Governor's race for the rich?

Republican gubernatorial candidate Fred Lampropoulos is working a room of about 50 state GOP delegates gathered for breakfast at Mimi's Restaurant in Murray.

As he goes over his plan for economic revitalization, delegates are munching scrambled eggs and bacon, all on Lampropoulos' tab. The cost for hosting the event is somewhere in the neighborhood of $300.

He repeats the scene over lunch and later for dinner, sometimes for as few as 10 delegates, other times as many as 100. And every day, there are campaign spots on 12 radio stations around the state at a cost of $28,000 a month. Lampropoulos billboards line major Utah roads.

All of it is paid from the Lampropoulos campaign war chest, and all is part of a campaign strategy of wining and dining delegates that critics — mostly his opponents — say will have cost the businessman millionaire somewhere between $2 million and $2.5 million before the state convention convenes on Saturday. It may well turn out to be a record amount spent before a Utah gubernatorial convention.

If he comes out of convention — and he is one of the favorites to do so — will he have redefined how campaigns are run in Utah?

"I don't know, but would I have come out if I had not done this?" he counters.

Lampropoulos says that claims he has spent up to $2.5 million are inaccurate. He said reports due next week will detail his own giving. According to the last filing report in January, he had spent $1.5 million to that point, most of it his own money.

But Lampropoulos could spend $2.5 million if he wanted to, and then some. He estimates it could cost $5 million to run his campaign through the November elections. And he is prepared to spend it to win.

"It is unfortunate it takes this kind of money," he told the Deseret Morning News.

Lampropoulos has been freeing up cash toward that end. Over the past 15 months, according to filings with the Securities Exchange Commission, he has sold or otherwise disposed of $10.3 million of his personal stock in Merit Medical Systems Inc., the company he started in Sandy that is now worth an estimated $500 million.

As of early April, he owned 841,000 shares of Merit Medical, or 4.7 percent of the company's stock, worth roughly $25 million. A year ago, he owned 6.3 percent of the company, and two years ago it was 7.2 percent.