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Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett Ousted in Re-Election Bid

5/28/2010

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Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah has been ousted in his bid to serve a fourth term after failing to make it out of the Utah GOP convention.

Attorney Mike Lee and businessman Tim Bridgewater are the remaining Republican candidates after Saturday's vote. After a third round of voting, neither nominee received 60 percent of the vote, so both will head to the Utah primary on June 22. 

Bennett was a distant third in the second round of voting among nearly 3,500 delegates, netting about 27 percent of the vote.

Wiping away tears, Bennett called the political atmosphere "toxic" and said it's, "Clear some of the votes I've cast have added to that toxic environment, looking back with one or two minor exceptions, I wouldn't cast any any differently, even if I knew it would cost me my career."

The three-term senator was targeted by Tea Party activists and other groups for supporting the first traunch of TARP, or Troubled Assets Relief Program.

Bennett, 76, is the first incumbent to lose his seat in Washington this year.

Critics also say Bennett broke a promise he made during his initial campaign to only serve two terms. He was vying for his fourth term.

Aides to Bennett blame outside groups for "distorting" his position on multiple issues, such as the auto bailouts, the stimulus and health care reform. Bennett voted against all of those measures.

Bennett isn't the only Republican lawmaker in trouble as other moderate candidates across the country find themselves being abandoned by GOP voters in favor of those backed by Tea Party activists, such as with Senate races in Arizona, Kentucky and New Hampshire.

In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist decided to run for Senate as an independent rather than face an almost certain primary defeat at the hands of Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, Florida's former state House speaker.

DNC Chairman Tim Kaine emphasized the Tea Partiers' role in recent primary politics.

"This is just the latest battle in the corrosive Republican intra-party civil war that has resulted in the Tea Party devouring two Republicans in just as many weeks," Kaine said. "If there was any question before, there should now be no doubt that the Republican leadership has handed the reigns to the Tea Party."

Bennett's seven Republican rivals contend he no longer has the credentials to represent "ultraconservative" Utah.

Lee, 38, and Bridgewater, 49, have campaigned largely by saying they're better suited to pare down government spending than Bennett.

"I will fight every day as your U.S. senator for limited government, to end the cradle-to-grave entitlement mentality, for a balanced budget, to protect our flag, our borders and our national security and for bills that can be read before they receive a final vote in congress," Lee said in his convention speech.

The opposition to Bennett is specific, and can't be chalked up solely to a general anti-incumbency fervor. Neither of Utah's two Republican congressmen are at risk of losing their seats, and Republican Gov. Gary Herbert doesn't have any serious challengers.

But Bennett's vote to bail out Wall Street left many Republicans feeling he had become too much of a Washington insider. He's also come under fire for co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill mandating health insurance coverage and for aggressively pursuing earmarks.

By Jake Gibson

Published May 08, 2010

| FOXNews.com
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Rolly: Why Bennett can't pull a Lieberman

5/28/2010

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With anecdotal evidence mounting that Sen. Bob Bennett may lose his bid for a fourth term at the Republican Party's nominating convention next month, some have wondered if he might run as an independent, as Sen. Joe Lieberman did successfully after he was knocked out in the Democratic primary in Connecticut.

But Utah law forbids Bennett from doing what Lieberman did, even though polls indicate Bennett's popularity with the general public, as opposed to the small delegate pool voting in the state GOP convention May 8, is still fairly high.

The reason he can't do it: The J. Bracken Lee law.

While Bennett is getting hammered from his party's far-right wing, which seems to have a hold on a good portion of the convention delegates, his lack of options in trying to retain his seat is the result of one of Utah's original far-right politicians, who was widely popular, and equally controversial, in his day.

Utah law bans a candidate from being certified on the ballot as an independent after he already has been certified as a candidate by a political party. So, because Bennett filed for re-election as a Republican, he couldn't refile as an independent and be put on the ballot, even if he had done so before the filing deadline passed in March.

That law was passed in 1957, a year after Lee, who had served eight years as governor, was defeated in his bid for a third term at the state GOP convention by George Dewey Clyde, who went on to

win the election to become Utah's 10th governor. But after his convention defeat, orchestrated by Republican Sen. Arthur Watkins, Lee filed as an independent, making it an interesting three-way race and causing some discomfort for the state Republican Party, which had enjoyed political dominance during the 1950s.

Lee got his revenge two years later when Watkins was up for re-election and Lee filed as an independent. The law was already in effect prohibiting him from getting certified as an independent if he had been certified first as a Republican. So he never filed as a Republican that year. Lee was still popular with anti-tax conservatives in the party, so he split the Republican vote, giving the election to Democrat Ted Moss.

Lee could have been the original tea-party guy, without the birth certificate, death-panel and "Hitler-gave-good-speeches too" idiocy. He was an opponent of the income tax and believed in small government. As governor, he balanced the budget without raising taxes by drastically cutting spending. He became a national figure in his first term when he declared he would not pay the portion of his income tax that he calculated would be spent on the Korean War.

I knew J. Bracken Lee and interviewed him several times. This original anti-tax, right-wing icon, I believe, would be supporting Bennett, who, despite what you hear at tea parties, is a respected conservative in Washington.

While Lee had his issues with Watkins, he and the other Republican senator -- Wallace F. Bennett, the current senator's father -- campaigned for each other and got along quite well, even when the senior Bennett was attacked from the right wing. The John Birch Society claimed Bennett was soft on Communism, especially when he backed an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union to set up consulates in the other's country.

In 1968, that faction ran anti-communist Mark Anderson, who had enough convention support to force the three-term Bennett into a primary. In that larger arena, and in the general election, Bennett won easily.

Whether his son will likewise gain a fourth term remains to be seen, of course. But thanks to J. Bracken Lee, the Lieberman option is out.

E-mail Paul Rolly at prolly@sltrib.com


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