In 2000, Hatch was booed by some delegates and onlookers before his nominating convention speech but went on to get more than 60 percent of the delegate votes, eliminating Hawkins and winning his party's nomination outright.

In a poll conducted last month, Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV pollster Dan Jones & Associates found 72 percent of Utahns like the job Hatch is doing. Jones found that 87 percent of Republicans said they approve of Hatch's job performance.

But like Hawkins, Urquhart would look for support among hard-coreGOP delegates, who may be more finely tuned into some of the senator's stands — like his support for stem cell research, opposed by many arch-conservatives.

And Hatch is seen by some as becoming increasingly distant from his Utah voters. While keeping an official residence in Salt Lake City, Hatch lives most of the year outside of Washington, D.C., and has become embroiled in beltway politics.

In 2000, Hatch ran for U.S. president at the same time he sought re-election to his Senate seat. (The Legislature actually changed state law to allow Hatch to file for two offices at once — a law he didn't need to use since he dropped out of the presidential race before the mid-March candidate filing deadline.)

Urquhart, 40, is an attorney in private practice in St. George. He was first elected to the Utah House in 2000 and was elected into leadership last November. Considered a computer "techy," Urquhart has sponsored several bills aimed at punishing spammers and those who send marketing viruses into citizens' personal computers.

Urquhart was one of several southwestern Utah lawmakers who convinced Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and lawmakers to give millions of state dollars to flood relief to Washington County this year.

Urquhart told the radio station Hatch had personally been calling influential Republicans the past several weeks in an attempt to keep Urquhart out of the race. Those people hang up the phone with Hatch and call him to encourage him to run, Urquhart said.

---

E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com