No big 2010 surprises from Matheson, Beattie

A few 2010 political decisions were announced this week — Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, will run for re-election, and Salt Lake Chamber President Lane Beattie will not run for governor.

Not big surprises in either man's decision.

Matheson, Utah's leading Democrat, would have had a tough time winning either the governor's or U.S. Senate race next year — both contests he was considering.

And Beattie, the former GOP president of the Utah Senate, would have had to go up against Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, who will become governor in a couple of weeks after Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. resigns after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate as ambassador to China.

Herbert, says Beattie, is a friend. And Beattie personally asked Herbert to seriously consider Natalie Gochnour, Beattie's top aide at the chamber, to be Herbert's lieutenant governor.

Herbert has put Gochnour in his top four choices as second-in-command. Herbert says he'll announce his new lieutenant governor before he's sworn in, a ceremony now scheduled tentatively for Aug. 10.

Beattie says "no deals were made" when he told Herbert he wouldn't run against him for the 2010 GOP gubernatorial nomination.

And Beattie told me that should Herbert "struggle" as governor in 2010 or 2011, or should Herbert be defeated next year, Beattie would still consider a run for governor in 2012 or beyond.

Matheson certainly is a popular incumbent in his 2nd Congressional District. His re-election in 2010 is likely.

But I think he would have lost either the governor's or U.S. Senate race next year, putting Matheson out of office.

Simply put, Utah is still too Republican for even a moderate-to-conservative Democrat to win a statewide race.

Democrats have made election strides in Salt Lake County, which carries about 40 percent of Utah's population.

Matheson's older brother, Scott, beat Huntsman in the county in 2004. And the county government has a Democratic mayor and council majority.

Hey, President Barack Obama barely carried the county in 2008.

But in statewide elections, no Democrat has won for governor since Jim Matheson's father, Gov. Scott M. Matheson, won re-election in 1980.

No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate race here since 1970.

No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Utah since 1964.