I'm with Pete

I have had Pete Ashdown's campaign button in the sidebar of this blog for several months now. I've never explained why I'm supporting him.

There are the easy reasons: I'm from Utah and I'm a Democrat. I have voted in every election since I turned 18, so I have already voted against Orrin twice in my life. I disagree with him on nearly every position he takes. But, I'm not going to go off on a rant against Orrin.

Although.... while I'm here.

Orrin has been in the senate since I was two years old. It's true. When he was asking "What do you call a Senator who has served 18 years?" and answering his own question with the immortal line, "You call him home" I wasn't old enough to tie my shoes. He has spent a lifetime (mine) in the US Senate. He's completely out of touch with anybody under 50. We should buy him a card, leave it up at the front desk for everybody to sign, stuff in a gift certificate to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, and send him back home to Pennsylvania.

But, I'm really trying to avoid taking a standard partisan position on this race. I'm genuinely supporting Pete Ashdown because of what I know of him. I haven't met him in person more than two or three times, and those were very brief handshakes, but I have had interactions with him through his company, Xmission, since shortly after I first moved to Salt Lake City in the fall of 1993.

I signed up for my first Internet account at the University of Utah in September of that year (the infamous Eternal September). Back in those days, you could only get online through a university, a government agency, or one of a very small number of private Internet service providers. You could tell what organization a person was affiliated with by their email address. If you saw an email address ending with xmission.com, you knew it belonged to somebody from Utah. That was my earliest introduction to Pete Ashdown's Xmission.

The fact that Xmission still exists in 2006 shows something about the management skills of the person running that company. I remember the Internet of 1993. That was before the World Wide Web took off. Nearly everything was text-based. Anybody who jumped into that business back then had to have remarkable insight, and to stay in that business from that time to the present is something very few people or companies have been able to do.

The charitable work of Xmission has always impressed me. I have seen at least a dozen local charities and non-profit organizations over the past decade using space on the web donated by Xmission, and I know there are many more than that. Just this past Saturday, it was announced that Xmission is now providing free wireless internet access at Pioneer Park, which will be useful during the upcoming Farmers Markets. It's the latest expansion of the downtown availability of Xmission's free wireless access.

I use the Xmission networks at the downtown library, the Salt Lake Roasting Co, and/or the Beehive Tea Room on a weekly basis. It's the sort of investment in the downtown infrastructure that our city government should be making.

So, while I don't really know Pete Ashdown, I have seen his work in Salt Lake City and in Utah over the past 10+ years. When I heard the announcement (on KCPW of course) that he intended to run for US Senate, I was honestly excited. It's difficult for me to get excited about a political candidate, but if anything is going to be done to fix the political problems in this country, it is going to take capable, intelligent, and generous people such as Pete.

People in Utah like to say that they vote for the candidate and not the party. Here is a real chance to demonstrate that. Compare Pete Ashdown's positions and the positions of Orrin Hatch. Read what they say about themselves. Compare the biographies of Pete and Orrin and decide on the individual.

One of these guys will represent Utah for the next six years. How much have things changed in the last six years? What needs to change in the next six? Who is going to do that?

One guy has already been given 30 years to do what he could do. The other has spent the last 12 years building a successful business, creating local jobs, and raising a family -- exemplifying the sort of values Utah voters say they admire.

It can't be more obvious than that.