Tempest in a (decaffeinated) teapot

The two womens' car is parked in a corner parking lot in the city's red light district. A man pulls up next to them, says "Hi, honey" to the one closest to him, and asks what they are doing.

"Not much. What are you doing?"

"Just looking for some fun."

"Like what?" the woman asks.

The man asks if they are undercover police officers. They say "No," and smile. He describes what he has in mind.

One of them says "O.K. How much do you want to spend?"

"It depends on what I get."

"Anything you want."

"O.K. Sounds good."

"How much is it worth to you?"

"I usually go about $20."

They tell the man to follow them to a hotel several blocks away and drive off. He follows their car for a couple of blocks, but doesn't reach the hotel. A patrol car stops him and arrests him for soliciting sex acts from the two police decoys who reported this version of their conversation at the station that night.

Two guilty verdicts later, Representative Allan T. Howe (D-Utah) is still running for reelection in Utah's Second Congressional District. That district includes all of Salt Lake City, but for a while after Howe's arrest June 12 the only Howe campaign poster in town was on a corner of West Second South: some pranksters placed it across the street from the parking lot where Howe first met the two women.

Howe admits that he spoke to the two women, but claims that he was "lured" to the scene of the incident by a man who pretended to be asking him to a political gathering. He denies making some of the statements attributed to him in the decoys' story, claiming that he was only chatting with the women while he waited to be taken to the political meeting.

That was about the extent of Howe's story for several months--his lawyer told him not to comment on the case until the trial. Howe's silence did nothing to abate the political conflagration his arrest ignited. Senator Frank Moss (D-Utah) met for an hour with Howe and his wife and then implied to reporters that he had asked Howe to withdraw from his congressional race before the state's Democratic nominating convention so his name could be replaced on the November ballot. Salt Lake's evening paper, owned by the Mormon Church, called for Howe's immediate resignation. The editorial said Utahns hold their officials to higher standards than the rest of the country, adding that if Wayne Hayes had been from Utah he would have long ago been forced to resign.

The two police decoys took lie detector tests administered by Dr. Richard Raskin of the University of Utah. Raskin--a big man in lie detection who was ready to testify for the defense in the Patty Hearst trial until her defense discovered California doesn't accept lie detector tests as evidence even from Raskin--found that both decoys were telling the truth about the Howe incident.

Still, Howe kept his counsel, though his poll ratings dropped steadily. Mormon Church leaders issued a statement regretting the "embarassment" caused the church by the whole incident. And the rumors started flowing.

One story said that Howe had been called home from a mission and excommunicated from the Mormon Church because he had been playing around with a woman in violation of the church's strict rules about missionary behavior. Howe's secretary in his Salt Lake congressional office said Monday that he was in fact excommunicated "a long time ago," but termed the idea that he had been called back from a mission "ridiculous." She refused to detail Howe's offense, but emphasized that he has since been reinstated in the church and holds several church offices.

Another report suggested that Elizabeth Ray named Howe in her revelations of congressional improprieties. Most people who heard that rumor just laughed and referred to Howe's statement several days before his arrest that Utahns need not worry about their congressional delegation as regards the Washington sex scandals. "An elected official's public and private standards should be equally high," Howe had told his constituency reassuringly.

Howe consistently refused to respond to the rumors, or anything else connected with the case. He told the electorate that he did not consider it appropriate to comment before the trial, but promised to tell his story in court.

The trial came, the prosecution presented its case. And the congressman offered no defense. To no one's great surprise the four-man jury found him guilty.

After the trial, Howe's attorney explained that in Utah a defendant is entitled to an automatic appeal to District Court and a trial with an eight-man jury. The attorney said Howe could not have received a fair trial in City Court and hence decided to wait until District Court to present his case.

Howe's attorney is also his campaign manager now, because Howe's first campaign manager resigned shortly after the arrest. But the decision to remain silent in city court was politically disastrous. Most of the rest of his campaign staff resigned. "I quit because I knew he couldn't be elected and I didn't want to waste my time," one ex-staffer said. "My decision was not based on whether or not he was guilty. The way he's handled it is the problem; he's said one thing and done another."

Another former staffer said that while he admires Howe, he doubts the congressman was framed. "I just don't see a conspiracy of that sort," he said.

Democrats from all around the state called upon Howe to withdraw before he damaged the chances of the rest of the ticket. The party discussed ways to get another name on the ballot, but was stymied--the state convention had already been held and Howe was unopposed for the nomination. Because Utah law prohibits write-in votes in primary elections, Howe's name would not even be listed. Several Democrats offered their names as alternatives, but none was well-known enough to win a write-in campaign in the general election. Wayne Owens, who gave up the seat now held by Howe when he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1974, was unavailable for the job: he is running a mission for the Mormon Church.

Four weeks after the first trial, the second trial started. This time the prosecution presented another witness, Howe's former campaign manager. He testified that immediately following his arrest Howe was worried that the police had a tape recording of the incident. (One reporter had seen the transcript of the conversation as recounted by one of the decoys and had misread a notation at the top. He reported that there was a tape of the encounter.) When Howe found that there was not a recording of the conversation, he told the campaign manager that he was going to stay in the race.

At the second trial Howe took the stand in his own defense. He said he had been attending the county convention at the Terrace Ballroom, about six blocks from where he was arrested. A "Chicano" approached him, (though Howe can't remember his name), introduced himself, and invited Howe to a party where the congressman could pick up some votes and maybe raise a little money. The man told Howe to go to that corner of West Second South where a car would meet him and lead him to the party.

Howe says he went to the corner and pulled up next to the parked car. They exchanged greetings and Howe told the women he was looking for a party. After some brief conversation Howe realized that the women were not the people who were supposed to meet him. He told them he thought they looked familiar and wondered if they were police decoys. (Salt Lake's decoy program had been well-publicized for years.) The women denied that they were decoys until one recognized Howe as her congressman. She said that the two of them worked as airport security guards during the day and that she had seen Howe at the airport.

They conversed for a few more minutes. Howe admitted that he was curious about their jobs as decoys and questioned them to find out what sort of things men said to them. The women finally said that Howe had blown their cover and that they were going to leave. Howe said that he friends evidently weren't going to show up and that he was going to go home, too. He testified that he drove toward a freeway entrance, but was arrested before he could reach it.

The jury was confronted with conflicting testimony: either Howe or the two decoys was lying. They took 22 minutes to find Howe guilty.

The Brady Bunch was preempted that afternoon of Aug. 24: Allan T. Howe was on the courthouse steps spitting venom. One reporter asked Howe if he had ever had a girlfriend in the Four Corners area--the site of the controversial Kaiparowits power plant. Howe started to answer but was cut off by his wife's vehement reply: "Of course he had a girlfriend. Me!" His attorney said that such questions are the reason Howe can never get a fair trial in Utah. The reporter tried to ask another question, but Howe interrupted to ask what paper he was from. When the reporter said he represented the Brigham Young University student paper, Howe told him that he was a disgrace to the paper and the institution.

Shortly after the trial Howe's first campaign manager was arrested for intent to sell marijuana. The police had postponed the arrest until after the trial to assure a fair trial for Howe, they said.

The Democratic party began to move toward supporting a write-in candidate. More candidates declared themselves, and more voters said they would support a write-in. Howe's support settled down to about 15 per cent of the electorate.

But Howe still had fire in his breast. He announced on Sept. 3 that he was going to continue as a candidate for Congress despite his travails. He apologized for having been in that part of town, but continued to claim innocence, saying he put his trust in the innate fairness of the people of Utah.

Several days later, venom once again spewed from Salt Lakers' television sets. Howe's attorney railed at those who had "hounded" Howe into taking a lie detector test, defiantly producing the results of a lie detector that said that Howe was telling the truth. Mrs. Howe quoted the scriptures and suggested that others look to their own homes before criticizing her husband.

Raskin, who had tested the decoys, criticized the test that Howe's lawyer presented, saying that it was unreliable, an old technique that was not as good as the one Raskin himself had used. But many people who watched Howe at the press conference believed that Howe now had worked himself into such a self-righteous fury that he probably thought he really was innocent.

The Democrats went ahead and endorsed a write-in candidate, Daryl J. McCarty--Howe's opponent in the primaries two years ago.

So the voters of Utah must decide. Howe has generally been considered a good congressman, and until his arrest was assured of reelection. But Utahns are getting used to dirty campaigns and political scandal. The state auditor recently resigned after pleading guilty to a charge of misconduct in office--he had taken $50 in extra travel expenses. The Republican nominee for Attorney General was just cleared of a charge of interfering with a civil suit by telling the plaintiff that she "didn't have a case" against the daughter of his longtime personal secretary. The cleared attorney won in the primaries despite another charge hanging over his head: he has been accused of failing to forward "at least a couple of hundred dollars" in child support to a client.

"The mud starts slinging when campaigns start," he said.

The biggest problem facing Allan Howe is not campaign dirt, but his own behavior. Coupled with a propensity for five o'clock shadow, Howe's actions and self-righteous smugness raise the specter of a former president. Echoing the thoughts of many Utahns, Salt Lake City resident Nick Carling wrote a letter to The Salt Lake Tribune: "Richard M. Nixon is alive and well, living in the state of Utah and running around disguised as Allan T. Howe."

But to some citizens of Salt Lake, the affair has been less unkind. The women of West Second South got some free publicity. Although there was already a ski trail at Alta named West Second South, something new was needed. So the women down in pristine Salt Lake City's red light destrict have taken what might be considered campaign buttons of some sort, buttons that read "WE KNOW HOWE."