Democratic Rep. Bill Orton joked during a radio broadcast that President Clinton might not have been safe if he had traveled to Utah to announce creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Clinton's Sept. 18 news conference was held in Arizona, on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon."There was a practical consideration, too," Orton said during a program aired live on KSL Radio Tuesday. "I don't know that they had enough Secret Service agents to protect him if he came into Utah to make the designation."
Program host Doug Wright and Orton chuckled at the remark.
However, Clinton's Utah campaign spokesman, Nelson Reyneri, said, "I don't appreciate remarks, even if they are in jest, that refer to the security of the president."
He compared the remark to Republican Sen. Jesse Helms' gibe in 1994 that Clinton "better have a bodyguard" to venture into North Carolina. "And (Helms) subsequently apologized," Reyneri said.
Orton, who is running against Republican Chris Cannon, has lost much of his lead in the polls since Clinton created the monument.
He said there was no comparison between his remark and Helms', insisting his carried no implied threat.
"I was making a tongue-in-cheek comment about the way the people in Utah have taken the monument designation," Orton said. "I should have attributed the quote. It actually came from a meeting with county commissioners in Kane and Garfield counties - that was their tongue-in-cheek comment reflecting people there generally did not approve of the designation.
"It's getting pretty sad when every word of every sentence is taken and dissected by someone," Orton said.
Mike Mower, Cannon's campaign manager, said, "It seems a bit of a tasteless joke, but Rep. Orton didn't mean any harm by it."