Two top Utah politicians are starting to line up against each other in the state’s Senate race, with longtime Sen. Orrin Hatch facing a likely challenge for the Republican nomination from two-term Rep. Jason Chaffetz — and they’re fighting it out via talk radio.
Chaffetz, who first came to Congress after defeating incumbent GOP Rep. Chris Cannon, has been sending lots of signals that he could try to harness the Tea Party anti-incumbent fervor and turn it against Hatch. And in turn, Hatch was sent a serious message in 2010, when his fellow Sen. Bob Bennett was defeated at the state GOP convention, unable to even advance to a primary under the procedures used in the state.
It is important to note that the state convention system used in Utah — in which a candidate can win a nomination outright by a vote of 60% of delegates at the state convention, without need for a primary — can seriously empower the party’s right-wing activist base. As such, the early phase of this fight is not fought out through a wider primary electorate, but through activists and a caucus system. Thus, targeted radio shows and the activities of activist groups will be the initial field of battle.
Now, Hatch and Chaffetz have hit the radio hustings.
Roll Call reports:
“He’s asking voters to keep him there for 42 contiguous years, which I don’t know that that’s necessarily a healthy thing,” Chaffetz said Tuesday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.
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On the Hugh Hewitt Show, Chaffetz confirmed his interest in challenging Hatch but said he will not announce his plans until the end of summer.
“I’m a definite maybe,” the second-term Congressman said. “I really am thinking about it. And I just believe that our country’s on the wrong track, and if you want different results, you’re going to have to elect different people and let somebody else give it a go. And I think people want new, fresh eyes, new energy.”
And as the Daily Caller reports, the Tea Party group FreedomWorks, run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), is now officially targeting Hatch:
FreedomWorks PAC plans to launch a “Retire Orrin Hatch” campaign at the Utah Republican Convention this Saturday, the group’s first major move of the 2012 congressional cycle, The Daily Caller has learned.
The group says targeting Hatch is symbolic. It signals the beginning of the next wave of Tea Party activists working to replace Republican incumbents they see as too moderate and out of sync with a movement stressing fiscal conservatism.
Meanwhile, Hatch has rolled out a new ally, right-wing radio host Mark Levin, who had supported the effort to unseat Bennett last cycle. Now, Levin is attacking FreedomWorks. “This is what happens when decisions are run out of offices in Washington,” wrote Levin — who himself lives in northern Virginia, a short distance from Washington. “The Tea Party movement is a grassroots movement.”
