Salt Lake City might have just elected its first openly gay mayor

An openly gay candidate is leading the race for Salt Lake City mayor. She contributes the increase largely to the move to vote by mail.

“Fifty-two”, someone shouted at Biskupski’s election night party, then chants of “Jackie, Jackie, Jackie” erupted as the initial results came in. He also has pointed out his longtime efforts to limit billboards, leading a billboard-backed political action committee to post ads around town supporting Biskupski. But Martindale said they understand why Becker isn’t conceding and respect the process.

Becker was absent when the preliminary results were released, but as the second round of results were made public, he addressed his supporters with a level of cautious optimism.

Voters in Beaver, Box Elder, Juab, Morgan, Utah and Uintah Counties appear to have voted the proposal down.

“It is important to consider more than personal characteristics when casting your vote”, the activists wrote in endorsing Becker in an opinion piece in The Salt Lake Tribune.

Final results will be released on November 17.

Tuesday’s unofficial election results show 50-year-old Sophia Hawes-Tingey took 42 percent of the votes her bid for Midvale’s 2nd District.

“We’re a little disappointed that the mayor didn’t declare that we had won”, she said.

While Salt Lake City is the capital of a deeply red state and home to the headquarters of the Mormon Church, it has elected a few progressive Democrats as mayor, including Becker, who has served two terms, and Rocky Anderson, mayor from 2000 to 2008. Hawes-Tingey is a software engineer and U.S. Navy veteran.

It appears Utah’s capital city will have a new mayor.

Now, as the Mormon Church and many conservatives in Utah grapple with how to address the legal victory of same-sex marriage, three candidates from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are running for local offices. “We got a lot of those into election night results, but we still had a few that we couldn’t get verified and included in last night’s results”. Kitchen co-owns Laziz Foods, which sells hummus and other Moroccan spreads. Kitchen, his (now) husband, and two lesbian couples sued over Utah’s Amendment 3, which defined marriage as being only between a man and a woman.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Former state lawmaker Jackie Biskupski was leading results Tuesday night in the Salt Lake City mayor’s race, but with thousands of votes left to be counted, incumbent Mayor Ralph Becker said he wouldn’t concede.

It’s been Becker’s call to build upon Salt Lake City’s momentum and to let him “finish the job” versus Biskupski’s demands for change and a more “collaborative leader” as they have battled for votes.

But Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen has said at least 10,000 ballots county-wide would need to be counted in the coming days. While the mayoral election is nonpartisan, both Becker and Biskupski are Democrats and either win could maintain a four-decade streak of Democratic mayors.