Hatch plays safe in Utah seat challenge

SALT LAKE CITY -- It was an entertaining exchange, as one-man debates go.

Dan Liljenquist, hoping to shock the political world Tuesday, didn't let Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch's absence this month stop him. The GOP challenger opened his show with the usual call for new leadership in Washington, took questions from a pretend moderator and used a video recording of old Hatch interviews and speeches to provide the incumbent's response.

Hatch had his own play for the cameras the next afternoon. He met Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the Salt Lake City airport and walked with him to a waiting car as TV stations got the shot.

If there's one endorsement that matters in Utah, it's Romney's. He graduated from Brigham Young University, oversaw the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and carried more than 90 percent of the vote in the state's GOP presidential primary in 2008.

The two scenes captured the political dynamics at work leading up to Tuesday's Senate primary.

Liljenquist, 37, had no alternative but to undertake some unorthodox moves to get voters' attention. Hatch, 78, let his campaign treasury of nearly $10 million and other GOP leaders make his case for a seventh and final term. Sensing he's far ahead in a state where the Republican primary winner is the heavy favorite in November, Hatch has bobbed, wove and carefully avoided any mistakes that could lead to a surprise loss.

Hatch has spent the past two years reaching out to his critics while shifting his votes and commentary to the right. The American Conservative Union gives him a lifetime score of voting right on nearly 90 percent of its issues; the past two years it was 100 percent.

" . . . they were discouraged by some of his votes," said Joni Crane, GOP chairwoman for Uintah County in eastern Utah. "They always intended on voting for him, but they wanted to get their pound of flesh.