Incumbents sit pretty in races for Congress

Utah's GOP members of Congress seem to be headed back to Washington, D.C., after the Nov. 2 election. They hold healthy leads over their Democratic challengers, a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows.

And despite angering some of his conservative base over a marriage amendment, GOP Attorney General Mark Shurtleff also leads his Democratic opponent big time.

Pollster Dan Jones & Associates found that Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, holds a 39-point lead over Democrat Paul Van Dam.

Freshman Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, holds a 31-point lead over Logan City Councilman Steve Thompson, a Democrat.

Rep. Chris Cannon , R-Utah, has a 28-point advantage over South Salt Lake Police Capt. Beau Babka, his Democratic challenger. And Jones found that Shurtleff, despite coming out against controversial marriage-defining Amendment 3, which is on the same ballot, has a 38-point lead over Democrat Greg Skordas. Skordas also has said he opposes the amendment, which defines the only viable marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Besides the healthy poll leads, the GOP incumbents have more money than their challengers and hold seats where Republican voters outnumber Democratic voters, often by 2-to-1 margins.

As reported previously, in the same survey Jones found that the lone Democrat in the Utah congressional delegation, Rep. Jim Matheson, has a 32-point lead over GOP challenger John Swallow.

While that is as large a margin found for his Republican colleagues, Matheson's 2nd Congressional District votes upwards of 60 percent Republican. And Swallow promises he'll make a last-minute run at Matheson, as he did in the duo's 2002 matchup.

The new poll reflects what everyone knows: The state is one of the most Republican strongholds in the nation, especially at election time. The state gave President Bush his largest margin of victory in 2000.

And it has been 16 years since a Democratic challenger unseated an incumbent Republican in a major race. In 1988, Van Dam, then the Salt Lake County attorney, beat then-GOP Attorney General David Wilkinson.

In fact, in recent times the only way an incumbent Republican loses is if a fellow Republican takes him or her out, as in the 2000 balloting, when then-GOP 2nd District Rep. Merrill Cook was beaten in a primary election and this year when Gov. Olene Walker was defeated in the May state Republican Convention.

Jones found Republican incumbents are running so strong this year that their Democratic challengers are having a hard time even holding members of their own minority party. And most of the Democrats aren't doing so well with independents, either.