If you want a good example of how Utah legislators raise their campaign cash from special-interest groups and lobbyists, look no further than a Salt Lake City Democratic Senate race and a number of GOP legislative contests in Utah County.

Sen. Fred Fife, D-Salt Lake, got all his campaign money this year from special interests, while his intra-party challenger, Luz Robles, got little.

The pair face off this Saturday in the Salt Lake County Democratic Convention for the Senate District 1 seat, held by Fife for the past four years.

Other tough intra-party fights will take place Saturday when the Utah County Republican Party meets in its convention.

A computer-aided search of those candidates by the Deseret News shows GOP Utah County incumbents on average got $4,984 so far this year from special interests, while the GOP candidates challenging those incumbents got, on average, only $267 from special interests.

"Special interests always want to give to a winner," says Kirk Jowers, head of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics. "And incumbents are proven winners. In Utah, particularly, where corporate giving is allowed, that is the lowest-hanging fruit for incumbents. So they take that easy money instead of working harder to raise money from individuals and constituents. Challengers can't get the special-interest money, so they have to go to individuals."

Fife, a former Utah House member, raised $1,850 for his convention battle that involves around 90 delegates — all the money from special-interest groups that regularly have dealings with the Legislature. Fife raised no money from constituents and donated $850 himself to his race.

Robles, on the other hand, raised $28,900, much of that coming in hundreds of small, individual donations from $5 to $20. Many of Robles' donors are Hispanic. There are but a few donations by the corporations and lobbyists that dominate campaign giving to Utah's 104 incumbent part-time legislators. Robles also got several thousand dollars from relatives.

The giving so far in 2008 elections shows lawmakers raising thousands of dollars from special-interest groups while their challengers beat the bushes for small individual donations and/or self-fund their campaigns. As in recent legislative elections, that trend is a hallmark of Utah politics, various studies by the newspaper has shown.

Some incumbents put tens of thousands of their campaign dollars into their own pockets (repaying old campaign loans), or spent big amounts on gifts for others. Some who face challenges that came in part from their support for ill-fated private-school vouchers, defeated last November by voters, are enjoying phone banks and other help from pro-voucher groups now.