They lost the 1st District by 47 points, the 2nd District by 29 points and the 3rd District by 53 points. I'm not really sure just how much worse they could have done.
Fact is, Mia Love was THE best performing candidate against Matheson in his Congressional career.
She lost. She lost in a state where Romney beat Obama by almost 50 percentage points. How any Republican could lose in Utah in a presidential election year where the GOP candidate trounced his opponent so overwhelmingly and where every other Republican candidate racked up huge margins is beyond me. The only explanation is she's not the candidate for the job. So find one who is.
I should’ve said that Democrats have won Republican CDs in Utah with some frequency in the past 50 years. However, none have recently been serious candidates with UT Dems focusing their energies to retaining Matheson.
To wit: Democrat Bill Orton won in a landslide in UT-3 in 1990 in what was ostensibly considered THE most Republican-leaning district in the nation. He held it even in 1994. He lost it in 1996 not due to his own actions, but due to the massive unpopularity of Clinton’s deciding to lock up the coal-mining region and make it a national monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante. Even at that, he still barely lost.
Matheson lucked out by taking advantage of a GOP split when the flaky and damaged Republican incumbent lost in the primary. He has managed to do remarkably well being a Democrat, as I cited. Most of the time, he has been seriously targeted. 2012 was his most serious challenge to date, and I already outlined the dynamics of the race.
“How any Republican could lose” demonstrates that Matheson has had personal popularity over the past dozen years. It was the same with Bill Orton. I guarantee if the White Republican that lost to Mayor Love in the primary had won, the outcome would’ve been no different (and probably would’ve lost by a wider margin). Mayor Love is a popular figure, especially at the grassroots. To casually dismiss her as you have is unwarranted, unfair, naive and highly shortsighted.