You can usually count on Utah Republicans, when they get together as a party, to have a lively time.

Take this Saturday's state GOP convention in Sandy's South Towne Center.

There will be two attempts by Utah Eagle Forum president Gayle Ruzicka — both in the party platform and a convention resolution — to have Republicans condemn human cloning. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has actually come out in favor of a modified human cloning bill in the Senate, and the party's right wing is clearly taking aim at Hatch's stand. They did the same thing on Hatch's CHIP bill several conventions ago.

Then there's a resolution Saturday asking the Utah Legislature not to approve a $10 million loan guarantee for Geneva Steel.

Point is, Joe Cannon, Geneva's chairman, is also chairman of the Utah Republican Party and will be overseeing Saturday's convention.

So GOP delegates could adopt a resolution that goes directly against Cannon's request of state officials.

Cannon says Geneva needs the loan guarantee to ensure that Utah Power will move up the scheduled construction of a new substation in northern Utah County. Without that substation, Geneva can't get enough power for a new electric arch furnace it wants to install to let the mill switch to recycling scrap iron into steel. Going into the mini-mill, steel recycling business is the only way for Geneva to reopen, avoid bankruptcy and re-employee 1,600 workers, Cannon says.

But delegate Brent Odenwalder of Weber County says Cannon's legislative request is ill-advised, government has no place helping out big business, and GOP lawmakers should resist the clear conflict of interest of Cannon's request.

Then there are the resolutions to get the United States out of the United Nations and scrap a 1913 law that took U.S. currency off of the gold standard. "Those are some interesting ideas," says Scott Simpson, state GOP executive director.

Another resolution calls for Republicans to oppose the "failed" experiment of light rail in Utah.

Finally, there will be, again, a battle over delegates.

Longtime GOP dissident Mike Ridgway and his supporters want a state party constitutional amendment that ensures all state delegates are elected in their precincts. For years, most county parties and the state party have allowed GOP officeholders and party leaders to become automatic delegates to the state convention. Ridgway says this is illegal under current constitutional rules, but county and state party leaders say Ridgway is a pest who won't accept various rulings by party attorneys and committees that say the practice is allowed under current language.

Meanwhile, in the state Democratic Party Convention in Roy High School on Saturday, Democrats will likely be more mild-mannered. Well, perhaps.

This past week saw a very odd happening in the minority party's hierarchy.

It seems the Tooele County Democratic Party, in its convention several weeks ago, packed all of its 42 state delegates into three voting precincts in Stansbury Park. Tooele Democrats make no bones about what they were trying to do — get state Sen. Ron Allen, D-Stansbury Park, nominated instead of Sen. Millie Peterson, D-West Valley City, in the state convention.

You see, when GOP lawmakers redrew the 29 state Senate districts last fall following the 2000 Census, they believed two Salt Lake County senators had to be lumped into the same district. Of course they didn't pick any of their own senators for that fate, so they carved out Allen's home neighborhood and pushed it into Salt Lake County and Peterson's district. Now, Tooele County has had a Democratic state senator since Brigham Young was around, local Democrats say, and they didn't like the idea of the West Valley district having 90 percent of the district's population. That would mean "their" senator would be from Salt Lake County.

According to Peterson, if Tooele County Democrats were allowed to get away with the stunt, 40 percent of Senate District 12's state delegates would be from Tooele County, which has only 4 percent of District 12's population. Not exactly one-man, one-vote going on here.

Peterson appealed the Tooele convention's actions and in the end a state party committee decided, on a rule technicality, that Tooele Democrats acted wrongly in their county convention. Only 30 Tooele County state delegates could vote in the District 12 race Saturday, the leaders decided.

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The great irony here, of course, is that Democrats screamed long and loud over the unfairness of the Republican lawmakers' redistricting of legislative seats last fall. By far, Democrats were harmed much more than were Republicans in that endeavor.

Yet here is a case where a county party tried to pack a vote in the state convention and — following long-held state delegate selections — was basically allowed to do it.

Who knows how Saturday's vote in District 12 will go? If Allen and Peterson go to a primary, all the delegate arguments are moot — primary voters will decide. But if Allen 60-percents Peterson after Tooele County packed some of their state delegates into three Stansbury Park precincts, Democrats will be hard pressed to point at Republicans again and complain about unfair political treatment.


Deseret News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com

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