Mitt Romney’s Bid to Become Utah’s Next Senator Just Hit A Roadblock. Here’s What Happens Next.

Maybe Mitt is not such a shoo-in after all.

U. S. Senate candidate Mitt Romney delivers his speech to the delegates at the Utah Republican Nominating Convention Saturday, April 21, 2018, at the Maverik Center in West Valley City, Utah. Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Mitt Romney seemed like a shoo-in to replace retiring Sen. Orrin Hatch as the senator from Utah. But last night, after 11 hours of debates and posturing, delegates at Utah’s GOP nominating convention rejected the former presidential candidate in favor of State Rep. Mike Kennedy, a lawyer and doctor from Alpine, Utah, the same town that is home to former Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz.

Out of a 12-person field that included an Abraham Lincoln impersonator, Kennedy beat Romney 51 to 49, after campaigning on opposition to Obamacare and the Common Core educational standards. Because neither candidate received 60 percent of the delegate votes, the loss means that Romney will face Kennedy in a June primary.

Utah’s GOP nominating system is quirky—and this year’s was especially chaotic. (As the hours wore on, Romney volunteers threw Twinkies to exhausted delegates assembled in the hockey arena.) The convention system tends to favor far-right candidates, and allows an underfunded newcomer to upset more established candidates, as Chaffetz did in 2008, when he beat six-term incumbent Rep. Chris Cannon at the convention. Newcomer Mike Lee also knocked off three-term incumbent Senator Robert Bennett in 2010 this way.

Romney spent between half a million and $1 million dollars—money left over from his presidential race—in the run-up to the convention; Kennedy just $31,500.

The poor showing doesn’t bode all that well for Romney, despite polls showing he would easily win the Senate seat against a Democrat. Hatch has endorsed him as heir-apparent and Romney has deep family ties to the state. His ancestors were early Mormon pioneers, and Romneys have lived in Utah for generations. Romney graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, and lived in Utah during the years he spent trying to rescue the troubled 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. He returned in 2013 after losing the 2012 presidential election. Two of his sons also live in Utah. Yet delegates at the convention still accused him of being a carpetbagger and a RINO—”Republican in name only”. One of his opponents pointed to his support for gay couples adopting children.

Unhappiness with Romney jumping into the race surfaced early, when he announced his intention to run in February. The state GOP chair, Rob Anderson, attacked him publicly, comparing him to Hillary Clinton running for Senate in New York. (He later apologized after Romney called him to chat. ) But some of the irritation in the party also seems to stem from the fact that Utah hasn’t had an open senate seat since 1992. Hatch had been squatting on his political fiefdom for 42 years. Hatch’s retirement had new, younger candidates eager for a shot at moving up in the race for an open seat.

But the Romney juggernaut put an end to those hopes. As Anderson told the Salt Lake Tribune, Romney’s entry into the race had deterred a number of good, serious candidates from running, because Romney “has been poaching all of the talent as far as campaign and messaging and financing. Nobody wants to go out there like David and Goliath and get defeated by the Romney machine,” he said.

After Romney’s performance at the convention, some of those candidates might wish they had.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate