The quest to work as Utah's top law enforcement official has placed Democratic challenger Greg Skordas in a familiar position.
According to a Deseret Morning News poll conducted by Dan Jones and Associates, Skordas will have to close a 43 percentage-point gap against Republican incumbent Mark Shurtleff, who received 61 percent of the support from those surveyed, in the race for Utah attorney general.
Skordas received only 18 percent of the support while Libertarian Andrew McCullough received 4 percent. The poll surveyed 923 residents May 10-13 and has a margin of error of 3.2 percent.
Despite the numbers, Skordas remained upbeat about the upcoming campaign. To even come close to winning, he will have to turn some of Shurtleff's supporters, since only 17 percent were undecided.
"I'm probably about where we would expect to be, since we haven't done any campaigning or advertising," Skordas said. "I've spent my career representing the underdog, so this isn't a new position."
Once he hits the campaign trail this summer, he expects to sway some voters who assume Shurtleff is the more experienced and qualified candidate. To accomplish that, he will especially focus on his time in Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocom's office between 1988 and 1994, during which time he rose to become the chief deputy.
"I think people assume he's the candidate who's got the experience, but I've actually got the courtroom experience," Skordas said. "People just don't know that yet."
Shurtleff said his strong support validates the job he's done during his term in office. He was especially proud of his efforts to protect children with programs such as the AMBER Alert and his educational efforts about Internet predators and identity theft.
"That 61 percent shows that people are happy with the job we've done," Shurtleff said. "They feel safe, and that's our job."
Regardless, Shurtleff said he would not base his campaign strategy on polls, just as he does not look to polls to determine which issues to tackle as attorney general.
"I'm not going to rest on any kind of poll," he said. "We're going to go out and let people know our message. We've still got a long way to go."
While Shurtleff received the expected strong support from Republicans, he also received support from 37 percent of the respondents who identified themselves as somewhat liberal and 21 percent of the liberal respondents. Skordas, meanwhile, only had 66 percent of Democrats supporting him and 18 percent of those who claimed to be independent voters.
E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com