Hatch selling $500 tickets to dinner with Bush

You can never be too rich or too thin, the old saying goes. And Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, appears to be doing just fine on both those accounts.

Hatch's U.S. Senate campaign is now selling tickets at $500 a person for a fund-raiser featuring President Bush, who will be in town next week to address the national convention of the American Legion.

Hatch campaign manager Dave Hansen said the president will address a noon luncheon for the senator's supporters in the Grand America Hotel on Aug. 31.

Utah is one of only four states where most residents give the president a favorable job-approval rating — around 55 percent at the last measurement by pollster Dan Jones & Associates for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV.

Tickets to the fund-raiser are selling briskly, said Hansen. He expects more than 200 people to attend — at least another $100,000 for Hatch's campaign war chest.

Pete Ashdown, Hatch's Democratic opponent, said Tuesday he thinks it is great that Bush is coming to town.

"I wish more U.S. presidents would come here," he said. "Maybe then we could get some policy adjustments to help the Western United States."

Ashdown said he's decided to hold his own dinner in honor of Bush's visit.

"I'm asking 150 people to come to dinner at the Alta Club, absolutely free — I'm paying for this out of my own pocket, not with campaign funds," he said. "All I'm asking these guests is that they each make a charitable donation to a charity that deals with fighting hunger in America."

Ashdown's dinner will be on Aug. 29. The first 150 people who call his campaign at 983-7383 or RSVP on his campaign's e-mail — pete@peteashdown.org — will get the invites, the candidate said.

"It would be great if the president would come, Rumsfeld, Condi e — all those folks," Ashdown said. (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are accompanying Bush to Utah.)

Considering Hatch already has $2.5 million in cash in his campaign account — the most he has ever had for one of his five U.S. Senate campaigns — why even try to raise more?

"You never know what will happen in any campaign," said Hansen, who has run a number of GOP races both in Utah and across the nation. "You would rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."