Ivory as the official GOP candidate on the ballot would automatically get that straight-party vote.

Salt Lake County voters, too, are known to go down the ballot picking different candidates from different parties as they go. But will they remember to write in Ivory's name — especially if they haven't done a write-in before?

Finally, Cook is on the ballot. While Cook's popularity has waned with political insiders in recent years (he didn't come close to winning the GOP 2nd District nomination in 2002, for example), Cook has historically done well among county independent voters.

What will be the effect of having the former Republican Cook's name on the ballot, but a blank space for the real GOP nominee should Ivory's name not be placed there? Will some normally-GOP voters just punch Cook's name, not realizing he's not the GOP candidate?

The bottom line is this — Workman should have gotten out of the race a month ago when felony charges were filed against her. Maybe she should have gotten out of the race even sooner than that, as she fell in the polls and it appeared her party was going to lose the mayor's office.

After she had bailed out — doctor's note firmly in hand — the Republicans then could have immediately put someone in her place before the ballots were printed with Workman's name on them.

If all that had happened in July or August, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today.

• Now turn to the 2nd Congressional District race between Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Republican John Swallow — a race that has turned ugly.

This is not really a surprise. The 2002 matchup between the two was not pleasant. And some Swallow supporters maintain that if Swallow had banged on Matheson more in 2002, he could have won.

Swallow is making up for that "error" in spades this year. Swallow's new TV ads say Matheson is a Democrat (What! How could we have not known this?) and voted against President Bush's tax cuts and for abortion. The National Republican Congressional Committee has anti-Matheson ads saying about the same things.

Actually, Matheson says he voted for the main Bush tax cut bills and for the latest partial-birth abortion ban. (Matheson did vote against extending some of Bush's tax cuts, but he voted for other extensions. And he voted against the partial-birth abortion bill several years ago before supporting the latest version, which passed.)

In turn, Matheson is running a new TV ad that quotes Swallow's two GOP challengers this year charging Swallow has a "lack of integrity" and campaigns with "falsehoods, half-truths and misstatements."

We haven't seen either man run pictures of the other guy with his hair blowing all over the place — like the "bad hair day for Merrill Cook" ads that we saw in 1998. But we still have two weeks to go.

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Deseret Morning News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com.