Richard Culbertson Loses Bid For Mayor’s Office
Richard Culbertson, a mayoral candidate for Eagle Mountain, lost his bid for office in yesterday’s election by a landslide. Culbertson, recently investigated for mortgage fraud had his real estate license revoked for among other things forging the signature of his own son-in-law on real estate documents.
The fraud investigation was revealed just weeks before the election. Further, an inflammatory ad ran last week that poked at Culbertson’s marital history. Culbertson’s opponents discovered through a digital “fingerprint” the ad actually came from Culbertson’s camp. The Salt Lake Tribune got the Culbertson volunteer responsible to confess after previous denials -
An anonymous advertisement published in a community newspaper, the Crossroads Journal, encouraged residents
to vote for Jackson because of her “great marriage.” It criticized Richard Culbertson’s divorce, asking, “If he can’t even keep a marriage together, how can he bring the city together?”
Jackson, worried she would be blamed for the ad, decried the claims, alongside fellow Councilman David Lifferth who traced the ad to Michael Karr, a volunteer with Culbertson’s campaign.
Karr, who earlier denied on KSL-TV that he ran the ad, told The Tribune Wednesday that he - and he alone - did it. He said he wanted to parody a chart, published in an earlier issue of the paper, that enumerated Culbertson’s divorces, along with bankruptcy filings and traffic tickets.
“It wasn’t intended to hurt anybody,” Karr said. “And I apologize for anyone who was hurt.”
Culbertson lost the election 25% to 75%.