Good Tuesday morning from Salt Lake City.
It's Municipal Primary Election day in Utah. A Salt Lake City councilman says the Utah State Prison is relocating to Utah's capital city. If Jonathan Johnson decides to take on Gov. Gary Herbert in 2016, he might have quite a hill to climb.
The clock:
- 84 days to the 2015 election – (11/3/2015)
- 160 days to the 2016 Iowa Caucus (tentative) – (1/18/2016)
- 167 days to the opening day of the 2016 Utah Legislature – (1/25/2016)
- 168 days to the 2016 New Hampshire Primary – (1/26/2016)
- 212 days to the final day of the 2016 Utah Legislature – (3/10/2016)
- 322 days to the 2016 Utah primary election – (6/28/2016)
- 455 days until the 2016 presidential election – (11/8/2016)
Tuesday's top-10 headlines:
- Salt Lake City Councilman James Rogers says it's a "done deal" that the Utah State Prison is relocating to Salt Lake City [Tribune].
- Overstock.com chairman Jonathan Johnson has a tough road ahead of him if he decides to challenge Gov. Gary Herbert next year due to Herbert's high approval ratings and Johnson's low name ID [Utah Policy].
- Election officials say, in some areas, more than 30% of the mail-in ballots for today's primary election have already been returned [Deseret News].
- A single donor helped a political action committee pay for polling to help Jackie Biskupski's mayoral bid [Utah Policy].
- Gov. Herbert officially appoints Derrin Owens to the Utah House seat vacated by former Rep. Jon Cox [Utah Policy, Deseret News, Tribune, ABC 4].
- The Utah State School Board pulls out of the Utah Public Education Coalition [Tribune].
- Testing of backlogged rape kits in Utah is revealing new leads in some old cases [Tribune].
- Utah environmental officials are testing water from the San Juan River trying to detect the toxic waste plume from an abandoned mine [Deseret News, Fox 13].
- Former Texas Governor Rick Perry's presidential campaign has stopped paying staffers in South Carolina [National Journal].
- Actress Melissa Gilbert of "Little House on the Prairie" fame is running for Congress in Michigan [US News and World Report].
On this day in history:
- 1934 – The first federal prisoners arrived at the island prison Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.
- 1965 – Riots began in the Watts section of Los Angeles. In six days of violence, 34 people were killed.
- 1984 – In an off-air radio voice check picked up by TV cameras, President Ronald Reagan joked "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in 5 minutes." Needless to say, Soviet officials were not amused.
- 2012 – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney officially picked Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.
- 2014 – Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams took his life.
