GOP spat isn't dying down

Few fights are as bitter as one within a large family — and Utah GOP leaders are experiencing a doozy of a battle right now.

It comes with charges of mismanagement, disloyalty, excessive spending and pettiness.

"I'm done with it," said former gubernatorial candidate Fred Lampropoulos on Thursday. The current Utah Republican national committeeman, who told Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. last November that he would serve as the next state party chairman, says he took himself out of the chairmanship race after being poorly treated by the governor's office and sickened by "politics and personalities."

Lampropoulos also says he won't run for national committeeman again at the June 9 state GOP organizing convention, where a new chairman and other party officers will be selected by delegates.

Meanwhile, Jeff Hartley, fired by party chairwoman Enid Greene on Tuesday as party executive director, says his billing to the party of a $50,000 commission on fund raising in December was proper and followed an agreement he had with former GOP chairman Joe Cannon, who is now editor of the Deseret Morning News.

And Greene says she gave the party $50,000 from her own family monies to pay party bills that came pouring into its South Temple headquarters, after Cannon's November resignation, because of Hartley's free-spending ways.

The end result that with five weeks until the June GOP convention:

• The party's executive director is fired.

• Greene defends herself against charges of "vindictive actions."

• Lampropoulos is getting out of state party politics altogether.

• Huntsman, contrary to tradition, won't be backing any chairmanship candidate.

• And with a May 10 candidate filing deadline, no one has stepped forward to say they want the unpaid job of party chairman.

The TV soap opera "All My Children" has nothing on this group.

Lampropoulos, who lost in the 2004 state GOP convention to Huntsman, who was running for governor, and to Greene, who was gubernatorial candidate Nolan Karras' lieutenant governor running mate, said after a disappointing showing in the 2006 statewide elections by Republicans that he agreed to run for party chairman after Huntsman called him and asked him to stand for election.

"But I wanted to take over (the party) in February — when the (party's) central committee would vote to replace Joe (Cannon) and serve out his term," said Lampropoulos.

"I'm a CEO," said the founder and head of Merit Medical, a successful medical equipment firm. "I wanted to get in and make changes — even though I had concerns" about financial operations of the party and personalities involved.