Hopeful using radio ads to get name out

If you've got a few bucks in your pocket, what's the best way to go about running for governor?

Start campaigning early. Spend some of that money. Get your name out.

Author and lecturer Richard Eyre went about running for governor in 1992 by writing a book about what's good about Utah and how to go about improving it. It helped propel him into a GOP primary with then-insurance executive Mike Leavitt, but he lost.

Fred Lampropoulos, another potential Republican candidate, is taking another tack, one used by famed conservative and former President Ronald Reagan.

Since January, Lampropoulos, the millionaire, chairman and CEO of the product firm Merit Medical Systems Inc., has been running radio ads nearly every day on some of Utah's leading stations, ones that either broadcast throughout the state or are the most popular in isolated rural areas.

Sponsored by his Web site www.UtahIdeas.com, Lampropoulos reads one-, two-, even three-minute commentaries on all kinds of subjects, from the value of Boy Scouts to the evils of the liberal media. He has produced more than 30 so far, with two new ads each week.

"We're planning on continuing the ads into the future," says Dave Hansen, a paid political consultant to Lampropoulos' gubernatorial campaign. While the beginning of the ads say they are presented by UtahIdeas.com, Hansen said Lampropoulos is actually paying the $20,000-a-month radio ad bills himself.

The radio ads "are a way to get Fred's name out there, get his thoughts out there," says Hansen, who at one time was the top political operative for the Republican U.S. Senate organization in the Western states. The ads don't say directly that Lampropoulos, who paid a visit to the Deseret News editorial board earlier this year to discuss his expected bid for governor, is going to be a candidate for governor.

Lampropoulos got the idea for the media campaign from Reagan.

As Lampropoulos details in one of his radio addresses, titled "Ronald Reagan's Optimism," the former president, after losing the GOP nomination in 1976, spent the next four years reading dozens of radio commentaries carried on stations across the nation. Lampropoulos, then a traveling salesman, listened to many of those broadcasts as he drove across states on business.

The commentaries helped shape his political thinking and his life, says Lampropoulos.

Lampropoulos ends each of his broadcasts with, "I just thought you'd like to know."