Can GOP ship right itself after a wave of defections?

A month before the November election, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Orton made his way to Farr West, Weber County, and met with a group of Utah's most conservative Republicans.

The meeting place was Smith and Edwards, the top-selling Wrangler jean dealer in Utah and a sprawling, 40-acre gathering place for those who need paint, tack, tarps, automotive supplies, government war surplus and one of the biggest gun selections in the state. About 200 people showed up for the meeting organized by Bert Smith, a lifetime Republican who founded Smith and Edwards 53 years ago and considers himself "strongly conservative."

Smith and his like-minded friends hammered Orton on gun control, education concerns, school vouchers, wilderness, open space preservation and his stance on local initiatives. When the meeting was over, many who attended, including Smith, had decided to support Orton instead of popular Republican Gov. Mike Leavitt, who was seeking his third term.

"I tried to get the governor's attention that he was not doing the right thing," Smith said last week. "I told him he was too liberal, but nothing changed. So I had to look outside the party."

Smith wasn't the only one.

A Deseret News analysis of exit polls conducted by Dan Jones & Associates for KSL-TV shows nearly a fifth of faithful, conservative Republicans deserted their governor this year and voted for Orton.

"When it came to the governor's race, I voted for the only person honest enough to call themselves a true Democrat, and that was Bill Orton," said Greg Zenger, a lifetime Republican, real estate agent and house painter from Taylorsville.

Leavitt has acted like a Democrat his whole term in office, Zenger claims. Taxes have gone up, the governor didn't back a bill to rein in sex education curriculum, and on the Grand-Staircase National Monument, "he rolled over and played dead," Zenger said.

"Mike Leavitt is a RINO, a Republican in Name Only," Zenger said. "His policies and stances have been so liberal."

Leavitt and his supporters — who are many — disagree with

such sentiments. State taxes were actually cut by Leavitt and the GOP-controlled Legislature, for example. But, as the Jones poll shows, there are a number of conservatives and Republicans out there who side with Zenger and Smith.

Deserting the party ship