Posted on 12/05/2011 3:42:25 PM PST by Clintonfatigued
The Club for Growth PAC endorsed state Rep. Carl Wimmer on Wednesday in the Republican primary battle for Utah’s new 4th district.
Calling him a “free market champion,” Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said, “Wimmer is exactly the type of principled fiscal conservative we need in Washington. Carl will fight against big government and wasteful spending in Washington with as much force as he did in Utah.”
Wimmer is expected to face at least two others — state Rep. Stephen Sandstrom and Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love — in the competitive open seat primary. Sandstrom officially announced his campaign last month and is already running a radio ad. Love is the state’s first female African-American mayor, and the Salt Lake Tribune reported that she was endorsed by Rep. Allen West (Fla.), the only Republican member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Roll Call rates the 4th district, which includes parts of Salt Lake and Utah counties, Safe Republican. That could change if Rep. Jim Matheson (D) opts to run there instead of in the 2nd district.
(Excerpt) Read more at rollcall.com ...
If this is a safely Republican district, we need to nominate the most conservative candidate in the running. I don’t know anything about any of the candidates in this case.
Does anyone have a new district map of Utah? Excluding some of the funky ski resort counties, metropolitan Salt Lake (typical urban diseases) and some of the funky environmentalist areas around Moab & Lake Powell, the whole state is reliably conservative. That even includes the Indian Reservations.
I’ve heard of one candidate (possible if not committed), Mia Love, Mayor of Saratoga Springs (population almost 18000, up from just 1000 in the previous census).
She has one of those “and I’m a Mormon” you tube videos. She’s the daughter of Haitian immigrants. Says she tea party (but who doesn’t).
I’m sure we’ll get a conservative in the 4th.
Beating that pond scum Matheson in the 2nd is the priority. Looks like a fresh crop of candidates in that race.
If Love wins, she’ll be an instant superstar. We’ve still yet to elect a Black GOP woman to federal office.
“We’ve still yet to elect a Black GOP woman to federal office.”
Who was the black, female Republican with the highest share of the vote in a congressional general election? Was it that public official from Islip, Long Island who ran against Steve Israel like in 2000?
I’d have to look over a lot of races, but two that come to mind were the TX-10 district races in 1994 and 1996 that featured two Black GOP women (Jo Baylor in ‘94 who got 40% against Lloyd Doggett and Teresa Doggett (no relation) who got 41% in 1996).
The lady in NY-2 was Joan Johnson, which ended up a fiasco as she failed to get either the Conservative or Right-to-Life lines (since she was neither), and received just less than 35% (Steve Israel, however, won with just under 48%), although even if she had gotten those two other lines, they would’ve just added up to about 46%, and an “Independence Party” candidate took 5% (which came almost exclusively out of Israel’s support, since said candidate was a regular Democrat who only lost the nomination to Israel by about 4%).
Yes, it was Joan Johnson of whom I was thinking. She was the Islip Town Clerk, right? I remember her being a huge disappointment, but had forgotten the extent of the drubbing she took.
I first heard about Teresa Doggett over 10 years ago, but knew of her merely as a conservative who valiantly ran against Lloyd Doggett (I keep thinking of her as a medical doctor, but I’m probably conflating her with our female candidate against Doggett from 2008 and/or 2010); until this morning, I didn’t know that Teresa Doggett is black (or if I ever knew that, I had long forgotten it).
DJ, when Jo Baylor ran in the TX-10 in 1994, wasn’t it against Congressman Pickle? My recollection was that Pickle retired in 1996 and Lloyd Doggett first ran for that seat that year.
No, Pickle retired in 1994. Lloyd Doggett was one of only a few freshman Democrats of that year (although I don’t think the GOP had any serious hopes of winning the seat). As for Teresa Doggett, I remember seeing her on C-Span at some event where she gave a speech. She was very impressive. Unfortunately, as I’ve said many times (and now with Cain), the GOP has been horrible with promoting and giving the kind of support needed for non-White candidates to win. Joan Johnson was a plain weak candidate, but more outrageous examples of the party having decent/winnable candidates and failing to give them GOTV & $$ support was James Garner in the adjacent NY district (he was Mayor of Hempstead), and fmr NJ Sec of State Buster Soaries in a run against Rush Holt, Jr.
I had misremembered my history re: TX-10 (I erroneously thought that Pickle had a relatively close call in 1994 and decided to retire).
I remember the Garner and Soaries campaigns for Congress. Garner was a social liberal, as I recall, making him a bad fit for the socially conservative areas in the district such as Garden City (the NY-04 is fairly conservative by NY standards, but its black and Hispanic precincts make it lean Democrat—if its black precincts were appended to the black-majority NY-06 across the Queens county line, it would become Republican leaning). I’m not sure why Soaries never caught on when running against Rush Holt.
Democrat Congressman Jim Matheson has decided to run in this new CD (the UT-04) instead of the UT-02, so it goes from being safe Republican to becoming a toss-up. It’s a very Republican district, but probably no more Republican than Matheson’s current district. Wimmer, Love or whoever is the GOP nominee will have a very tough general election against Matheson.
Isn’t Teresa Doggett the wife of the man who testified so effectively on on behalf of Clarence Thomas?
I can’t think of Doggett’s first name (just recall that he had striking eyes), but he claimed that Anita Hill was assuming they had a relationship when they did not.
Maybe I’m getting him confused with someone else.
What have they done with the make up of UT-02? Was it made more Democrat, basically giving in to Matheson? They had to know that he would challenge in a more swing district.
Many Democrat stalwarts were defeated in 2010. Maybe it’s Matheson’s turn.
Dems are banking on a lot of Republican cross over votes for Matheson, I guess. I doubt there will be much enthusiasm for Obama voters among Democrats there.
Obama will lose big in Utah, so Matheson will need those cross over votes to win as he’s probably not going to get a big Democrat turnout.
But I guess they’re gambling on a pick up of two seats rather than settling for one sure one. And Matheson might be the sacrificial lamb, which he probably doesn’t mind because it was rumored that he wanted to retire anyhow.
If Romney, a Mormon, wins the nomination (hope not), I suspect Matheson will lose big.
No idea. DJ, do you know?
The new UT-02 combines Salt Lake City (but few, if any, Dem suburbs) with conservative rural areas, and is overall a very Republican district. I would be surprised if Dems will post a strong challenge now that Matheson is running in UT-04.
I’m not sure how much help it will be for the GOP nominee against Matheson if Romney wins the nomination: if he increases turnout among Mormons in the UT-04 (suburbs south of SLC and exurban areas in Utah County), it might be non-political Mormons who may vote for the also Mormon Matheson because they remember his dad or something.
Is most of Salt Lake City in the 2nd? And none in the 4th?
Still, news articles say the 4th is more favorable to democrats than the others so this makes sense.
I just saw the POTUS numbers.
The 1st and 3rd have the same numbers, 66% McCain in 08, 76% Bush in 04.
The 2nd was 58% McCain, 67% Bush
And the 4th was 56% McCain, 66% Bush, slightly worse than the 2nd.
His CURRENT 2nd district was 57% McCain, 66% Bush.
So at least in POTUS voting the seat he is running in now is an iota better for the democrats, but with new territory for him including part of heavily Republican Utah county. He should fare a little worse there than he did in the rural areas of his current district.
http://assets.matchbin.com/sites/29/assets/IZIU_Utah_Congressional_District_Map_Final.jpg
There’s the map
John Doggett.
Thanks for the presidential numbers.
With the UT-04 going 66% for Bush in 2004, and including a lot of new voters for Matheson, 2012 could be the year we finally knock off that phony. And the UT-02 will be a slam-dunk for us without Matheson running there—provided that we nominate someone who can dunk (if you catch my drift).
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