Brian’s Utah Weblog

For years, Democrats and Republicans in statehouses and Congress and even a vocal passel of retired Generals from our armed services have been demanding the resignation of Secretary Of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. And the disastrously bad handling of the Iraq war should have led any president who was doing his job to conclude that Rumsfeld must be replaced.

But it wasn’t until Monday the Congressman Jim Matheson (D-UT2) joined the chorus of voices calling for Rummy’s head. Two days later Rumsfeld was gone. Coincidence? I think not.

With the election of a Democratic United Stated House, The Honorable Representative Jim Matheson (D-UT2) becomes even more powerful. As co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition in the incoming House Matheson will head the conservative Democrats holding the swing votes on most every issue facing the United States in the next two years.

Yes, the Secretary Of Defense is a big scalp, but save space on Matheson’s wall for some even bigger trophies.

I received an invitation yesterday from a candidate for mayor of Salt Lake City to a fundraising breakfast.  It was perfect timing to kick-off election 2007.

Today I saw Greg Schulz planning his run for Utah House 22 in 2008 with Utah Democratic Party leaders.  Of course, we’re all still hoping that Rep. Carl Duckworth (D-Magna) will pull out a victory in this close race on the provisional ballots.  But I like to see a candidate with the energy to work right from the first day.  Good for you, Greg.

Welcome to election season for 2007 and 2008.

While the national results show the Democratic candidates ahead by about 5% to 10%, in Utah we didn’t see any change in partisan results.

State Democratic Party officials say that Utah results improved just over 4% statewide over the historic average trend. But we didn’t win any elections on that rise, so I think it’s nothing but systematic bias based on changes in which races Democrats and Republicans targeted in this cycle.

For example, Democrats challenged Republicans in Iron and Washington county for the first time in years and Republicans challenged Democrats in districts like Sentate District 2 where former senator Paula Julander was unchallenged in 2002. None of those candidates won, but our long shots did better than their long shots.

Lucky for America, it looks like the trend did hit in our neighboring western states. Colorado and Arizona are sending more Democrats to Congress and Colorado has a new Dem governor. Wyoming and New Mexico may yet elect more Democratic congressmen.