Tenacious Hatch

Orrin Hatch is fussing with the CD player in his office. The machine can't seem to find the right song track on the right disc, and the situation is making one of Utah's coolest political characters a little frustrated.

He doesn't get to his home office in Salt Lake City's Wallace Bennett Federal Building as much as he used to, and he's not all that familiar with the equipment. But he's in Utah this autumn afternoon for a series of election season stops. His wife, Elaine, is making the campaign rounds with him, and Hatch wants a reporter to hear the love song he wrote for her.

Hatch is punching buttons to no avail. Minutes pass. Still no music. It's getting late, his staffer says. We can listen another time. She's giving him an out. "I'll come back," the visitor offers. But Hatch perseveres. "We can make this work," he says, standing over the hissing CD player. "I can figure this out."

Eventually, he does. With some persistence — and a staffer's help — Hatch is happy again, resettled on an office couch with his wife of 43 years, listening to "All Because of You." He's cranked up the volume to a surprising level for this stately man, and when his visitor and a staffer share a few words during the song, Hatch chides, "Shhh. You can't hear the lyrics."

This is the way it is with Hatch, say the people who know Utah's most senior senator in Washington, D.C. He is tenacious. Tenacious about his conservative philosophies, tenacious as he tackles ambitious political tasks in Utah and around the country, tenacious when a stubborn CD player won't work and insistent when someone isn't listening to something he thinks they should.

It is one of Orrin Hatch's most notable characteristics, says Gov. Mike Leavitt, who's been close friends with Hatch since 1976 when he met then-candidate Hatch while campaigning with his father, Dixie Leavitt.

It is the trait for which the 19-time grandfather is best known, and it has served him well as he's climbed from student to student body president, player to team captain, poor kid to probable millionaire.

"He is relentless," says Leavitt. "He is very well known on Capitol Hill for his willingness to take on a tough fight and to stick with it until he is finished."

And Hatch is not finished with his political efforts. He seeks a fifth term as Utah's senior senator, ready to do another six years of battle with the "left-winged ideologues" who are poised to "run wild" if Hatch isn't around to watch out for the country's best interests.