Why reluctance to challenge Matheson?

In the summer, fall and winter of 2001 several dozen Utah Republicans were thinking about running for the 2nd Congressional District.

By the March 2002 candidate filing deadline, 12 were actually in the race.

That was a record candidate field.

Fast forward four years.

To date, no Republican has stepped forward to challenge Democratic incumbent Jim Matheson in 2006, even though U.S. House campaigns have gotten more expensive, more technical, and more time is needed to plan and execute an effective campaign.

What's changed?

Well, Matheson has successfully thwarted GOP legislators' attempt to redistrict him out of office, raising a lot of money, campaigning hard and winning twice in his redesigned district.

Matheson barely survived that 2002 onslaught, winning by less than 1 percentage point in a new district that stretches from eastern Salt Lake County to eastern and southern Utah. Republicans even gave him northeastern Utah County, where he gets few votes in the conservative enclaves of Alpine, Highland, Lehi and American Fork.

Matheson solidified his position by dispatching the final GOP challenger in 2004 by nearly 15 percentage points — an impressive victory for an incumbent even if most of his constituents were members of his party.

But Matheson's 2nd District, as redrawn by the Legislature in 2001, historically votes nearly 60 percent Republican — in races where Matheson's name is not on the ballot. He got the lion's share of Democratic and independent voters, even 20 percent of GOP voters last year.

Still, Matheson has to work like a dog every two years to get re-elected, taking only a few months off after Election Day before the grind begins again.

And it is a pace that — barring any unforeseen developments — he'll have to keep up for years to come.

Some U.S. House members in swing districts, like the late Rep. Wayne Owens , just get tired of the fund-raising/campaign work.

They either retire, seek a more stable public office (Owens ran for and lost two U.S. Senate races rather than run for re-election to his House seat) or just slow down in fund-raising and constituent services to a point where they are beaten by a better-financed, harder-working challenger.

Matheson says the latter won't happen to him.

But there are always unforeseen circumstances.

Former 3rd District Rep. Bill Orton , a moderate-to-conservative Democrat like Matheson, seemed to be coasting along in his heavily conservative district, dispatching his underfunded GOP challengers in 1992 and 1994 until he was booted out of office in 1996.