Gov. Calvin Rampton
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ormer Gov. Cal Rampton, who died earlier this week at age 93, lived long enough to watch himself become a true rarity in Utah politics: a Democrat elected to statewide office three times in a row. That sort of thing just doesn't happen anymore.
Rampton, who was governor from 1965 to 1977, interrupted what had been a 16-year run for Republicans in the governor's office. And over his 12-year service to the state, he taught Republican Utahns how to regard candidates based on individual issues as opposed to simplistic party labels.
Rampton, a Bountiful native and graduate of Davis High School, is being remembered for all he accomplished during that long tenure at Utah's Capitol. He consolidated more than 150 state agencies into 11 departments in an effort to modernize state government, which survives largely intact today. (He was helped along that road by a state Legislature that had a Democratic majority.) Utah's public college and university campuses began to take on the appearance of their current incarnations via Rampton-sponsored building initiatives and boosted funding. He also made economic development and tourism promotion cornerstones of his decade-plus administration.
It's hard to imagine, but before Rampton, Utah didn't place much emphasis on those twin pillars of our state's economic health.
Rampton's early life had him earning a law degree at the University of Utah, and serving briefly as Davis County attorney. He had been a member of the Utah National Guard since the early 1930s, and was called up after the United States entered World War II. He eventually served overseas, in France.
Between that time and his election to Utah's highest state office, Rampton and his wife Lucybeth had children and he spent time working on his political skills -- by failing to win any of several elections in the march toward the governor's office. Along the way, he kept adding names to his list of admirers and supporters, until he was well positioned to run for governor -- though few others seemed to believe it, given his history of failure at the ballot box. But he rode Lyndon Johnson's coattails in '64, and Utahns stuck with him, even giving him his largest victory ever in 1972, when the Nixon landslide swept over almost every state, including Utah.
It seems almost quaint to contemplate such things now: Rampton was well-regarded by voters for his blunt honesty and good humor -- they saw past party labels. The term "mealy-mouthed politician" would never have applied to Rampton, and voters rewarded that.
Another thing to remember about Rampton is that he never was a practitioner of dirty politics or demagoguery. Tough politics? Yes, but never low. As such, a great many current Utah politicians on both sides of the aisle could learn a lot from his example. We hope they're paying attention.
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