On Saturday Utah GOP state delegates will pick a new party chairman, who will guide this state's majority political party for the next two years.

Several men (no women this year) are running, but it seems that the top post will go to either Dave Hansen or Steve Harmsen. There are several other candidates for GOP chairman. But it would be a real upset if any of those men win.

Current GOP Chairman Stan Lockhart, lobbyist for the Micron computer chipmaker, is not running again, stepping down after just one two-year term.

Hansen is a longtime Republican operative. He's twice been the party's executive director, the top paid staff post, and has run a number of GOP campaigns.

He was the U.S. Senate's Republican regional staff campaign director for the Northwestern/Mountain states several years ago.

And he now consults for several groups and individuals, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Hansen has the backing of many of the state's top Republican officeholders.

Harmsen is a businessman who also has a long history inside the Utah GOP. At times seen as a maverick, Harmsen served in the 1970s as a Salt Lake City commissioner. And he was recently a Salt Lake County council member. He's currently out of political office.

Harmsen says he's the alternative to Hansen, who he portrays as a party insider. Former conservative state legislator Morgan Philpot is running for vice chairman on a promise to open up the party and oppose power-grabbing bosses with personal agendas. Current GOP Vice Chairman Todd Weiler seeks re-election to his post.

There are around 3,500 state GOP delegates. But only between 900 and 1,000 show up to an organizing convention — as Saturday's is known — where party leaders are elected. In even-number years the chance to vote on candidates for public office is much more enticing, and most delegates make the nominating convention.

Utah state GOP delegates aren't a real happy bunch right now.

They saw their by-far-favorite presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, lose the 2008 nomination to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Former President George W. Bush, who had a GOP-controlled Congress for six of eight years, left office not only with two active wars raging but a terrible economy and a huge federal deficit. National Republicans were spending like, well, national Democrats.

While Republicans in 2008 picked up a Democratic state Senate seat in southeastern Utah and another Democratic House seat in Ogden, they lost a Senate seat and three House seats in Salt Lake County, including the ouster of then-House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy.

It was the first time a sitting Utah House speaker lost since the 1960s.