge that I do not live in District 2, so anything I have to say on the subject should be considered in that light. While I have held workshops and focus groups and crunched data from surveys taken on the west side, and while I worked for more than a year at University Neighborhood Partners' office there, and while I am familiar with west side issues, I will not be casting a vote for either candidate next week.

With that said, if I were presented with an opportunity to do so, I would vote for Kyle LaMalfa. Van Turner is an outstanding leader in the community, and both of his businesses - the Hook and Ladder and Firehouse Floral - are locally owned and pump money into the local economy. LaMalfa, however, has experience with west side community councils (although Turner arguably has more) and experience with low-income citizen needs on the west side, in addition to his accomplishments as a community organizer with the People's Market and elsewhere. LaMalfa's background and contacts are slightly more diverse, horizontally speaking, than Turner's.

The nice thing about a better-of-two-goods scenario, of course, is that no matter who wins the upcoming City Council election, we all will come out on top.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apparently, Liberals Are The Illuminati

By
posted 10/5/2012 by the Salt City Sinner Greetings, sheeple, from my stronghold high atop the Wells Fargo Building in downtown Salt City, where I type this before a massive, glowing bank of monitors that display the ongoing progress of my 23-point plan for complete social control. Whether you want to demonize me as a "liberal," or prefer the Glenn Beck update "progressive," we all know the truth, and it's time to pull the curtain aside: like all left-leaning persons, I am actually a member of the Illuminati. How else to explain how much power my side of the aisle wields in U.S. American politics? According to conservatives, liberals/the Illuminati control the media * , science * , academia in general * , public schools * , public radio * , pretty much anything "public," the courts * , and Hollywood * . Hell, we pretty much control everything except for scrappy, underdog operations like WND and Fox News, or quiet, marginalized voices like...
126 comments
Read more

Where (Else) to Find My Writing

By
REGULARLY UPDATED Posted on 1/9/2020  - UPDATED 2/4/2025 MY FULL-LENGTH   NONFICTION DEBUT! BLACK SUNRISE ON PISS EARTH: FASCISM, NIHILISM, AND THE 21ST CENTURY OCCULT Black Sunrise on Piss Earth: Fascism, Nihilism, and the 21st Century Occult is a nonfiction, anti-fascist, punk rock, and no-holds-barred look at the role that nihilism and the postmodern occult have played in the development of fascist movements in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere – a coordinated movement I call the Fascist Internationale. The manuscript’s title is a reference to Piss Earth 2025, a piece of fascist agitprop that I respond to, using my refutation as a framework for looking at the dangerous, deadly, and dumbass ideas undergirding everything from QAnon and Christian Identity to Nazi Satanist- worshipers the Order of Nine Angles and portions of the Asatru (Norse Pantheon worship) and chaos magick communities. HE LED US INTO THE WILDERNESS AND SPOKE TO US My fourth novel! No...
Post a Comment
Read more

May Day, Salt Lake City

By
Posted on 5/1/2012 by the Salt City Sinner It was a glorious spring day in Salt City today.So why not get some exercise in the form of a protest march celebrating May Day ? Our goal was to meet at the City County Building and march to the capitol. The crowd started to gather at the City County building at 3:00 PM, MST. The big news on the street was that the Black Bloc would be in attendance ( my views on the Bloc are mixed at best). Were there Black Bloc comrades* at today's march? Yes, there were: The real  story here is that we had an ally far more lovable (but I would argue less flexible) than the Bloc on our side. Gumby. My favorite sign by far: And we marched! At one point the protesters were too many to stay on the sidewalk and spilled into the street, effectively stopping traffic. The cops (who were already on scene) blared their sirens and ominously intoned "STAY OFF THE STREET" through bullhorns. The response? Protes...
6 comments
Read more