HURRICANE, Utah — The primary election for Hurricane mayor has four candidates vying for the position, but the race has already become contentious over campaign signs.
Rick Crow, who came to Hurricane five years ago to retire, said he wasn't prepared for the political climate he encountered when deciding to run for his first political office.
"I wasn't prepared for how dirty it was, even at such a small city level. And it kind of scares me," Crow said.
The controversy centers around campaign signs. Mayor Nanette Billings has admitted to directing city personnel to take down campaign signs of one of her opponents, Gary Stevens. She says she pulled down the signs, which said "Hurricane Deserves Better," herself.
"The sign said, Hurricane deserves better. And I said, well, I respectfully disagree. Hurricane deserves the best. And that's been me. I've done the best work as the mayor," Billings said.
Billings defended her actions by claiming the signs didn't properly identify who was behind them.
"They weren't identifying as a campaign who they were, and if you are, you can say Gary Sanders hates Nanette Billings and thinks that we deserve better in hurricane. That's fine. But he didn't do that," Billings said.
Stevens, who couldn't go on camera, told me he was not told names needed to be on signs and doesn't believe that is a free speech requirement. He said he is being selectively targeted by Billings.
Billings posted a message she received from Steve Hirzel, a special agent with the Utah Attorney General's office, saying that the "Hurricane Deserves Better" sign didn't meet the criteria of a campaign sign based on Utah code.
That code says it is a misdemeanor to remove a campaign sign unless it is not clear it is for or against a candidate or a referendum. The code does not say a campaign sign must be removed if it does not fall under such criteria.
Both the code and the U.S. Supreme Court in a recent ruling said any removal must be done in a neutral fashion.
"We have a First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and I wouldn't even have had as much problem if the mayor would have gone and got all the signs that were on that corner. But no, it was selectively one sign. And that is an attack on our freedom of speech," Crow said.
Billings maintains her position that the signs weren't properly identified as political speech.
"It's not even a political sign. So not even against your first amendment, because they're not holding it or have identified who it is that's saying it... if you say, hurricane deserves better, Better air, better mountains, better roads, better parks, better people, better restaurants, better what?" Billings said.
When asked if she had any regrets about taking the signs, Billings acknowledged some second thoughts.
"Yeah. You can say, I'm just gonna say, if you say we're going to do what's right or be right, and doing what's right probably wouldn't have been to take the signs down," Billings said.
Beyond the sign controversy, each candidate has different priorities for Hurricane's future.
Crow emphasized transparency: "The people are not heard. I've been traveling around to parks just like this all over the community. And besides water, the number one thing that people say, What we say to the city falls on deaf ears. They don't get back to us."
Billings focused on infrastructure: "It's definitely our infrastructure. Absolutely. We have to build and finish the redundancy of our power lines for transmission so that people can have reliability and we also have to for water we have to be able to connect and make sure that people have what they need so we have our flows right. Those are probably the very biggest issues is our power, water, and roads."
Stevens prioritized relationships: "Restoring our integrity and relationships with sister communities in the county and region, sister agencies in the area including the Hurricane Valley Fire District, Ash Creek Sewer District, Washington County Water Conservancy District, Washington County Commission as well as our local state legislative representatives, other state officials and even some federal agencies such as the FAA."
Clark Fawcett, the fourth candidate, did not respond to interview requests but has stated in campaign materials that his first priority is water management - getting an inventory of existing approved developments and subtracting from water resources to ensure there's enough water to serve what has already been approved.
Ballots are now in residents' mailboxes, and voters have until August 12, Election Day, to make their choice.
