U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch may wait until Oct. 30 to definitively say whether he is running for an 8th term next year or will retire.
If he waits that long, then announces he is leaving office, it will be the shortest U.S. Senate campaign in Utah for an open seat in many years.
And an open seat comes up in Utah once in a generation.
The last time: 1992, when then-Sen. Jake Garn retired.
Bob Bennett won that race. And, yes, Bennett was voted out of office in 2010 by arch-conservative, Tea Party state GOP delegates.
But Mike Lee’s win in 2010 wasn’t an open seat; he had to go through Bennett to win.
Before 1992’s open seat it was 1974, when Bennett’s father, Wallace, retired and Garn won that race.
You see what’s at stake here for any Utah Republican who wants a shot at the U.S. Senate.
I say Republican because there is little chance that a Democrat or independent could win Hatch’s seat next year.
The last Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from this state was the late Frank Moss, who won re-election in 1970, only to lose to a then-upstart Hatch in 1976.
If Hatch had followed a normal course and announced over the spring or summer that he was stepping down next year, you could have seen a dozen or more Republicans jump into the GOP nomination race.
Especially with SB54’s signature-gathering route to the 2018 June primary, all kinds of candidates would jump in.
But Hatch didn’t do that.
He’s waiting.
This past week Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, said if Hatch doesn’t run he will.
Stewart – who it must be said is not the most exciting candidate or officeholder – is clearly a favorite of Hatch’s.
The senior senator has said many times how much he likes and admired Stewart and believes he would make a good senator.
But if Hatch gets out, you will see any number of latecomers going for it, especially on the Republican side.
UtahPolicy has written before that sources close to Hatch say former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney would be interested.
Hatch has also praised Romney, saying he would consider stepping aside if a really good candidate – like Romney – would run in his stead.
But starting a U.S. Senate race in November means getting out of the traditional gate late – and it may well take a wealthy candidate who could spend millions of dollars him-or-herself to make a go of it.
Stewart has not raised significant campaign funds in his U.S. House races – and he’s not personally wealthy.
Others, like local businessman Derek Miller, would be even further behind in the money-raising race.
Romney has the personal wealth to run a well-organized, well-funded campaign late in an election cycle.
And there could be a handful of other well-off Utah Republicans to do likewise.
Certainly a right-winger like Chris Herrod – who lost the recent GOP primary in the special 3rd District election – could take the caucus/delegate/convention route and hope to make it to the party primary.
But Herrod – and other right-wingers like him – just found out what a disadvantage it is to be the delegates’ choice, only to be beaten down by more moderate Republicans in the election where all rank-and-file party voters get a say.
SB54 has only been around for one general election and this year’s 3rd District special election.
But in two high-profile contests – the 2016 GOP governor’s race and the 3rd District – the guy who got the most convention delegate votes lost in the primary.
Hatch’s inside consultant, Dave Hansen, says if the senator ends up running, Hatch will take both the signature-gathering route and the convention route – ensuring that Hatch makes the primary, and delegates can’t vote him out of office like they did Bennett in 2010.
Hatch has got the dough, with around $4 million in his campaign war chest.
Hatch is paying Hansen $10,000 a month now, along with political consultant Ivan DuBois, at $7,500 a month.
[Ed. note: DuBois left the Hatch campaign on Friday to become Rep. Mia Love’s chief of staff].
Those are the only two people working on Hatch’s current-low-budget campaign.
But with plenty of money to pay for a statewide signature-gathering effort – maybe costing $150,000 to get the 28,000 signatures of Republican registered voters – the senator can afford to wait, and wait, and wait (as the introduction narrator of “Casablanca” says).
Will Hatch run or not?
Oh, boy. Some big-time Republicans with a lot of money in their pockets are standing on the sidelines – itching to get in the game.
