From Deseret News archives:
Chaffetz facing uphill battle
But now Chaffetz, the former chief of staff of GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., faces a whole new challenge: Defeat an entrenched incumbent in a closed Republican primary June 24 — with just five weeks to raise and spend the money needed to introduce himself to tens of thousands of 3rd Congressional District voters.
Convincing nearly 60 percent of 1,000 conservative GOP delegates to dump the incumbent party member is different than getting a majority of 60,000-plus rank-and-file Republicans (and independents who choose to sign up as Republicans to vote in the party primary) to vote Cannon out.
Cannon, 57, has faced a GOP primary challenger in five of his seven elections — and he's beaten each one.
"I'm not those guys," Chaffetz said after driving Cannon to the wall of elimination Saturday — falling short by just a few delegate votes.
"We've won a lot of elections" in the past "because we've worked hard. And we'll work hard this time, too," said Cannon in an interview from his D.C. office Wednesday.
Chaffetz, 41, says he'll use nearly 1,000 volunteers; smart, yet small, media buys; some direct mail; and good ole shoe leather to win the primary. He has already been running an introductory biography TV ad on cable channels and a few times on local broadcast TV stations. Those ads start running again today, he said.
"Cannon will outspend me 10-to-one. That's OK. I will not go into debt in this campaign. Mr. Cannon has been in debt since he was elected in 1996. How you run your campaign is how you will operate in office. And I absolutely refuse to go into debt and have to ask lobbyists to bail me out," said Chaffetz.
Cannon beat his 2006 GOP primary opponent, millionaire water developer John Jacob, by more than 10 percentage points. "And (Jacob) had a lot more money (than Chaffetz) and had much better name ID than my current opponent, too," said Cannon.
Recent elections, in fact, show just what Chaffetz is up against:
• Cannon is a millionaire who loaned his 2006 campaign $120,000. Chaffetz, a small-business man, can't afford to self-fund his campaign and says he won't go into debt to do it. He's given his campaign nearly $4,000 and says he may make some more small donations in the primary race.
• Cannon raised $95,000 and spent $151,000 in the short, six-week primary campaign two years ago. From his 2004 election through his 2006 primary, Cannon raised $969,000 and spent $864,000. Chaffetz has raised $92,000 in the 18 months he's been running for the 3rd District.
