Group posts ‘deceptive’ Bennett video

SALT LAKE CITY — A national conservative group posted an Internet video Thursday that it says shows Jim Bennett — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett's son and campaign manager — urging supporters to be deceptive if necessary to be elected as state Republican delegates.

But Jim Bennett says the short segment gives a wrong impression about a light-hearted story, and he says he never encouraged anyone to be deceptive. He accuses the conservative group of "waging the dirtiest pre-caucus campaign in Utah history."

The pro-business, conservative Club for Growth posted on its stopbobbennett.com Web site a video of Jim Bennett talking to supporters in a hotel ballroom (which Bennett said was at a fundraising event that also featured Mitt Romney).

In it, Bennett says, "There are precincts that are going to say, 'If you've made up your mind for Bennett, then we're probably going to elect somebody else.' " Then he talks about a way around that.

"Now I don't encourage or discourage this, but I've had somebody come to me and say, 'Yes, I go and say I'm not going to make up my mind, and then I just go there and vote for Bennett anyway,' " Jim Bennett said.

"We'd be happy if you did that," he said, while some laughs can be heard. "But the fact is, you're going to have to gauge what your precinct wants you to do."

"This is the smoking gun," said Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth, which has been running TV ads and waging a letter-writing campaign against Bennett for months largely because it does not like a health care reform bill he pushed.

"Bob Bennett's campaign wants supporters to mislead their friends and neighbors at next week's caucuses in order to trick conservatives into electing them as delegates," Chocola said.

But Jim Bennett said he had been taking questions at the event, and one man asserted that delegates must be neutral. Bennett said that is incorrect and that he gave stories of people being elected as supporters of a delegate, as neutral, or as willing to support whomever their caucus decided.

Bennett said he then mentioned the man who reported saying he was neutral but voted for Bennett anyway. "It was light-hearted. I was smiling when I said it," he said.

"At the same event, Mitt Romney jokingly urged people to vote several times. Does that make him guilty of urging voter fraud?" Bennett asked. "I never urged anybody to lie."