(I wrote this tribute to former Utah Republican Party chairman Bill
Stevenson shortly after his death in May of 2010. It was published on the now
defunct StandardBlogs on The Standard-Examiner newspaper website. I’ve been thinking of
Bill lately. I rescued this post from Wayback Machine and am happy to publish
it on this blog. - Doug Gibson)
The world’s a little bit smaller with the death of Bill
Stevenson, former Utah Republican chairman. He was 80 when he died on May 19.
It’s a shame that there’s not even a news article about this man’s death in the
Salt Lake City papers because the dominance of the Utah Republican Party owes
itself to men like Bill, principled, honest, and determined to build a base
from the grassroots up, not the top down. Bill was part of the era of Ogden’s
Richard Richards, former national Republican chairman.
Bill’s heyday
was a long time ago. When I first met him, more than two decades ago, his
tenure as state GOP leader was already over. But he stayed active in politics,
working behind the scenes for such pols as Chris Cannon, Enid Greene and Greg
Hughes. His last major push was for New Mexico’s Gary Johnson, who runs the Our
America group, and may be a candidate for president in 2012.
Bill taught me that a lonely man with his principles is more important than a wealthy man with his principles for sale. I loved him and I’m sure he’s up there with many of his colleagues, keeping an eye on Utah. Read his obituary here.
The original Wayback blog post is here. It includes a few comments.
