Sorry, More Utah Politics

The Senate recently voted to expand the members of the House of Representatives from 435 seats to 437, giving one seat to the District of Columbia and another to Utah. The reason for Utah's inclusion is because it was 80 human beings short of getting a new district from the 2000 census, was the fastest growing state since then, and will likely vote a Republican to fill the seat to counter the forgone conclusion that D.C. will vote in a Democrat.

There is this tantalizing possibility, though, that this could all backfire and Utah would end up voting for a Democrat, as well. The Utah legislature drew up the four districts back in 2000 when it seemed likely Utah was going to get the seat the good old fashion way. You can see the map here.

District 1 in Northern Utah is solidly conservative, and so is District 3 because even though it has Grand County and some of Summit County, both of which went for Obama, and San Juan County, which nearly went to Obama, it also contains Utah County which is big and hugely conservative. So that puts District 1, likely for Bishop, and District 3, likely for Chaffetz, solidly Republican. District 2 is a slam dunk for Democrats. It contains the north half of Salt Lake County, a little bit of Davis County (Woods Cross), a little bit of Utah County (Alta) and the real liberal part of Summit County, Park City. Then there's District 4. This little gem is the southern half of Salt Lake County and then the western counties down to Washington County.

The backfire comes where in the last ten years the southern half of Salt Lake County is more and more liberal, especially along the east bench. Republicans have lost some state seats in that area to Democrats, most notably Senate president Greg Curtis from Sandy. Also making this intriguing is that Matheson has the highest approval ratings outside of the Huntsman juggernaut and is from Iron County, which is within that District 4. So Matheson could run in that 4th District and win, with the only challenge being picking up some votes from big-ish and conservative Washington County. He also has experience running in conservative districts and a record of being a moderate. If he did that, then District 2 could run any viable Democrat and win and suddenly Utah has 2 Democrats in the House. I'm not sure if Matheson is that big a risk-taker with District 2 seemingly in the bag, but this is not that far fetched.

Which leads to another interesting little bit of politcal time-wasting. The National Journal Online (warning, slow loading) recently ranked all Congresspeople along the ideological spectrum. You will notice such things as Jim Matheson being predictably moderate, fellow Mormon Harry Reid not as liberal as conservatives think, and Bob Bennett and Orin Hatch are suprisingly moderate. These rankings are not official, by any means, and there is some criticism of it methodology, but it is probably more or less the starting point to some arguments.

The juiciest tidbit, for me, is seeing Chris Cannon, former Representative from Utah, as the 16th most conservative in the 435-seat House. This is not surprising, and Rob Bishop is just barely behind. Chris Cannon, however, lost to Jason Chaffetz in the last election, from the right. Chris Cannon, the 16th most conservative Rep in the nation, was too liberal for the good folks of Utah County, at a time when the entire rest of the nation shifted to the left.

Now I'm not saying that Utah Republicans that don't fall in line with shockingly moderate Governor Huntsman are already irrelevant, but it is quickly approaching that point. The problem with the Republican Party over the past five years is not that it is too liberal, or that it got away from it conservative roots, or that it is not listening intently enough to Rush Limbaugh, it is that the American people have moved to the left. The American people now favor more liberal policies. So either the Republican Party can gravitate toward leaders like Huntsman, or it can fade to obscurity.

And just to be clear, more liberal does not mean less moral. Is it more or less moral to torture? How about being responsible for the deaths of a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians as the result of an unprovoked war? How about letting millions go without proper medical care in the name of self-sufficiency and the free market? And so on.