SALT LAKE CITY -- Like the terminator, Claire Geddes is back. And bold as ever.

After a few years hiatus caring for her ailing husband, Harold, the recently widowed Geddes returned to her well-honed watchdog role on Utah's Capitol Hill this year.

This time it was to battle legislation that threatened to gut the state's committee of consumer services, which advocates for families, farmers and small businesses in utility rate cases.

Not so fast, Geddes said to lawmakers pushing to erode the committee's independence.

"This is the last defense that rate-payers have," Geddes told senators. "If you take away the independence of this panel, you've stripped it."

A compromise measure, hailed by advocates as preserving consumer protections, emerged and passed on the final day of the session, with several of the players crediting Geddes's intervention.

It was reminiscent of one of the governor and Legislature's most notable reversals.

In 2000, Geddes battled the same beast in HB 320, legislation that got rid of the consumer services committee.

While the bill passed, Geddes and her allies persevered, speaking out against the measure and keeping public attention trained on what they portrayed as a shameless anti-consumer measure. A year later, in a rare capitulation to public pressure, lawmakers repealed it as the sponsor conceded defeat in a tearfully bitter floor speech.

Sometimes the Cottonwood Heights homemaker had to be hard as nails, taking on the state's top politicos without flinching.

"I used to light into these people," Geddes recalled. "If things aren't right, I'm more than willing to say it in the harshest terms."

Geddes also learned to force her way into places she wasn't wanted.

"When Marty Stephens was House speaker, we demanded to go into the back rooms where the negotiating was taking place," Geddes recalled. "You have to go up there and not care if they like you."

Geddes, now 62, learned to question authority early.

"I'm a downwinder," she said of her upbringing in Salina.

For 15 years, her father hauled uranium ore, dying of lung cancer at age 46.

"When everyone tells you there's no danger, you can say 'that's not true,'" Geddes said.

She poured her energies into working with HEAL Utah, which aims to keep nuclear and toxic waste out of the state.

In the early 1990s, Geddes threw her support behind third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot, quickly rising to co-chairwoman of his in-state campaign and then directing his United We Stand Utah organization until 1997.

She also headed Utah Legislative Watch -- a volunteer good government group -- until disbanding it in 2004 to spend more time with her husband, who died May 5, 2008.

"My watchdog work prepared me to care for my husband," Geddes said, describing the many hours she spent researching to discover he had Lewy Body Disease rather than Alzheimer's -- and then being an advocate on his behalf.

Sen. John Valentine, who sponsored the bill last session to shrink the committee of consumer services' authority, acknowledged that Geddes can be abrasive at times.

"We've had our battles in the past," Valentine said. "But the issues she raised with SB 214 were compelling. Her suggestions made it a better bill and easier to pass as consensus."

Rep. Fred Hunsaker, R-Logan, carried the successful amendment.

"I found her to be extremely committed and passionate about the issues of consumer representation," Hunsaker said, voicing concern about people who feel so disenfranchised that they won't participate.

Even utility representatives -- while not always pleased with her message -- admit that Geddes plays an important part in the process.

"Anytime someone wants to get involved and express opposition, it's a good thing for all customers," said Questar spokesman Darrin Shepherd. "She certainly is one voice."

And it's a voice likely to continue ringing out in years to come.

Geddes plans to stay connected and engaged.

"This isn't politics -- this is your country and the quality of your life," she said. "If we don't participate, we've lost."

• Cathy McKitrick writes for The Salt Lake Tribune.