News Highlights
Republican Gubernatorial candidate Jon Huntsman,
Jr., announced his Utah revitalization and education plans earlier
this year. Now that the Primary Election is over The Salt
Lake Tribune reports
that Democrat Scott Matheson, Jr., has announced
his education plan. The two candidates have come down on different
sides of tuition tax credits or vouchers.
The Tribune
and the Deseret Morning
News report that Salt Lake District Attorney David
Yocom has asked his counterparts from four nearby counties
to screen possible charges against County Mayor Nancy
Workman.
Any Hit Man Volunteers?
National pundits are saying that Al Gore
is the designated hit man for the Democrats in the presidential
campaign. He is trashing Pres. George Bush at
every opportunity, in every way possible, his voice dripping
with contempt and derision. Some Republicans have said the Bush
campaign needs someone with real stature, like Rudy
Giuliani or John McCain to counter
the Gore onslaught and go after John Kerry .
Locally, we can expect the gubernatorial contest between Jon
Huntsman, Jr. and Scott Matheson,
Jr., to stay positive and upbeat, as both are nice guys and
won't want to be tagged as negative campaigners. Still, they
have to define each other and draw contrasts if they want this
election to be anything more than about who has the nicest haircut.
Matheson is likely to be behind as the general election gets
underway, and he has to take some fight to Huntsman or lose
by default. So if he won't personally get aggressive with Huntsman,
who will? In small states like Utah, that role often falls to
the party chairman, in this case Donald Dunn.
GOP Chairman Joe Cannon could also be called
in to take a little of the gloss off Matheson or to defend Huntsman
against attacks by fringe groups.
Huntsman will likely continue to take hits from fringe groups,
and at least some of the news media will probably further scrutinize
the family business operations. You don't get as big as the
Huntsman conglomerate is without picking up some enemies and
committed detractors. Huntsman was able to simply ignore the
fringe attacks during the primary because the mainstream media
did not give the critics much play.
Utah Ain't So Different (Chapter 1)
Democrats and the news media frequently lament the fact that
such a close correlation seems to exist between the Republican
Party and the LDS Church. Surveys show that most church-going
LDS members support Republican candidates, and exit polls confirm
that fact.
Well, guess what? Utah isn't much different from the rest of
the country. A flurry of recent national news stories and
columns point out that all across the country, church-going
people favor George Bush and the Republican Party by large margins.
In fact, other than race, religious involvement is by far the
single biggest predictor of voting behavior, bigger than
any other social or demographic category such as income, education
or gender. Everywhere in the country, people who are religious,
people who attend church, vote Republican. People who are not
religious vote Democratic. New York Times columnist David Brooks
recently wrote about this enormous “religious divide,” and noted
that a Time magazine survey showed that only 7 percent
of Americans feel that John Kerry is a man of strong religious
faith. That could be a big problem for his presidential campaign.
Utah Ain't So Different (Chapter 2)
He's a conservative Democrat who distances himself from John
Kerry, supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage,
is staunchly anti-abortion, backs drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, and earns top grades from the National Rifle
Association. Sound like a Democrat trying to get elected in
Utah? No, it's Chris John, the leading Democrat trying to win
a U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana . And he's fairly typical of
Democrats all over the South, where fewer and fewer Democrats
are being elected.
National Journal recently published a lengthy article
about the woes of Democrats in the Deep South. In Alabama, Joe
Turnham, an evangelical Christian, respected businessman and
former State Democratic Party chair tried to win a House seat
in 2002. He proposed a congressional NASCAR caucus, challenged
his opponent to prove he had hunting and fishing licenses, proposed
a constitutional amendment to protect the Pledge of Allegiance,
was pro-life, pro-guns – and still lost. Said Turnham in National
Journal: “You just know that people in your own family
and your own church, and your own community that know you, love
you, and will ask you out to dinner, will not vote for you.
It's a cultural phenomenon.” Words that have been repeated by
many a Utah Democrat.
- LaVarr Webb
