It’s about the safest bet around: Mitt Romney will win Utah’s Republican presidential primary Tuesday with the kind of dominant victory rarely seen outside of elections held in North Korea.
But while Utah’s last-in-the-nation presidential contest provides an inconsequential punctuation mark on the story of Romney’s nomination, down the ticket expensive and bitterly fought races will be decided.
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Voting
Voters can locate their polling places or view sample ballots at the state’s election Web site: vote.utah.gov
The Republican primary is open to registered Republicans. Unaffiliated voters can register with the party at their polling places to vote in the GOP contests. Those registered with other parties may not. The Democratic and Constitution party primaries are open to all voters.
Candidates for Tuesday’s primary
Hopefuls in top races for Utah’s last-in-the-nation primary election Tuesday:
President, Republican
Rick Santorum
Mitt Romney
Fred Karger
Ron Paul
Newt Gingrich
Senate, Republican
Dan Liljenquist
Orrin G. Hatch
Salt Lake County mayor, Republican
Mark Crockett
Mike Winder
Salt Lake County Council, at-large, Republican
Joseph Demma
Melvin Nimer
U.S. House of Representatives, District 1, Democratic
Ryan Combe
Donna McAleer
Governor, Constitution
Kirk Pearson
Brandon Nay
Attorney general, Republican
John Swallow
Sean Reyes
State auditor, Republican
John Dougall
Auston Johnson
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Chief among them is Sen. Orrin Hatch’s bid to win his party’s nomination for a seventh term against challenger Dan Liljenquist. Hatch, already Utah’s longest-serving senator, has spent more than $10 million to retain his party’s nomination, obliterating every spending record for any Utah political race.
Hatch’s campaign manager Dave Hansen said that $10 million tally was everything Hatch had spent since his 2006 election, but acknowledged a big chunk of it was dedicated to winning the nomination.
"Senator Hatch doesn’t take any election lightly, but especially this one," Hansen said. "After 2010, we knew this was going to be a tough race. Fortunately, we had the resources to do the things we’ve needed to do, to be honest with you."
Liljenquist, who has spent more than $600,000, with about $400,000 of that coming from his own pocket, said he feels good about the campaign and has had good feedback from voters since he and Hatch met in their only debate earlier this month.
"We do event after event. We have hundreds of people out knocking on doors. We’ve put out 100,000 door hangers and 11,000 signs, and you know what? We’ve done it all through volunteers," Liljenquist said. "It’s been awesome. We’ve blanketed the state. We understand that the way we compete with money is with hard work."
Adam Brown, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, said when an elected official pours money into a race, it’s typically a sign that the incumbent is sensing a real threat.
"The fact that you see Orrin Hatch spending a lot shows that he is taking this challenge serious," Brown said. "The flip side is: It’s not clear how much spending actually accomplishes. … It’s really hard to say that there’s any real-world impact."
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Outside money » The spending by the Hatch campaign doesn’t even paint the full picture, as outside groups and Super PACs (political action committees) have pumped money into the Senate race at an unprecedented rate, and the third-party spending has even trickled down to state and local races.
In the Republican race for attorney general, for example, candidate Sean Reyes has been battered down the stretch by $140,000 in attack ads, dredging up a 20-year-old run-in with kids who egged his car and a campaign-finance complaint in which he was cleared of wrongdoing.
Jason Smith, a Texas lobbyist and former political director for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign, said he created the It’s Now Or Never PAC to help get candidates elected who would oppose President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. All of the PAC’s money has been channeled through a nonprofit to hide the donors, meaning nobody knows who is paying for the ads.
Meantime, Reyes’ opponent, John Swallow, the chief deputy attorney general, was also hit by a PAC with Democratic ties, which alleged Swallow was on the verge of being indicted by federal prosecutors for intervening in a contract dispute in Salt Lake County.
State legislative races are not immune from the Super PAC phenomenon, either.
Voters in state Rep. Brad Daw’s Orem district have received numerous pieces attacking the incumbent, accusing him of supporting health care reform worse than the Affordable Care Act, being soft on bullying and refusing to vote on immigration.
Those ads have come from a PAC run by Jason Powers, a political consultant who is also
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