The Crossed Pond

Daveg pointed this race out in the comments, and I think it bears expansion.

Six-term incumbent Rep. Chris Cannon has held this seat (UT-03) for awhile, but he’s also been more or less marked for death by the Utah GOP for some time as wekk. His nemesis today is “former gubernatorial aide Jason Chaffetz” (he was chief of staff, but that’s how they describe him), who was also a place-kicker for BYU, but not normally the sort of guy you’d send to oust an incumbent rep. It goes without saying that whoever wins the Republican primary wins the seat. UT-03 is literally the most Republican district in the country (UT-01 is eighth, and UT-02, Jim Matheson’s district, is 28th). So, that’s a bit of trivia should you ever need use it.

In any case, Chaffetz barely made it to a primary—if Chris got 60 at a convention, there is no primary called, but Chaffetz got 40 plus a hair. This is the third time Cannon has had primary challenges come up via the convention system (i.e. with him not being able to nail down 60% to win the race without it going to a primary), and even in the times when the convention vote was close, Cannon wound up trouncing them in the primaries.

In any case, here is a great overview of the ideological battleground of the race:

Chaffetz, owner of a corporate communications firm, has some name familiarity as a former football placekicker at Utah’s Brigham Young University. He is also a former campaign manager, congressional liaison and chief of staff to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

Chaffetz is trying to paint himself as the “true” conservative candidate and says Cannon is not. He cites the congressman’s support of the No Child Left Behind Act and the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit expansion laws. He said he would repeal the NCLB education law, arguing, “The federal government should not be in the public education business.” He advocates abolishing the Department of Education and making deep cuts in government spending.

He chastised Cannon for a May 18, 2006, vote for a Republican budget resolution which Chaffetz says was the single largest budget and debt-creating bill at that time. He opposes earmarks and signed a pledge he would not ask for or support them in fiscal 2009 while Cannon does not oppose them but wants to have a more transparent process.

But Chaffetz is focusing most of his attacks on Cannon’s relatively moderate stance on immigration. Cannon supported proposals to assimilate a number of immigrants in the country illegally while toughening border security. Chaffetz says Cannon supports amnesty.

Cannon attacks back, saying he has a tough record on immigration and that Chaffetz’s “Web site says illegals should be able to stay and get a temporary pass, and not do anything.”

Cannon is running on his Washington credentials, citing his influence on such things as cosponsoring a 2007 law that creates a seven-year extension of the ban on Internet-access taxes. He also touts his cosponsorship of a 2008 law authorizing money to reduce recidivism by helping former prisoners obtain housing, employment, education and health care.

Cannon says while he may not be as flashy or talkative as other members, he regularly attends hearings, offers amendments helpful to Utah at bill markups and occasionally speaks on the House floor.

Quite the pedigree.

But what strikes me about this is in part the ideology, but in part the empowerment. The situation is a bit weird with UT-03—Cannon is perennially unpopular for reasons I’m not going to do the research to find out, but in short the Utah GOP will send a warm body out to dispense with him if they could (and, they do). As to the issues, the hardline immigration seems like it was what hit, but the rest of his wedge issues are almost straight-ticket Ron Paulian. That’s a heckuva libertarian conservative right there, when he’s even going so far as to say the federal government ought to be out of education entirely, and blasting the incumbent for voting for the Republican authored and sponsored budget resolution.

Anyway, today was the primary. The last poll of the race showed Cannon barely ahead by 4. The final result from tonight:

With 497 of 621 precincts reporting (80%), it’s
Chaffetz 18,960 (60%) *
Cannon 12,539 (40%)

I don’t know if Chaffetz would ever call himself a Ron Paul Republican, but at least on the issues he is sounding off on, he sure seems like one to me.

Reminds me of another race brewing down South. Republican B.J. Lawton is running in North Carolina, and though he is a Republican, he’s getting support and endorsements from places like FreedomDemocrats, who posted this exchange where B.J. wanders up to a mic at a townhall the incumbent was doing, and very politely asks if he’s ever read the bills that he passes into law, like, say, The Patriot Act.

B.J. is a self-described Ron Paul Republican, and it’s kind of a bullshit gotchya question, but still, look at him. As viable a candidate as any you could find. Young, fresh, erudite, polite, smart. What you might not realize looking at it is that the guy he’s speaking to, the one up at the podium, is the Democratic incumbent. BJ already won his primary in May, with 70% of the vote. He’s running to the left of the Democratic incumbent on civil liberties in wartime. In North Carolina.

The sheer brass balls of that is making me plunk down a campaign contribution at his website.

Incidentally, so have a lot of Democratic sites like FreedomDemocrats and other places where libertarianism and progressivism mix. The best is the Liberty Republicans endorsement (written by a Freedom Democrats alum) called “Stand Up to George Bush! Elect a Republican to Congress!”

It still is amazing to me that, except in mealy-mouthed nothing-on-the-line proclamations, the gentrified Republican political establishment are not only not running against Bush, they don’t even seem particularly perturbed, outside of the nuisance it creates in, say, losing both houses of Congress. I would have figured we’d have fire-breathing Republican candidates in all echelons of power spitting venom Bush’s way every chance they got, and running to the right of his policies and his legacies. We’re not seeing that yet, by and large—maybe the body’s still warm. It remains the status quo that to be a good Republican soldier you have to accept most everything the White House plunks in your lap and pretend to like it. Most, when asked, don’t even see anything on the horizon for steering the Republican brand away from what it is now. It’s starting to seem like their strategy is to keep riding this thing through losing elections until one day people are just tired of voting against them for Bush-related reasons.

But we are starting to see it at smaller, bottom-up levels. Young and energized people who would not normally run for office (when a party is rapidly falling into a slimmer and slimmer minority, that doesn’t tend to get the ambitious folks to come out of the woodwork and start putting their names on ballots) suddenly popping up, angry, not at some liberal poltergeist/conspiracy, but angry at their party….by and large for all the right reasons.

And a lot of them sure seem spurred on by Ron Paul’s example.

I have to admit I’m still skeptical about how much Ron and his Campaign for Liberty can do. But I’ll say this: I met, in the course of my work with the campaign, literally dozens of people I could see in Congress one day.

And if the Ron Paul people have the good sense to immediately throw down in races like these two, get some visible successes tied to the brand, and also start going through their volunteer armies grooming more potential candidates…well hell, they could actually pull something off.