Utah's three incumbent congressmen leading

U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, Utah's lone Democrat in Washington, D.C., took an early lead Tuesday over a Republican challenger from the state House of Representatives.

With 24 percent of precincts reporting, Matheson led LaVar Christensen 62 percent to 34 percent in the 2nd Congressional District.

In the 1st District, Republican Rep. Rob Bishop had 66 percent of the vote and Democrat Steve Olsen had 29 percent, with 46 percent of precincts reporting.

In the 3rd District, Republican Rep. Chris Cannon was leading with 55 percent of the vote to Democrat Christian Burridge's 35 percent, with 27 percent of precincts reporting.

Matheson is a moderate Democrat whose conservative votes have made him popular in Utah's 2nd District. Matheson voted to send troops to Iraq and is a member of the Blue Dog coalition, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats.

Marian Huffaker, 83, voted for Matheson even though she hoped to see the Republicans maintain control of Congress.

"I think he's a good man," Huffaker said.

Tom Huckin, 64, a professor of English at the University of Utah who said he normally would have voted for Matheson felt the congressman had moved to far to the right.

"As a protest for his rubber stamping of the Bush administration I voted for someone else," Huckin said as he left his Salt Lake City polling location.

Christensen, 53, has served in the Utah House of Representatives since 2002. He has sought to endear himself to voters by describing himself as a "Ronald Reagan" conservative and pledging to oppose gay marriage, abortion and retreat from Iraq.

Republicans Cannon, 56, and Bishop, 55, campaigned on their experience and seniority, contending their years in Congress benefit constituents.

Bishop, a former high school teacher who landed in Congress after serving as Utah House speaker and state Republican chairman, won his first two terms with more than 60 percent of the vote each time.

His opponent, Olsen, 49, hadn't planned to run for Congress until he caught the eye of the Utah's Democratic Party with a booklet he wrote titled, "Why Most Utahns Are Democrats But Just Don't Know It Yet."

Likewise, Burridge, a 31-year-old attorney, answered an e-mail sent out by the state party that read "No one is running against Chris Cannon."

Cannon has represented the heavily Republican 3rd District since 1996 and has come the closest in Utah's delegation to the ethics scandal that has plagued Washington this year, but has seen no political fallout.

Questions have surfaced over Cannon's dealing with his lobbyist brother, Joe, and his former chief of staff, David Safavian, who was convicted in June of covering up his dealings with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.