GOP delegates boot Tooele incumbents

GOP delegates booted every incumbent facing a challenger for county office at last week's Tooele County Republican convention, and at least one ousted commissioner believes it boils down to three things: nepotism, nuclear waste and a sex-change operation.

Both commission members facing re-election and the county attorney were defeated — all by at least 2-to-1 margins.

Commissioner Matthew Lawrence, who won only 30 percent of the delegates' support to challenger Jerry Hurst's 70 percent, pins his loss largely on party vice chairwoman Joyce Hogan. She works for nuclear-waste management company EnergySolutions as a public-relations director in Tooele. Her son, Douglas Hogan, defeated incumbent county attorney Douglas Ahlstrom 73 percent to 27 percent at the convention.

Lawrence this week said he believes that "basically what we've got is a Republican Party that was taken over by the EnergySolutions company."

EnergySolutions has been at the center of a debate over whether nuclear waste should be stored in the Tooele County desert. Most recently, the company announced its support of a Bush administration plan to develop recycling facilities for spent nuclear fuel.

Lawrence worries EnergySolutions wants to do some of that recycling in Tooele County, a move he said the current commission would not support. A recent EnergySolutions news release said the company "is working with parties in several locations outside of Utah who have an interest in a recycling facility."

Mark Walker, a spokesman for EnergySolutions, said Thursday that the company is "not seeking to reprocess in the state of Utah." Regarding Lawrence's accusation that the company had influenced the county-office races, Walker said, "It's not the practice of EnergySolutions to get involved in the internal matters of governmental entities."

Neither Ahlstrom nor commission chairman Dennis Rockwell, who was beaten 85-15 percent by Bruce Clegg, could be reached for comment on Lawrence's claims.

The party's leadership denies nepotism or a concerted anti-incumbent effort by Joyce Hogan. "At every conversation we've had, she has agreed with me that we need to make sure there are no fingerprints of the party leadership being involved in the outcome" of any of the races, party chairman Gregory Copeland said.

Joyce Hogan opted to respond to the accusations in a written statement Thursday rather than in a telephone interview. "It would be inappropriate for me to campaign for or against any candidate," she wrote. "I did not campaign against Commissioners Lawrence or Rockwell or any other candidate."