{First, a cheap plug for my blog Senate Guru.}
Well, this is interesting. It looks like Democrats will have an at-least-somewhat-prominent candidate for Senate in 2010:
Popular deli chain owner Sam Granato will run for Sen. Bob Bennett’s seat in 2010.
Granato, who owns several Granato’s delis throughout the Salt Lake Valley, also is chairman of the Utah Liquor Control Commission. He confirmed to me Thursday that he is in the race for sure as a Democrat, and he has secured early support from several Democratic insiders and officials. He will make the formal announcement June 1. …
Meanwhile, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff told me Thursday he has made the decision personally to challenge Bennett for the Republican nomination, but he has given his wife one more week to talk him out of it.
Sure, Utah’s Utah. Ruby red. I get it. But if Shurtleff v. Bennett does turn nasty and expensive, a prominent figure like Granato could take advantage. We’ll see if lightning strikes.
is Shurtleff one of those simply out of there minds conservative, that new generation who thinks their parties problem is its not conservative enough?
Well he could be a good candidate, only problem is he would really offend the mormon population which is anti-alcohol.
But if he could possibly self-fund to the degree of a few million he might have a shot at being competitive if Shurtleff wins a narrow and nasty primary.
Next thing oyu know they’ll be priamrying Orin Hatch for not being outspoken enough on conservative issues and for being too polite and cozy to democrats, amicable in other words.
It’s exploding population isn’t just due to high birthrate, there are a lot of West Coasters and others coming for the low house prices, a pattern repeated in many other inner states like Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada. And as we saw with the other states, that growth has turned the states towards us. Obama actually won Salt Lake County, and it’s pretty much impossible now to draw any congressional map that doesn’t give us at least one winnable district.
Bennett deserves the best challenge we can give him, especially if he is facing a credible primary challenge.
a viable candidate in Utah who can raise enough money to be considered a serious candidate is always good in my book. We’re not winning Utah any time soon (if ever) but it never hurts to get the message out.
If the demographics truly are going our way the margin of the loss might give us an idea how long it will be before we Utah becomes a state we can compete in.