Salt Lake County GOP candidates' spending analyzed

Life is good for the 59 lucky Salt Lake County Republican Convention delegates from House District 48 in Sandy and Draper, who are being fed and entertained by two candidates seeking the party's nomination on Saturday.

Incumbent Rep. Sylvia Andersen even spent $3,090 to rent a theater at Jordan Commons on April 4 to show the movie "Nim's Island" for those delegates and their families. She said 220 people attended.

Not to be outdone, intra-party challenger LaVar Christensen spent $1,728 to take delegates' families to a Salt Lake Bees baseball game. He said about 100 attended and watched the Bees win 1-0 on a cold day.

Andersen and Christensen have spent hundreds more on breakfasts and dinners for delegates at places such as Mimi's Cafe, Golden Corral, Chili's and Village Inn. Christensen even spent $525 to cater a family picnic for delegates.

But one big difference exists in their spending. All of challenger Christensen's spending is funded out of his own pocket, while a big chunk of Anderson's comes from special interests that often lobby the Legislature.

A Deseret News analysis of campaign spending in the 11 contested races at Saturday's convention shows that is typical. Special interests are investing in incumbents, and gave nothing to their challengers. Special interests did give a bit to people running for open seats. But non-incumbents generally are spending a lot of their own money to run.

Analysis shows that in the 11 contested races on Saturday, the six incumbents running raised an average of $7,400 each — with 69 percent coming from special interests (such as corporations or political action committees).

Their intra-party challengers received nothing from special interests. Such challengers raised only $4,050 on average, with 93 percent of it coming from their own pockets.

Special interests did give a bit to candidates for open seats where no incumbents are running — about $1,480 of the $3,460 each raised on average. Meanwhile, candidates in races where nominees eventually will face Democratic incumbents received only a pittance from special interests, about 5 percent of the $725 each of them raised, on average.

"People think the incumbent has all the advantages," said Andersen, who runs a convention hosting firm. "And in some cases, that may be true." But she said she expects not to win the 60 percent of delegate votes Saturday needed to win nomination outright, and instead probably will face Christensen in a primary election.

She said she was working 16-hour days during the 2008 Legislature, and then had only two weeks to organize people to run as delegates in mass meetings.