From Deseret News archives:
GOP has held legislative majority since mid-'70s
Pollster Dan Jones & Associates also finds that most Utahns get most of their legislative candidate information from traditional media sources newspaper, radio and TV news reports.
There is almost no chance that Democrats could win control of either legislative body. Republicans have been in the majority since the mid-1970s.
But state Democratic Party leaders recently told the News that they could pick up six House seats and a couple of Senate seats, enough in either body to break the Republicans' two-thirds, veto-proof majorities.
"We could stop bad constitutional amendments and (gubernatorial) veto overrides," state party executive director Todd Taylor said during an interview at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
But GOP leaders say while they may be playing defense in some races, they also have opportunities to pick up some seats. Part of the problem for Republicans in the Senate is that out of 15 races this year, there are only three Democratic seats up for election so the numbers are against the Republicans in defending their incumbents.
Jones found that 57 percent of Utahns said they would vote for the Republican in their House race; only 28 percent said they would vote for the Democrat.
Overall, those are hard numbers to overcome for Democrats.
But there are Democratic bright spots in several individual constants.
Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, is clearly fighting for his political life. A survey last March in his District 10 found that 67 percent of the residents did not want to re-elect him this year. Buttars faces Democrat John Rendell.
Buttars has been a controversial legislator for some time. In the 2008 Legislature he referred to a school board bill as a dark, ugly baby, leading some to say the comments were racist.
The Salt Lake Chapter of the NAACP called for Buttars to resign. But Buttars apologized to anyone who may have been offended, said he certainly didn't mean for the comments to be racist, and announced he'd run for re-election this year. He won his party's re-nomination in a hotly contested Salt Lake County GOP convention.
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