Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Richard Piatt Reporting After years as Salt Lake County's top cop, Sheriff Aaron Kennard might be in trouble tonight. Just four days until the election and we have the results of the latest Dan Jones poll for KSL and the Deseret Morning News.
The Sheriff has been in hard-fought races before, but this year is different, a serious challenge is swaying the rank and file, and the public.
For 16 years, one of the state's largest law enforcement agencies has been under the control of one man: Sheriff Aaron Kennard. Tuesday, Salt Lake County voters will decide whether to re-elect Kennard for a fifth term.
Aaron Kennard, Salt Lake County Sheriff: "I stand by my record. We've done some great things while I have been in office, not only in the law enforcement side, but in corrections."
But Kennard has a challenger, sheriff's deputy Jim Winder. Winder has been an aggressive campaigner, taking Kennard on about golfing during the day and about his management style.
Jim Winder, Candidate for Salt Lake County Sheriff: "We've used it as something analogous. The current administrator thinks the ship is sailing fine. And it's sailing so fine that it's ok to spend substantial time doing something else."
The issue may have hurt the Sheriff. The latest Dan Jones poll for KSL and the Deseret Morning news shows Winder leading Kennard, 49 to 42 percent.
Salt Lake County has another close race, this one for District Attorney. Republican Lohra Miller and Democrat Sim Gill are now in one of the closest races of the year. The poll of 501 voters reveals a race that's too close to call: 41 to 38 percent in Miller's favor. But the results are within the 4.4% margin of error.
County voters are also being asked to raise the sales tax on themselves by a quarter-cent to pay for transportation projects like TRAX, commuter rail and new roads. 60 percent say they support the measure, 29 percent say they don't.
There is substantial support for the other Salt Lake County propositions: 65 percent favor keeping the ZAP tax; funding the zoo, community arts and recreation. And 74 percent favor Proposition 2, which would bond 48 million dollars to preserve open space in the county.
With all these races and issues, the story is the same: turnout will be very important.
The poll also shows Salt Lake County incumbents doing well. At large council member Jim Bradley has a 12- point lead over Republican challenger Janice Auger.
County Clerk Sherrie Swensen has a healthy lead over Carrie Dickson.
And Gary Ott is leading Democrat Leslie Rebert by 15- percentage points in the race for auditor.
