In yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune Holly Mullen wrote a column offering some excellent advice to candidates. The inspiration behind the column came from one Thomas Wright, who is challenging our very own Representative Roz McGee. Mullen didn’t disclose Wright’s identity, but with a little bit of research it was easy enough to figure out.

Apparently, Mullen was approached by Wright while unpacking her car after a Labor Day weekend get away when he “started to rail against his opponent in what became a full-on stump speech.”

This isn’t the type of candidate Wright describes himself as being on his website. According to his home page, his campaign “is about listening and learning”, not “railing” and exhausting voters’ patience.

Be that as it may, Wright clearly has very strong feelings about the two party system; in his view we don’t have one. His website states “District 28 needs and deserves a representative in the Utah State Legislature who is seen as more than an interloper in a one-party system.” “One party system”? That sounds more like the old Soviet Union than the representative democracy we pride ourselves in, even if we are in Utah where things are a bit lopsided.

Wright should heed Mullen’s call for civil discourse and do a little more of the listening he prides himself in. As for Representative McGee, she has served her district and her state well and is anything but an “interloper”.