Utah a bit less Republican

Democrat Barack Obama is president, but Utah remains Republican country — although maybe a bit less so in Salt Lake County, with GOP Utah House Speaker Greg Curtis losing his seat and Democrats winning control of the County Council.

Complete, but unofficial, tallies show that by 63-34 percent Utahns gave their five Electoral College votes to John McCain, the Republican Party presidential candidate who lost handily to Obama across the nation.

Still, GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. got a record re-election win, 78-20 percent, over Democrat Bob Springmeyer. U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, goes back to Congress in his 1st Congressional District, joined by Jason Chaffetz, a Republican newcomer from the 3rd Congressional District.

U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, as expected, remains the lone Democrat in the Utah delegation with a big re-election victory in the 2nd Congressional District.

In other statewide races Republicans swept into office: Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who left a hospital after being treated for a staph infection in his leg to vote Tuesday, won a third four-year term; Auditor Auston Johnson won re-election; and current chief deputy treasurer Richard Ellis survived a nasty GOP-primary scandal to win his retiring boss's job.

But while state Democrats can only cheer Obama, they showed gains in Salt Lake County and in the state Legislature. Indeed, with 34 percent of the vote in Utah, Obama ran much better than the 26 percent that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry received here just four years ago. (Obama narrowly lost in Salt Lake County.)

Tuesday night at the Democrats' party in a downtown Salt Lake hotel, one may not have known that they lost most of the top races in the state this year — electing Obama as president and making gains in Salt Lake County was enough to bring smiles and cheers. Indeed, Utah Democrats are used to taking baby steps in their election victories.

Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon won an impressive re-election victory. Salt Lake County Councilman Randy Horiuchi also won re-election on Corroon's coattails. (Horiuchi was running newspaper ads with Corroon endorsements — and a picture of Corroon, not Horiuchi.) And Democrat Jani Iwamoto unseated GOP incumbent councilman Mark Crockett in District 6 to give Democrats a 5-4 majority on the council. Democrats control county government for the first time in more than a decade.

Utah Democratic Party leaders and their legislators hoped this could be a year like 1986, when Democrats doubled the number of party members in the state House. Democrats were further down then, and jumped further ahead than they did Tuesday.