While many eyes in the electoral junkie universe are peeled on the co-main events on Tuesday in Pennsylvania (Holden-Cartwright in PA-17 and Altmire-Critz in PA-12), the Beehive State of Utah offers us a whale of an undercard this weekend as Democrats and Republicans convene for statewide conventions which have the ability to short-circuit primary elections in key races across the state.
In fact, both parties will be meeting at this hour to begin the process of candidate selection. The Democrats will be meeting at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, while the Republicans will be downstate a few miles at the South Towne Expo Center in suburban Sandy. These conventions have a critical element to them electorally, because a candidate who can attain 60 percent support among the delegates automatically claims the nomination for that seat, eliminating the prospects of a June primary to determine the nominee. If no candidate can manage to snare 60 percent support, then the top two votegetters will go heads-up in June.
These conventions got fairly wide attention in 2010, when the Republican convention effectively ended the career of longtime U.S. Sen. Robert Bennett. Bennett, you will recall, ran third behind GOP candidates Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater at the convention, eliminating him from the June primary. Lee went on to claim the nomination in the primary, and proceeded to win an easy general election victory.
Initially, prospects of a similar fate befalling longtime Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) seemed likely. A year ago, it was largely assumed that upstart GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz would run for the Senate, and that Hatch might be extremely vulnerable to his challenge. Chaffetz's decision to forgo a Senate bid increased Hatch's chances for re-election exponentially, though he still faces a pair of intraparty rivals.
What follows is a quick sketch of the major battles on tap today in both parties. For a local's take of the races today, you can check the perspective of longtime Utah political editor Bob Bernick. You are also, of course, more than welcome to use the comments section as a thread for discussing the results, since this is not an event for which Daily Kos Elections is planning a liveblog.
4:12 PM PT (David Jarman): So, Orrin Hatch didn't hit the magic number of 60%; he got to a frustratingly-close 59.2% in the second round of ballots, meaning that he and Dan Liljenquist advance to a primary. Hatch is probably still a strong favorite in the primary, but we'll have to see if the FreedomWorkses of the world try and boost Liljenquist ahead of the June 26 election. Also, we know who Hatch (or Liljenquist) will face: Democratic former state Sen. Scott Howell, who won the Dem nomination outright. He beat tech entrepreneur and previous Senate race loser Pete Ashdown.
On the gubernatorial front, incumbent Gov. Gary Herbert won his party's nomination outright. He defeated Morgan Philpot in the second round of balloting, and in November will face the only Dem who bothered running, former Major General Peter Cooke.
GOVERNOR: Incumbent Gary Herbert (R)
There was a time when Herbert's name was high on the list of potential 2012 electoral casualties. Having ascended to the office when then-Gov. Jon Huntsman left office to become Ambassador to China, it seemed logical that other ambitious Republicans would want to leapfrog the appointed successor and claim the office as their own. Eventually, a handful of Republicans did step up to challenge the incumbent. There are, essentially, three leading GOP challengers: former state party vice chairman Morgan Philpot (who ran respectably close to Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson in 2010), state Rep. Ken Sumsion, and tea party activist David Kirkham.
Fortunately for Herbert, none of his challengers have really caught fire, and the multiplicity of them has probably worked in his favor. A poll this week by Dan Jones and Associates put Herbert right on the number necessary to move onward: 61 percent. Democrats, meanwhile, have no fight in this one, as they coalesced early around retired Army Major General Peter Cooke. Indeed, Cooke is already looking to November: just this week he named his nominee for Lt. Governor.
U.S. SENATE: Incumbent Orrin Hatch (R)
Back at the height of the Chaffetz speculation, it seemed plausible, and maybe even probable, that Orrin Hatch would suffer the same fate as his longtime Senate colleague and friend, Bob Bennett. A lot changed, however, when Chaffetz elected to stay in the House. After speculation about other candidates, only two serious ones emerged. One was former state senator Dan Liljenquist, and the other was state Rep. Chris Herrod. Neither was really able to mount much of a campaign, cash-wise. More importantly, Hatch seemed to score a coup by managing the delegate selection process in a way that seemed to blunt the force of the kind of hard-right activists that sent Bennett packing in 2010.
The net result: polls over the past several weeks put Hatch right on the number in regards to winning the nomination outright. The range has been from the high 50s into the low 60s, leaving most to conclude that even if he falls tantalizingly short today of the magic number, a primary election in June should be something akin to a foregone conclusion.
UT-02: NEW DISTRICT (No Incumbent)
When Jim Matheson elected to run in the state's 4th district (the state's most Democratic seat), this made the 2nd district the "new district" in Utah, which gained a 4th seat in the 2010 census. There is an absolute flood of Republican candidates in the mix here, with no less than eleven declared candidates. With that kind of volume, and no incumbent, it would seem to be a virtual certainty that the Republican nomination will not be settled until the primaries in June. The leader in the Dan Jones poll taken this week (military veteran and political newcomer Chris Stewart) was only at 34 percent. It is hard to see where he snares an additional quarter of the vote from.
Democrats, meanwhile, are a longshot at best in a 59-38 McCain district. They have an above "Some Dude" level candidate here, though, in the person of former state Rep. Jay Seegmiller. Seegmiller dispatched the Utah House Speaker a few years back in a monster upset, but winning the 2nd would be an upset well above and beyond that, considering the funding head start of many of the GOPers in the mix plus the natural terrain in which he is competing.
UT-04: Incumbent Jim Matheson (D):
Jim Matheson, who is unopposed for the nomination, is already looking ahead to November. And it is a perilous road he is looking down: while this district is incrementally more Democratic than the one he has held in the past decade, it is populated largely by folks he has never represented before in Congress. Therefore, many of the inherent advantages of incumbency, in this case, fall by the wayside.
With that in mind, several legitimate GOP contenders have thrown their hat in the ring to challenge Matheson. While there is not nearly the volume of candidates we see in UT-02 (here, we are only talking about five candidates), it is the relative parity between the candidates that would seem to hint that a June primary might be needed to settle the nomination. Dueling polls in the last week have swapped the leadoff position between Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love (who would become the first African-American Republican woman to serve in the House) and state Rep. Carl Wimmer.
There are also multicandidate competitions on both the Republican and Democratic sides in the GOP-held seats in UT-01 (Rep. Rob Bishop) and UT-03 (Rep. Jason Chaffetz). But the incumbents seem secure, and it is virtually impossible to see a path to victory in November for the Democrats in districts that Barack Obama lost with just 29 and 30 percent, respectively.