2 brothers on Utah ballot?

Voters in much of Utah may get the chance to vote for not one but two Matheson brothers next year.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, said Tuesday he'll run for re-election in his 2nd Congressional District, which includes the eastern part of Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County as well as eastern and southern Utah.

And his older brother, Scott Matheson Jr., officially filed campaign organization documents for governor Monday.

"This is not my official declaration of candidacy," Scott Matheson Jr. Tuesday. "But we're moving forward, we're going to start fund-raising. And I recognize the symbolic significance of what I'm doing. . . . I hope to be" the Democratic nominee for governor, he said.

Such a filing is required before a candidate can have someone else write checks off of a campaign account, state election officials said. Candidates can't formally file for office until March 2004 and don't have to file a state campaign financial disclosure report until May or June of next year.

If Scott Matheson Jr. is ultimately the Democratic Party's gubernatorial candidate, his name would be on all 2004 Utah ballots. Jim Matheson is virtually assured of his party's 2nd District nomination, and so his name will be on ballots in a third of the state. Scott Matheson Jr. couldn't recall a time in Utah when two brothers' names were on the same ballot for major office. "This is a unique situation."

Their father, Scott M. Matheson, was Utah's most recent Democratic governor, serving from 1977 to 1985. The much-loved Democratic politician in GOP-controlled Utah died of a rare cancer in 1990.

This is the first time that Jim Matheson has said he'll run again. He was also looking at the governorship in 2004 but clearly would not have opposed his brother.

Scott Matheson Jr., dean of the University of Utah law school, said he'll have to take a leave from the publicly funded school at some point to conduct a partisan campaign. "But that time hasn't been decided."

Jim Matheson said, "Yeah, I'm running for Congress next year. I like what I'm doing. Our office and I have put a lot of effort into getting to know the new district" redrawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2001. "I'm enjoying every aspect of it, and we want to keep doing what we're doing."

Jim Matheson won a squeaker of a race in 2002, beating then-GOP state House member John Swallow by 2,000 votes out of 200,000 cast.

Name recognition