Utah Attorney General Paul Van Dam, who earned a 50 percent approval rating in a recent Deseret News/KSL-TV poll, was expected to announce Friday afternoon that he will not seek a second term.
Van Dam spent most of the morning with his top aides, polishing a speech he was scheduled to give at 1:30 p.m. to his staff, to let them know his political intentions."I've been told he won't run," one staff member said, repeating many of the same reasons others in the office have been given for their boss stepping down.
Among those reasons is Van Dam's frustration at the bad press he's gotten during the past year, much of it from his choosing a law firm later found to have a conflict of interest to defend the state's controversial abortion law.