Don't vote for this guy

If you live in Salt Lake City, this guy wants to be your mayor.  His name is Rainer Huck and  you might have guessed from his picture that he is a Libertarian Crackpot.  Yes, I believe that is the politically correct term for people of his particular bend.

You may recall that Mr. Huck is the former president of the Utah Shared Access Alliance, the ATV advocacy group that believes ATVs should be allowed to go anywhere and everywhere they please.  He once led a group of disabled veterans, complete with oxygen tanks and walking canes, past a “no ATVs” sign, across a proposed wilderness area to a small desert creek.  He reasoned it was an act of civil disobedience.  I’d call it more an act of uncivil ignorance. 

But that’s about as Transcendentalist as Rainer gets. 

On his website, www.huckformayor.com, he claims to be the Anti-Rocky, in reference to current Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson.  He says if you want to know his position on an issue all we have to do is “apply the principle of inversion” to whatever Rocky would do.  For example, Rocky supports preservation of the small, old houses that were popular when Salt Lake City was built out.  Therefore, Rainer opposes neighborhood covenants that would prohibit property owners from building “monster houses” anywhere they want. 

Rainer says he will not take any campaign contributions and will not have any signs, billboards, flyers, junk mail campaigns, etc.  That’s a great idea to eliminate those eyesores and wastes of resources, but I’d venture to say that it’s also why most of you have never heard of Rainer, not to mention that he’s running for mayor. I’d also venture to say that’s one of the reasons we’re fortunate he’s not going to win. 

Here are some more. 

Rainer doesn’t like what rocky has done to make Salt Lake City a more bicycle friendly town.  He says he conducted a survey and found that 98% of people prefer to drive their cars to work, even in good weather.  He doesn’t understand why Rocky gives cyclists "extraordinarily preferential treatment", and apparently doesn’t understand that cyclists are doing all commuters a huge favor.  Rainer is out of touch if he doesn’t realize that Rocky isn’t giving cyclists undue influence but instead is just trying to restore some balance. 

Rainer says he wants to make Salt Lake City a more car friendly town.  Honestly, what more can he do?  Has he seen our absurdly wide and straight streets?    Has he seen our sprawling suburbs?  Our big box stores with acres and acres of parking lots?  Salt Lake City is one of the most car friendly towns in the country and all Rocky has done to alleviate the problem is paint bike lanes on some streets and provide places for cyclists to lock their bikes up. 

Rainer says economics tell the whole story:  “Automobile users pay their own way” while bike and transit riders require subsidies.  Rainer is out of touch if he doesn’t realize how heavily subsidized our roads and highways are.  Or maybe he thinks our roadways should be privatized.  Then we could all pay a toll each time we wanted to drive on one. 

I could go on and on with examples of Rainer being an out-of-touch crackpot; his website is full of them,  but I don’t want to waste any more of my or your time on him. I’m not going to tell you who to vote for.  I don’t even know who I’ll be voting for.  But if you vote for Rainer, you’re voting to replace a left wing nut job with a right wing nut job.