PROVO — When it comes to challenging six-term Rep. Chris Cannon's bid for a seventh Republican nomination, Joe Ferguson has experience. Jason Chaffetz and David Leavitt don't.

Utah Republicans have nominated Ferguson for Congress before.

Whether that experience translates well to the 2008 race for the party's nomination in Utah's 3rd Congressional District is an open question because it came way back in 1976 — before the state even had a third seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, before Republicans controlled most of the state and before there was such a thing as a personal computer, much less e-mail and the Internet as we know them now.

Ferguson thinks the ensuing 32 years give his candidacy a real boost.

"I am an absolute known quantity," the Cedar Hills resident said. "There's so many liars in politics that people appreciate someone who has a record that is consistent. People who were around back then will remember me and either love me or hate me. Either way, they'll at least recognize that what I was telling them then and what I'm telling them now is the same and is the truth."

Ferguson is 76 but no dinosaur. He's making a DVD to mail to Republican delegates and he has a hard-hitting Web site, www.VoteJoeNPC.com. "The NPC stands for Not Politically Correct," he said. "I tell the truth. If it's politically correct, it's a damn lie."

A colorful speaker with a booming voice, Ferguson left his native Tyler, Texas, in 1948 in a Model A Ford bound for Utah State University, where he learned to fly planes. He later graduated from Brigham Young University and then served in the Air Force from 1953 to '56, flying KC-97 air-to-air refueling tankers out of Mountain Home, Idaho.

He was a commercial airline pilot for 42 years, retiring on his 70th birthday.

A self-described "ornery, crustaceous old devil," Ferguson announced his candidacy at mid-month and promised to keep the race exciting. He also said that if he doesn't win the nomination this year, he'll be back in 2010 at age 78.

Ferguson was right when he said he hadn't changed much since incumbent Democrat Gunn McKay defeated him in 1976. He's still a member of the John Birch Society, which McKay and others made a big issue. He said he is seasoned enough now to handle that better. In fact, the main thrust of his campaign this winter and spring will be direct attacks on President Bush and Cannon, whom he calls a Bush puppet, for looking the other way while Ferguson, the Birch Society and others say the United States is slowly blurring its borders in a secret attempt to merge the nation together with Mexico and Canada in a European Union-like organization they refer to as the North American Union.