Utah House Rep. Sylvia Andersen was bounced out of office Saturday by her own GOP delegates and controversial state Sen. Chris Buttars was given his party's nomination in the Salt Lake County Republican Convention.
While Andersen's defeat at the hands of former Rep. LaVar Christensen may have been a shock to her and her supporters, the big news was the victory by Buttars — who was given up for politically dead earlier this year after a horrible gaff on the floor of the Senate.
Buttars, R-West Jordan, didn't mince words Saturday speaking to the 200 or so Senate District 10 GOP delegates. After surviving a first-round balloting, Buttars told the delegates: "I will stand for all the things I stood for" before.
Buttars got 60.2 percent of the second-round of voting, winning the nomination outright by probably just one or two votes. Any candidate who gets 60 percent of the delegate vote wins outright, avoiding a late June primary.
Buttars made news in February when in a floor debate over a school bill he said: "That baby is black. . . it is a dark ugly thing."
Buttars apologized immediately, but the Salt Lake Chapter of the NAACP still asked him to resign. Buttars refused, and said he would run for re-election. Buttars defeated three GOP challengers Saturday.
District 10 delegates were hit with an anonymous mailer Thursday and Friday, criticizing Buttars' actions and saying he couldn't win re-election. Asked by the Deseret News where the mailer could have come from, Buttars said: "This is the same ghost PAC of the national gays — that was an ugly thing to do on Friday when (I) can't reply."
Buttars said the state election office will look into where the mailer came from. The mailer says it was paid for "by Senate District 10 Citizens for Fair Taxation" — but there is no such group registered with the state elections office. The mailer quotes an earlier Deseret News poll of Senate District 10 registered voters that found 67 percent saying Buttars shouldn't be re-elected, and 54 percent of District 10 Republicans said someone new should serve.
But now that only "new" person could be Democrat John Rendell, whom the victorious Buttars will now meet in the general election. Senate District 10 is heavily Republican and Rendell will have an uphill fight.
Andersen, a freshman legislator seeking her first re-election, told the Deseret News last week that she thought she had a fair shot at eliminating Christensen Saturday by getting more than 60 percent of the vote. Instead, Christensen got 70 percent, ending Andersen' legislative career.
Interestingly enough, Andersen had the endorsement of a number of her House and Senate GOP colleagues, including Reps. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George; Becky Lockhart, R-Provo (wife of GOP chairman Stan Lockhart); Lorie Fowlke, R-Orem; Sens. Niederhauser, R-Sandy; and Curt Bramble, R-Provo.
Christensen has a combative personality and bumped heads with some of the legislative insiders in his previous state House service. Christensen gave up his House District 48 seat in 2006 to run against U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, losing that race.
Now Christensen will face former Democratic House member Trish Beck, who held the Sandy seat before Christensen defeated her.
E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com; ldethman@desnews.com