MILLCREEK, Utah — The campaign has been brutal. Names have been called, insults hurled, yard signs stolen. In these final days, volunteers are out knocking on doors, and undecided voters are awash in leaflets warning about big government and higher taxes, or the loss of crucial government services.

Romney versus Obama? Hardly. Here in the mini-malls and rolling cul-de-sacs south of Salt Lake City, the election dividing friends and neighbors is one to decide whether the suburb of Millcreek should abandon its loosely organized ways and knit itself into a bona fide city.

It is a campaign rife with many of the same fundamental issues roiling the presidential campaign: taxes, spending and the right size and role of government in people’s lives.

To supporters, a city would cobble together a few suburban neighborhoods into a more perfect union. After years of living at the whims of county codes and tax rates, residents of Millcreek said they would, for the first time, be able to keep their tax dollars inside their own borders and write their own future.