With the formal submission of the Count My Vote citizen initiative petition this week, there is a pulling back of the veil on a new “super-player” in Utah public policy and politics.
Gail Miller, the widow of Jazz and car-dealership magnate Larry H. Miller, is a co-signer of the new CMV application.
And Mrs. Miller is also a co-signer on the recently-filed Our Schools Now citizen initiative.
Since Mr. Miller’s passing several years ago, his wife – and business partner of many years – has slowing been stepping out on Utah’s main stages.
From an active supporter of the arts and civic causes, now Gail Miller has been seen more and more in the public’s view.
With the breaking up of several huge Utah family fortunes into charitable trusts and/or children and grandchildren trusts, Miller was recently listed as the richest person in the state – her wealth (much of it in the Utah Jazz, the Vivint Center and 50+ car dealerships) is valued at more than $1 billion.
Still, she and her children made a gigantic public gift of the Jazz and its large downtown arena to the citizens of Utah recently – setting up a special trust aimed at keeping the NBA franchise in Utah for the foreseeable future.
It was an amazing act of generosity.
And with it comes who knows how much goodwill in the public’s eye.
Opposite to the flamboyant Larry (how many years did we see him cry at press conferences over his love of Utah, the Jazz, and its players), Gail Miller has been a retiring figure.
She drives herself to her various public services meetings, dresses moderately, and is happy to sit in the audience as other leaders of Our Schools Now or Count My Vote or the many other groups she’s associated with hold TV-camera-bright press conferences.
But in my work of talking to Utah’s political and civic leaders over the last several years, one thing has become clear:
You treat Gail Miller with respect.
And you don’t go out of your way to antagonize or upset the groups she backs and lends her considerable personal prestige and money to.
You take on the person who gave the Utah Jazz – worth hundreds of millions of dollars – to the public with care. If at all.
I was recently talking to a few backers of the Our Schools Now and the Count My Vote citizen initiative petitions (there’s some overlap among the two).
The question I was asking is whether those two power organizations – who have around $1 million each to collect the 113,000 signatures needed to get their petitions before the voters next November – might be willing to allow some other, less well-financed, petition backers into their gathering organizations.
There were some hemming and hawing – kind of talking around their answers.
I brought up the name of Gail Miller. And both folks told me in separate conversations that if Miller wanted to add another petition to the main ones, well, that would happen.
You’ve seen some TV ads recently featuring Miller, as she talks about the family values Larry and she brought to their growing automobile franchise business years ago.
Those values remain today, she says.
Well, Utah is going to see Miller’s public policy advocacy growing in the next few years – especially if she takes on a high-profile position in the upcoming campaigns to convince Utah voters to approve the Our Schools Now public school tax hikes and the Count My Vote petition to do away with the state’s caucus/delegate/convention party process.
In either case or both, will opponents of these petitions be willing to take on Gail Miller by name?
It would likely be a bad public relations move.
As a new figure, perhaps a bit reluctantly, moves onto the public policy stage in Utah.
