Matheson spokeswoman Alyson Heyrend said Matheson would vote for a bill giving Utah a fourth seat, whether it creates a fourth district or an at-large position.

She said it was "way too hypothetical" to comment on the maps released by the governor Wednesday.

"Congress isn't going to pass any maps, that is putting the cart before the horse," Heyrend said. "The Utah Legislature does the redistricting."

She said Matheson's office knew nothing about the maps until the governor's press release came out.

"Who knows what the Utah Legislature will do," Heyrend said.

Meanwhile back in Utah, Huntsman, state House Speaker Greg Curtis and Senate President John Valentine, all Republicans, quickly met Wednesday to give preliminary approval to a four-district alternative.

Oddly enough, it was not the four-district plan that was formally adopted by the 2001 GOP-controlled Legislature and former GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt.

Leaders adopted a four-district plan then just in case Utah won its U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the U.S. Census data from which North Carolina, not Utah, was given an extra U.S. House seat. Utah ultimately lost that court challenge, and so a new three-district redistricting plan was adopted.

Todd Taylor, executive director of the Utah Democratic Party, was not pleased with what he saw under the new four-district plan Wednesday. "First off, on its face, it is illegal," said Taylor, who has led state Democrats through two previous statewide redistricting efforts, in 1991 and in 2001.

Court-tested redistricting law says that each district's population can vary only by 0.5 percent from other districts', Taylor said. The four districts put forward by GOP leaders Wednesday show population variations of 2.39 percent, 2.52 percent, 4.21 percent and 0.70 percent, respectively.

"This shows Utah's Republicans going back to their old tendencies," Taylor said. "They either dump all the Democrats they can into one district, or they break up all the Democrats they can into all the districts."

Curtis said: "We were told to draw up a map that was very fair to Congressman Matheson. We did that. Of the 15 Utah House seats that Democrats hold in Salt Lake County, the new 2nd District has 14 of them. I told the governor I don't know how we could have drawn it any more Democratic."

Taylor said despite artificial deadlines that GOP leaders in Washington may have put on Utah to suggest a four-district plan, this is not the way to go about it.

"As bad as the four-seat plan adopted" in 2001 "may have been, at least there was an open hearing process. They come up with this map in one day with no hearings at all. I got my map from a newspaper reporter," Taylor said.