The terrain of the West, both social and natural, drew Ralph Becker, transplanting the Washington, D.C., native to the land of sage brush and misplaced sea birds.
The draw of the open spaces which he now works to preserve infected him when he applied for a summer job with the National Park Service.
“I took whatever they gave me,” he said. He worked that summer as a garbage man, a.k.a. sanitation engineer, although “there’s not much engineering involved.”
Returning to college and the urban expanse of the East, he suffered minor culture shock.
“There is nothing like the West in terms of landscape and wild country, also just the style of living, the communities of people I felt so much more comfortable with,” he said.
He returned for five summers afterward, working as a firefighter and a ranger among other things.
Eventually, he moved to Utah to pursue a law degree and study planning at the U. He then worked as a planner and begin teaching classes at his alma mater as an adjunct faculty member.
A vacancy in his Salt Lake City district and the encouragement of others prompted him to run for a seat in the state House of Representatives in 1996.
Though he had experience in government and community work, Becker had no experience with party politics before he ran for office. But after his election in 1996, he rose through the ranks of Democratic Party leadership to become House Minority Leader.
Despite the position, he feels new to the world of party politics.
And the realm is uneven at best. Of the 75 seats in the state House, Democrats hold 24?less than one-third of the votes.
The majority sets agendas, and if it so wishes, can cut off debate and shut the minority out of decision making. As redistricting proved, Democrats can find themselves precarious placed and potentially ineffectual.
Becker believes the long standing imbalance undercuts some representatives’ sense of accountability and clears the way for what he terms “retribution politics,” when personal vendettas surface as legislation.
U President Bernie Machen and Mayor Rocky Anderson were among the targets this year, drawing wrath for opposition to state gun laws and a lawsuit against the Legacy Highway, respectively.
From his seat in the House, Becker has established a reputation as a friend of open spaces, fighting to pass the bipartisan Quality Growth Act in 1999.
Over the past several years he has championed ethics reform. For the second year in a row, Becker sponsored an unsuccessful ban to dramatically limit lobbyists’ gifts to legislators. This year, at least, the bill made it through the House, but only to face defeat on the floor of the Senate.
Sometimes partisan politics requires a little extra maneuvering for Democrats to circumvent.
“It’s very common for us to recruit Republicans to carry bills to avoid the difficulty,” Becker said. He happily passed legislation to limit cell-phone use while driving on to Rep. Kory Holdaway, R-Taylorsville, even though the bill failed once again to receive the stamp of approval.
Democrats must also use alternative means to ensure their voices are heard: the press, the Internet and others, Becker said.
Their caucus meetings, unlike some Republican ones, are always open to the public, a practice Democrats tout as ideological.
But as discussion bounces across the tables of the minority party’s meeting, plans seem to dance around a ubiquitous “they.”
Becker interjects occasionally into the dialogue, his presence between other party leaders understated.
“He strikes me as someone who likes to serve in a mediational capacity,” said U Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Philip Emmi. “What he thinks is less relevant than what others think.”
It’s a role that goes naturally with planning, according to him.
Bear West, the company Becker helped found, played a lead role in developing the Wasatch Canyons Master Plan, an instrumental part of the decision not to hold Olympic venues in the Wasatch canyons, according to Emmi.
Acting on a recommendation from the College of Law, he invited Becker to teach in the planning program in 1986.
This winter, like many before, Becker has juggled his legislative schedule with the courses he co-teaches one evening a week.
“I unlock the geography department and pick up whatever they’ve left me,” he said.
While politics may be the art of the possible, a classroom is a forum free from confining realities. “It’s a chance to re open doors in my mind that I need to re-open.”
In 1986, courses on environmental topics were scattered few and far between, according to Emmi. But Becker’s courses, which cover environmental and natural resource law, “demonstrated the viability of that kind of class,” he said.