The Patrick Henry Caucus getting some love from GOP voters?

The Deseret News put a poll out this last weekend. It shows, among other things, that if the election for the 4th Congressional District were held today, Matheson would probably win.

Meh. This same polling company also put Philpot at 26 points behind Matheson back in 2010 right before Philpot lost by only 4%. Not exactly a record of great polling.

But that’s all ancillary to what I find interesting: the contest for the GOP nomination, especially between Carl Wimmer and Stephen Sandstrom. As two of the founding members of the much vaunted Patrick Henry Caucus, friends, and Utah House colleagues, I think it’ll be a tight contest between Carl and Stephen for delegates support, especially if they intend to avoid going negative. Elected to the state legislature in 2006, both have fairly short careers in government, not to mention fairly similar voting records on most hot button issues. Political scientist Adam Brown summed up public impressions of them neatly:

Sandstrom’s candidacy has surprised many observers, mainly because Sandstrom and Wimmer are seen as friends and allies. For example, the Tribune notes that both men supported HB 479 (the enforcement-only immigration law) and both opposed HB 116 (the guest worker law). Both also supported HB 477, the controversial GRAMA revision. It’s also true that both are founding members of the legislature’s Patrick Henry Caucus. They are so similar that the race might hinge more on personality and experience than on ideology, as discussed in the Tribune’s article.

Yes, they did vote differently 257 times, but still, not enough to move either of them much away from the other. Both are right of center, Wimmer slightly more so than Sandstrom.

Which brings me back to the Deseret News poll.

Each is snagging about 15% of registered voters in a hypothetical primary. Check it:

In a hypothetical primary, not only do Wimmer and Sandstrom take 15% of the vote, each, but only 59% of registered voters intend in voting.

That’s 15% of the total vote. However, if we remove the 41% that does not plan on voting in a Republican primary, that means either Wimmer or Sandstrom walks away with just over 25% of the total vote. In contrast, Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love gets about 13% and attorney Jay Cobb get about 5%. Nearly a third are undecided or choosing someone else.

The funny thing about all this is that it’s just academic. Utah has a convention before it has a primary, meaning delegates will have choose who should be in the primary, or if there should even  be a primary for the 4th Congressional District nomination. That means there is a good chance that we could see two completely different  candidates face off the Republican Primary in June (and I would bet dollars to donuts that this race does not get decided at convention. Carl and Stephen are just too similar and the competition with Jay and Mia–don’t count them out–too high to see the delegates settling on one candidate in convention). Once the as yet unselected delegates start meeting candidates, Mia and Jay will have  as much an opportunity to prove their value as Carl and Stephen, and if Utah’s system has shown anything in recent years it is that the convention system is a great equalizer.

Just ask Bob Bennett. Money and name identification cannot win a convention alone, if at all.

In the mean time, it looks like the Patrick Henry Caucus’s founders are headed for some tight competition.

[Utah Data Points][Deseret News]

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