Matheson is out of town this week and unavailable for comment. But his congressional spokeswoman Alyson Heyrend said, "It is just not accurate to say we haven't engaged people of southern Utah." She then runs off a list of town councils, homebuilders, Native American tribal leaders and other groups who have "formally endorsed his proposal."

Yes, the Kane County Commission, all Republicans, did pass a resolution saying the Matheson bill didn't go far enough — they want to just ban nuclear testing outright, she admits. "But the political climate in Washington, D.C. — where President Bush wants this authority and the Senate won't pass" a nuclear test ban treaty — "is such that a clear ban won't pass, although Rep. Matheson would support that."

Swallow said he also likes a few details in Bennett's proposal not found in Matheson's.

Still, Matheson is clearly out front on the issue, and Swallow, politically speaking, is left either playing catch-up or just giving up on this issue.

"That's what you do — you just agree with your opponent and then point out some other issues where you have big differences," says longtime GOP consultant Dave Hansen.

He recalls 1992, when the late Wayne Owens tried to jump from the 2nd District to the U.S. Senate. Republicans trying to get Bennett elected were taking out after then-Rep. Owens for a vote in the House against the Persian Gulf War. In an early debate, Owens was asked to defend that vote, and he replied: "I was so wrong in that vote," Hansen recalls. "He just took away the Republicans' issue — he admitted he was wrong and it was over."

Accordingly, Swallow, "who feels the same way on this issue, anyway," is right to just agree with Matheson and move on, said Hansen.

Swallow says he sympathizes with downwinders' concerns, even though neither he nor his family were affected directly by open air testing, which ended in 1962. He lived in St. George from 1968 to 1973. Matheson's father, the late Gov. Scott M. Matheson, died in 1990 from a rare cancer that could have been caused by nuclear test fallout.

"No one sees this as a Democratic issue. We all want what's right for our constituents," said Swallow. "There are a lot of other issues in this campaign."

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com