This is number five in a planned series of 50 entries between now and November, looking at each of the 50 states in terms of every race on that state's ticket--Presidential, Gubernatorial, Senate, House, State legislatures--the whole beehive. Special attention paid to identifying and promoting the most important contests per state.
This time, we look at Utah
Previous diaries in this series:
Delaware: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Arkansas: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Illinois: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Texas, Part One: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Texas, Part Two: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Utah is definitely the 50th state in the 50-state strategy, the most solidly Republican state of them all, and the only one that still occasionally gives even George W Bush a net positive approval rating.
Utah can be divided into three parts. Salt Lake City, the major metro area, is actually a pale shade of blue, and competitive for Democrats, as evidenced by the Democratic Mayor. This is great for Utah, but not so good compared to other major metro areas in the west. Naturally, the Republican-dominated government has gerrymandered the Congressional map so that SLC is divided into three parts and their blue votes are diluted by the red votes in the rest of the state.
http://www.nationalatlas.com/...
Surrounding SLC are the suburbs along Highways 80 and 15 (Orem, Ogden, Provo, "Bountiful", etc.). I have a theory that these suburbs are populated entirely by Human Resources Directors, who fired everybody else in the area, gave them copies of Who Moved My Cheese?, and then kicked them out of town for no longer looking clean enough, after they’d been unemployed for a few months. They also kick you out for being a Democrat. Ironically for a political party that claims to hate the Federal Government and especially taxes, a major source of employment in Provo is the Internal Revenue Service.
Finally, there is the thinly populated rest of the state, which is if anything even more Republican than the Suburbs. Some few reclusive hardcore Mormon sects that still advocate polygamy to the embarrassment of the mainstream LDS church are to be found here. Also worth noting are Moab to the east, a rare island where Democrats can do well; and St. George in the far Southwest corner, which might be called "Little Arizona" due to the population of retirees.
Utah does have a progressive blog, the Wassatch Watcher. http://www.wasatchwatcher.com/
As far as the 2008 elections go, the best and most important use for 50-staters’ time and energy here is to build infrastructure and try to reduce the GOP’s victory margins here so as to create a foundation for eventual wins later on.
PRESIDENT: Utah’s five electoral votes are the safest McCain votes in the nation.
SENATE: No Senate race in 2008.
GOVERNOR: The Republican incumbent, Jon Huntsman, is considered the most popular Governor in the 50 states, and is talked up as a primary choice to succeed Borin’ Orin Hatch in the Senate should he retire after his next term. The leading Democrat in the race is Matt Fransden, a tax resister whose initial website is a flashpoint presentation on tax reform. A better choice for the primary is Bob Springmeyer, who appears to be a land conservationist in the Schweitzer mode.
http://www.bobforgov.org/
OTHER STATEWIDE:
The Democratic candidate for Attorney General is Jean Welch Hill. http://www.jeanwelchhill.org/
The Democratic candidate for State Auditor is Clare Collard. http://www.voteclarecollard.com/
Hill and Collard are taking on incumbents. The State Treasurer’s office is an open race, and the Democratic candidate is Dick Clark. I have not found a website for clark.
STATE LEGISLATURE: Good God, give me air! 20 Democrats out of 75 House members, and 8 out of 29 in the Senate! I imagine them huddled together for protection like ancient Christians in the lions’ den. Hopefully we can make a dent in these numbers come November, and give these hardy souls some reinforcements.
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS:
DISTRICT 1—Morgan Bowen (D) v. Rob Bishop (Inc R). Not on anybody’s radar. The good news is that, while eleven House Districts to date have had their filing deadlines pass without any Democrat running, Utah has a full slate.
http://www.bowenforcongress.com/
DISTRICT 2 – Jim Matheson (Inc D)—Utah’s 50-State, 435-District hero, and one of the few glimmers of life in the Beehive State. The Goopers tried to redistrict Matheson out of a job after the 2000 census by carving out large parts of SLC giving him instead as much rural Republican territory as the other two districts combined, and yet Matheson survived. He was a prime target for defeat in 2002, slightly less so in 2004, and a footnote in 2006. This time around, the Republicans are pretty much going through the motions while they focus on more vulnerable targets in our first-termers in other states. However, we can’t take him for granted, and so I am including a link to Matheson’s site.
http://www.house.gov/...
Please do not complain that Matheson is not blue enough to deserve our support. He is Utah’s ONLY Democrat in Congress, and our best evidence to Utah voters that they should consider voting Democrat at all.
DISTRICT 3—Bennion Spencer (D) v. Republican primary winner. Spencer is not on the radar for now, but the next best thing to a competitive race is watching Republicans make asses of themselves in a contested primary. Incumbent Republican Chris Cannon is a hardcore conservative, not the type you’de expect to see primaried by the Club for Growth brigade, but hey. Apparently Cannon has suggested support for gay marriage as a vehicle for eventually gaining acceptance of the outlying polygamous mormon relationships, while challenger David Leavitt (related to former governor Mike Leavitt) is attacking him therefore as a commie liberal, and taking the opposite tack that we must wipe out all vestiges of polygamy because it would be a gateway to acceptance of ThoseScaryHomos. Other Republicans Jason Chaffetz, a BYU football player and Joe Ferguson, a military candidate, are also part of the circus. I say get out the popcorn and watch them hurt each other.
http://utahamicus.blogspot.com/...
What to do about Utah to make it bluer? It's hard to say. We are making great strides in other parts of the West due to the split between the libertarian streak in most parts of the west and the authoritarianism in the Bush Administration's pandering to the religious right. However, Utah, unlike most of the Rocky Mountain West, is a theological region where religious authoritarianism is popular.
I take some hope in the overreaching of evangelical Christians, some leaders of which have started to be vocal in their belief that Mormonism is not "real Christianity", just as they have said about Catholics. It may be that the fundamentalist base eventually sunders LDS from the Republican party for us. In the meantime, what would happen if the Democrats began to treat Latter Day Saints with the deference given to other minority groups, and spread out a welcoming tent? It's worth a thought.