Eleven days until the 2004 elections, and what have we learned so far?

1. A whole lot of money will be spent in Utah races this year with, I'm guessing, not much change.

2. The governor's race — the first open chief executive contest in a dozen years — started out with a bunch of Republicans in the pack, loads of cash being spent, and is ending with a relatively quiet pop. Certainly not a bang.

3. The most interesting race this season didn't look that way at the March candidate filing deadline. Who would have guessed that GOP Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman's re-election juggernaut (she had $500,000 in her early war chest) would strike the shoals and sink?

She didn't go down as quickly as the Titanic, but it was painful to view, nonetheless.

4. The LDS Church, which rarely speaks on political issues, is a dominant, deciding factor when it does.

5. You can run a winning race for the U.S. House (like in the 1st and 3rd districts) in a big election year and remain nearly invisible.

6. A Jim Matheson/John Swallow congressional contest is, now by definition, a bitter, hard fight.

To elaborate:

Nine GOP candidates, including Utah's first female governor, Olene Walker, filed to run for governor this year.

Democrat Scott Matheson Jr. had his party's nomination sewed up a year ago.

It was a tough battle for the Republicans from the get-go. One, local medical supply manufacturer Fred Lampropoulos, spent more than $3 million of his own money on the race. And he, like Walker, former U.S. Rep. Jim Hansen and Utah House Speaker Marty Stephens, was eliminated in a May state Republican convention.

The monthlong GOP primary race between Jon Huntsman Jr. and former state House speaker Nolan Karras proved to be a sleeper — a big win for Huntsman.

And the Huntsman/Matheson final election campaign has been one of the most cordial affairs in decades. There are differences between the two men's approaches to the top state job, yes, but compared to the U.S. presidential and 2nd Congressional District campaigns, the governor's race is a kissy-face contest.

I mean, how much nicer can Huntsman and Scott Matheson be?

We don't have that problem in the race of incumbent Jim Matheson, Scott's younger brother.

It appears to me that the McCain-Feingold campaign reform bill has had some effect on this contest. Under the new law, outside groups can't run negative (or positive) independent TV campaigns 60 days from the election.

Rep. Matheson this summer thought groups might come in before the two-month deadline to pound him. They didn't.

Now we're seeing massive spending by the national Republican and Democratic parties for and against each man. But we are not being bombarded by some independent PACs, as was the case in Rep. Matheson's races of 2002 and 2000.