Free Republic

I'm calling the race right now. With 72% reporting Mike Lee has a 3% lead over Tim Bridgewater. The remaining precincts are in areas where Lee has overall been doing better. Mike Lee will almost surely win the Utah senate race in the November general election as Utah is very Republican.

APNewsAlert (AP) – 6 minutes ago SALT LAKE CITY — Attorney Mike Lee wins Republican nomination for US senator from Utah.

State Returns from SC (polls close at 7pm EST): http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/16213/28352/en/summary.html From NC (polls close at 730 EST) http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NC/17242/28326/en/summary.html For Utah (Polls Close 10pmEST) http://electionresults.utah.gov/xmlData/300010.html If anyone has better links, please share them. GO Haley, Scott, and Lee!

Utah Senate candidate Mike Lee (R) unveils his own big endorsements, Illinois adds a big spender to the Senate race and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) won't be going to Colorado after all. I'll see your senator and raise you a congressman Lee was thought to be losing momentum in his bid for the Utah GOP Senate nomination after his rival, Tim Bridgewater, rolled out endorsements from Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and fourth-place convention finisher Cherilyn Eagar (R). But Lee was able to fire back this week with endorsements from Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and the Tea Party Express, which helped...

Unless Sen. Bob Bennett's political fortunes change dramatically in the next two weeks, he could become Utah's first incumbent U.S. senator to lose his party's nomination in seven decades. A new Salt Lake Tribune poll of Republican delegates shows Bennett running in third, behind GOP challengers Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater. Lee logged 37 percent support in the survey, while Bridgewater came in at 20 percent, and Bennett lagged at 16 percent. The survey of 400 Republican delegates, with a 4.4 percent margin of error, was conducted April 22-25 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C. It comes...

Bob Bennett's defeat in last Saturday's Republican primary might be the beginning of a national trend. In the early 1990s, when incumbent members of Congress long thought to hold safe seats suddenly found themselves in political trouble over tax increases and the House bank, a Washington lobbyist friend lamented to me, "This is a tough year for the overdog." The same can be said, and perhaps with more emphasis, about election year 2010. Case in point: Bob Bennett of Utah. Mr. Bennett, who has served three terms in the Senate, was just denied a place on the primary ballot by...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Heron Lake - and I must admit, I did not know there were lakes in New Mexico, but here's a guy that lives on one, Dave, great to have you on the program. Hi. CALLER: Good day. Yeah, I wanted to bring up the subject of Utah. They threw out Bennett in the primary. RUSH: Yeah. CALLER: Is this an ongoing thing that, say, Schumer, Waxman, or McCain better start thinking about. It's not a Democrat thing or Republican thing, the people are -- pardon the pun -- pissed. They're throwing all of these people that think...

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), who lost his bid for re-nomination on Saturday, has not ruled out running as a write-in candidate for the Senate this fall. "I've made no decisions to make a decision," he said Tuesday when asked about his political future. “I’ve made a firm decision not to make any decisions at the moment.” Bennett would only say he'd make a decision "later." Such a decision would put his colleagues - who personally like Bennett but will only endorse a GOP candidate in the primary - in a tough position. "It's a little like going to your own...

Democrats and assorted commentators are professing to be alarmed about the defeat on the weekend of three-term Utah Republican Senator Bob Bennett at a GOP nominating convention. They say it signals the triumph of the tea party and other allegedly uncouth sorts, which is said to be bad for bipartisanship and other Beltway bromides.

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), who lost his bid for re-nomination on Saturday, has not ruled out running as a write-in candidate for the Senate this fall. "I've made no decisions to make a decision," he said Tuesday when asked about his political future. Bennett would only say he'd make a decision "later." Such a decision would put his colleagues - who personally like Bennett but will only endorse a GOP candidate in the primary - in a tough position. "It's a little like going to your own funeral while you're still alive," the 76-year-old, three term senator said of his...

[This article was written about Bob Bennett loosing his Senate seat in Utah. But it contains, IMHO, the best definition of the Tea Party I've ever read. That is excerpted below.] The Tea Parties represent an asymmetric threat to political organizations optimized for party-line warfare. The threat is no longer across the aisle but outside the building. As such, two possibilities suggest themselves. The first is that the Washington elite will circle the wagons, bury their minor differences and concentrate on keeping the money and power flowing to the capital. A threat from outside the building is after all, a...

Incumbent Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) was ousted Saturday from his state’s Republican primary by caucus voters fed up with big government spending, "stimulus," bailouts and the passage of Obamacare -- for starters. His ouster from the primary is proof GOP voters are not limiting their ire to Democrats. Bennett has been a big spender over his 18 years in the Senate, consistently voting to the left of his constituency. And from the red state of Utah that’s not a plan for lifetime Senate employment. When first elected back in 1992, Bennett pledged he would term-limit himself and serve no more...

Bennett Won't Appear On Senate Ballot May 8, 2010 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Share This By Reid Wilson Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) has lost the battle for a fourth term in office after delegates to the UT GOP convention refused to renominate him on Saturday, a highly-placed source with knowledge of the vote count tells Hotline OnCall. Instead, GOPers will choose between attorney Mike Lee (R) and business consultant Tim Bridgewater (R), who will advance to a third ballot. If neither candidate receives 60% of the vote, they will face off in a June 22 primary....

Republican officials sought to unify the party after Saturday's tea-party driven ouster of three-term Utah Republican Senator Robert Bennett. Mr. Bennett became the year's first victim of the anti-incumbent fervor sweeping through the Republican Party when he lost his bid for his party's nomination at a state GOP convention here. GOP activists blasted him as a Washington insider who had lost touch with Utah's conservative ideals and will instead nominate a tea party-backed populist candidate who promises adherence to conservative principles. The GOP candidate hasn't yet been chosen, but it will be one of Mr. Bennett's two challengers, businessman Tim...

After toppling three-term Republican Sen. Robert F. Bennett in Utah, tea party activists and other conservative critics shifted their sights Sunday to a mid-May primary in Kentucky, their next big challenge to a political establishment they have vowed to upend. Bennett, 76, left the door open to a write-in campaign after losing his bid for renomination, raising the possibility of an unpredictable three-way race that could yet extend his career. But within minutes of Bennett's defeat, the chairman of the Republican senatorial campaign committee, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, announced the organization will support the winner of a June 22...

Senator Robert F. Bennett, an 18-year veteran Republican who had been seeking a fourth term this fall, was stripped of his party’s nomination on Saturday at the state convention, becoming one of the first Congressional victims of the surging ferment of discontent from the Tea Party-infused Republican right. Mr. Bennett, 76, was outmatched in delegate votes by two relative newcomers despite an enthusiastic endorsement and convention speech from Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and local Utah hero, and a political pedigree of deep Mormon roots and public service.

Unless Sen. Bob Bennett's political fortunes change dramatically in the next two weeks, he could become Utah's first incumbent U.S. senator to lose his party's nomination in seven decades. A new Salt Lake Tribune poll of Republican delegates shows Bennett running in third, behind GOP challengers Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater. Lee logged 37 percent support in the survey, while Bridgewater came in at 20 percent, and Bennett lagged at 16 percent. And in a Republican race where only two can survive, that would spell the end for the three-term senator. Bennett's biggest liability, Coker said, is that delegates have...

So, why is Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff so confident that Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) is on track to lose at the state GOP convention on May 8? I got an early look at a survey of state GOP delegates conducted by a Utah firm. It's not pretty. When more than 1,000 delegates were polled on their choices in the Senate race, only 15 percent chose Bennett. When asked for a second choice, only 5 percent picked Bennett. In the first test, he's barely in the top three, which raises the possibility of the three-term senator getting knocked out of...

UT-Sen: Could Robert Bennett Be the First Victim of Anti-Individual Mandate Anger? By: Jon Walker Wednesday March 24, 2010 6:25 pm Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) is in a serious fight for his political survival. His is currently getting challenged from the right by several Republican candidates who think he is too liberal to be the Republican nominee for Senate. The recent enactment of the health insurance reform law and the anti-individual mandate effort it stirred up could turn out to be a real liability for Bennett. Prominent conservatives, like Erick Erickson, have realized that Bennett was for the individual mandate...

Sen. Bob Bennett's re-election bid could be in serious trouble, based on reports of widespread opposition to the incumbent at Tuesday's Republican caucuses. While not definitive, interviews with a dozen caucus-goers around the state reflected a familiar theme: Support was not coalescing behind any Bennett challenger, but there was a strong "anybody-but-Bennett" sentiment. Jim Bennett, the senator's son and campaign spokesman, said the campaign is optimistic and believes that many Bennett supporters got elected as delegates, but may not have made as much noise as the anti-Bennett crowd. "We're waiting for the hard data to come in, but we are...