A contentious GOP convention

Utah state GOP chairman Joe Cannon and his vice chairwoman, Enid Greene, were barely re-elected to their posts in a Saturday state Republican Convention that saw a lot of intra-party arguing and squabbles.

U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch and other GOP leaders had to wait hours to address the delegates at the Salt Lake Community College hall, because the delegates voted to change the convention agenda to put the dignitaries at the end of the agenda.

In addressing the several hundred delegates who stayed after five hours of debate and voting, Hatch said he not only wouldn't apologize for calling those Utahns who protested against President Bush last week "nutcakes," but that the people who stood along the presidential motorcade route and gave the president "the middle finger" were "rude, belligerent and rotten" for not respecting the office of the president.

Rhetoric aside, the real reason about half of the 3,353 GOP delegates came Saturday was to vote on new party leaders.

Cannon, who asked for a third two-year term, won a three-way race on the first ballot, getting 51 percent of the vote. Patrick Reagan got 35 percent and Jeremy Friedbaum got 11 percent. (Cannon is a member of the Deseret Morning News board of directors.)

Greene, a former U.S. House member, barely eliminated her vice chair challengers on the first ballot. She got 50.77 percent of the vote; Davis County GOP chairman Todd Weiler got 31.7 percent; and David Spackman got 17.4 percent.

So of the 1,380 delegates who cast ballots, nearly half wanted someone other than Cannon and Greene to run the party over the next two years — not exactly a mandate. Still Cannon and Greene clearly have the support of GOP officeholders and big-money donors, many of whom endorsed their re-elections.

It's not unusual for off-year conventions like Saturday's to draw only the most conservative, hard-core delegates. And many of those in attendance seemed displeased with some party policies.

One example: Delegates approved a resolution that said delegates had the right to place party constitutional and bylaw amendments before the convention, even though party leaders had already ruled that only the party's Constitution and Bylaw Committee could place such amendments on the convention agenda.