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Winder Exec is also author, public servant
by Rosemary Winters (Salt Lake Tribune)
10/15/2007
WEST VALLEY CITY - Even at age 4, Mike Winder thought big.
As other kids dreamed up their Halloween costumes - garish or ghoulish, cowboy or cop, Frankenstein or fireman - Winder knew there was only one thing he wanted to be: president of the United States.
He had been watching, with his parents, a televised debate between President Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan when the inspiration struck.
So on Oct. 31, 1980, he suited up in his Sunday duds, complete with a red-and-white-striped bow tie and a straw hat banded with red, white and blue ribbons.
VoilÀ. He was a president - or at least an Uncle Sam-like convention delegate. But perhaps most notably he was campaigning as himself. No Carter or Reagan mask. No Washington wig. No Lincoln beard. Just Mike - who, at 4, thought running for president would be a "cool thing."
So to say that Winder, West Valley City's youngest councilman, has political ambitions would be an understatement.
And he's still obsessed with the Oval Office. He recently wrote a book, Presidents and Prophets, about each president's relationship with the LDS Church. A history buff, he's also a member of the Center for the Study of the Presidency.
'He has the ambition'
Twenty-five years after he masqueraded as a presidential wannabe, Winder won his first real political victory, securing an at-large council seat in Utah's second-most populous burg, West Valley City.
It was a win even bigger than Reagan's in 1980. And, like Reagan, Winder trounced an incumbent - beating three-term City Councilwoman Barbara Thomas with 71 percent of the vote.
Granted, he enjoyed widespread name recognition - milking his family's dairy dynasty - but Winder, then 29, snagged a victory big enough to be recognized as a political force in his own right.
It still has people talking about what his next steps might be.
"I expect that Mike will seek higher office someday," says Todd Weiler, vice chairman of the Utah Republican Party. "It would surprise me if he didn't run for the state Legislature or even statewide elected office."
Winder's big sister, Aimee Newton, watched his penchant for politics unfold after his pretend presidential campaign in 1980. As kids, their favorite game to play was "cities." Newton - the oldest of five - now a mortgage loan officer, always claimed the job of banker. Mike Winder snatched the title of mayor, making sure the routes for their big wheels were safe.
"He doesn't enjoy [politics] because of the power and influence piece. He enjoys it because he really does care about people," Newton says. "I could see Mike as the governor of Utah someday."
West Valley City Mayor Dennis Nordfelt says you can document this prediction in your journal, he's so sure about Winder being a rising GOP star.
"You [will] see Mike Winder holding high office at some point in the future. I don't know if that would be governor or U.S. senator - or even something higher than that," Nordfelt says. "He has the education and the background, and he has the ambition."
Future mayor of WVC?
Most observers agree that it's at least a safe bet that Winder could be West Valley City's next mayor.
Nordfelt is not saying if he will run for re-election in 2009, but he doesn't doubt Winder could take the job.
"If he wants to be the mayor, I'm sure he'll have the opportunity," says Nordfelt, who has talked with Winder about his political hopes.
"Usually, you kind of go up through the ranks. Maybe being mayor of the [state's] second-largest city would be a good training ground and a way for [Winder] to let people become aware of what a great public servant he is."
Winder dismisses the idea of running for a national office, such as Congress. He doesn't want to leave West Valley City, where he lives in a 1950s green-brick rambler on the family lane that leads to Winder Farms' headquarters and country store.
"This has been home to my family for six generations. I plan to raise my kids and die here," Winder says inside Winder Farms' "executive barn," where he works as vice president of marketing.
"It would be tough to raise a family with one foot in [Washington,] D.C., and the other in Utah."
Winder and his wife, Karyn, have three kids, and one more - the last, Karyn says - is due in November. Still, Winder could easily be an empty nester at 50.
National office, then? He doesn't say.
He's more open - if cryptic - about the possibility of running for mayor.
"I love West Valley City," he says. "I will certainly be running in some capacity at the city level" in 2009.
Rising star
Winder, with fewer than two years on the City Council, is still cutting his civic teeth. He points to creating the Mayor's Star of Excellence program, which honors the top 3 percent of the city's high schoolers, as his single, personal accomplishment on the council. (Nordfelt explains that most council actions are done as a group.)
And earlier this month, he was reprimanded by the city manager for sending a systemwide e-mail to city staff promoting the release of his new book, published in late September by Deseret Book-owned Covenant Communications.
But Winder fessed up to the "mistake" when called by a Salt Lake Tribune columnist, who chalked up the error to "youthful exuberance."
Already, the novice councilman has some impressive experience and political ties. As a senior at Taylorsville High, he served as student body president and statewide chairman of the Teenage Republicans - that post led him to hobnob with prominent Republicans, including Dick Cheney, at the Utah Republican Party's 1994 convention.
"It was heady stuff for a teenager to be hanging out with Dick Cheney, [Sen.] Orrin Hatch and [Sen.] Bob Bennett backstage," says Winder, who has a photo of himself shaking Cheney's hand at the event.
Also as a teen, he pushed Taylorsville's incorporation movement, which his parents, Kent and Sherri Winder, helped accomplish in 1996 after he left to serve an LDS mission in Taiwan. Kent Winder was elected to Taylorsville's first City Council.
Mike Winder worked as West Valley City's business-development manager from 2000 to 2004, when he was named one of "40 Under 40 Rising Stars" by Utah Business magazine. As a city councilman, he wants to continue work on economic growth, particularly with plans for a vibrant city center and a revitalized Valley Fair Mall.
Winder also led Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s research and policy committee during the 2004 gubernatorial campaign. In 2005, Huntsman appointed Winder to a four-year term on the Utah Board of State History.
Speedracer, kid wrestler
Winder crossed paths again with Cheney Sept. 28. The West Valley City councilman was asked to drive a staff van in the vice president's motorcade, which raced from the Salt Lake City International Airport to the Grand America Hotel for a super-secret meeting of the conservative Council for National Policy that was closed to the press.
Winder wasn't allowed in, either. And he didn't get to talk to or chauffeur Cheney.
But he enjoyed another rare thrill: driving on vacant downtown streets that were cordoned off for the veep's entourage.
"To fly down 6th South at 60 miles per hour, make lane changes without signals and run red lights - that's a memorable experience for any driver," Winder recalls.
Most of his days, though, are not so flashy as that. When he's not at Winder Farms or City Hall, he loves to play with his kids: Jessica, 8; Michael Jr., 6; and John, 3. They search for funny videos on YouTube. Or they play "tackle daddy" in the front room, which - so that there's enough room for romping - holds only a grand piano, a "timeout" stool and an old leather chair Winder rescued from a Dumpster.
Karyn Winder says life has been busy - some days she thinks it's "too busy" - since her husband joined the City Council and began work on his latest book.
But she expected this.
"When we were married, I knew he'd end up in politics. I just didn't know when," she says. "He has so much he wants to get done in life he had to start young."
Hobby: Meet presidents
Mike Winder no longer wants to be U.S. president. But studying - and meeting - presidents has become a serious hobby.
Last year, he sat next to President and first lady Bush in St. John's Episcopal Church, the so-called "Church of the Presidents," in Washington, D.C. Winder managed to briefly exchange greetings with the first couple despite the watching eye of the Secret Service.
In April, he came as close as he'll ever get to the 1980 presidential race: He met Jimmy Carter. Winder learned the former commander in chief taught Sunday school classes at his Baptist church in Plains, Ga. So Winder went to the class. And he gave Carter a copy of the Presidents and Prophets chapter about him - in case there were any errors or omissions.
Now that he's older, Winder realizes "what a long shot" vying for the White House would be.
"I've grown up from the four-year-old who wanted to be president of the United States to an adult who wants to be a public servant - but also enjoys being a presidential historian on the side."
And maybe a mayor. Or a senator. Or a governor.
rwinters@sltrib.com
Mike Winder
* Age: 31.
* Family: He and his wife, Karyn, have three kids and a fourth expected in November.
* Education: University of Utah, Master of Business Administration and a bachelor's degree in history.
* Number of books he's written: Six.
* Only election he's lost: Student body president at Bennion Junior High.
* First election he won: Student body president at Taylorsville High.
* U.S. Presidents he's met: George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter.
* President - dead or alive - he'd most like to meet: Theodore Roosevelt.
* Presidential candidate he's backing for 2008: Mitt Romney.
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