Incumbent knocked out of Utah County's GOP races

OREM — Saturday was a great day for eight of the nine incumbents running for re-election at the Utah County Republican Convention — but just barely for two of them.

And for Rep. Aaron Tilton, R-Springville, the day couldn't have been worse — but again, just barely.

Tilton lost his seat in the Utah House when delegates in District 65 gave upstart challenger Francis Gibson 70 of 115 votes, or 60.8 percent. That gave Gibson a supermajority and earned him the Republican nomination, ousting Tilton from the Legislature.

If two more delegates had switched their votes to Tilton, Gibson wouldn't have reached the magical 60 percent threshold and the candidates would have battled to a June primary.

Instead, Gibson will face Democrat Doug Baxter in the November general election, and Tilton will try to decide whether his vote for school vouchers or his controversial effort to build a nuclear power plant in Utah caused his downfall.

The other eight GOP incumbents who faced re-election challenges at the convention all won easily, and all by supermajorities like Gibson. That meant no primaries for any legislator whose entire district is in Utah County.

Two of those incumbents reached 60 percent by the skin of their teeth — Rep. Brad Daw with 60.4 percent and Rep. Keith Grover with 60.8 percent.

With one more vote, Linda Housekeeper would have forced Daw into a primary. Lisa Shepherd needed two more votes to take Grover to a primary.

Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, easily won the nomination over Jackie deGaston, whose high-profile accusations that party leadership was stacking the deck in his favor gained little hold with delegates in Senate District 16.

"I think misrepresentations and negative campaigning were proven to once again be an unsuccessful strategy," Bramble said.

DeGaston expressed satisfaction that she brought attention to the Utah County Republican Party's practice of allowing elected officials to be delegates. She called them automatic delegates. Party leaders say they are ex-officio delegates, a common practice.

"Is there a person alive who doesn't know there is a problem with automatic delegates?" deGaston said.