By KIRK JOHNSON
c.2010 New York Times News Service
SALT LAKE CITY – Sen. Robert F. Bennett, an 18-year veteran Republican who had been seeking a fourth term, was stripped of his party’s nomination on Saturday at the state convention here, becoming one of the first congressional victims of the surging discontent from the Tea Party-infused Republican right.
Bennett, 76, was outmatched in delegate votes by two relative newcomers despite an enthusiastic endorsement from Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and local Utah hero with a political pedigree of deep Mormon roots and public service.
“You know his principles,” Romney said to the roughly 3,500 delegates. “We need Bob Bennett’s skill and loyalty and intellect and power.”
Bennett himself, in his final appeal from the dais, said the stakes in Washington were simply too high to take a chance on the unknown. “Keep the veteran on the floor when you’re playing a championship game,” he urged the delegates.
But the delegates were not in the mood, and the two leading challengers, Tim Bridgewater, 49, a businessman, and Mike Lee, 38, a lawyer, were united in wanting Bennett out.
“Our anything-but-Bennett bond is strong,” said William Lee, the field director for the Lee campaign. William Lee, who is not related to Mike Lee, said some delegates were pledged to switch to Lee or Bridgewater to keep Bennett from qualifying for the primary election on June 22, where Bennett’s advantages in name recognition and fundraising could be decisive.
The senate seat is not expected to change party hands in November, as Utah has not had a senator from the Democratic Party since the 1970s.
The convention functioned rather like the television show “Survivor” – sudden death for the candidate voted off.
All but the top three candidates were eliminated after the first round of voting. Delegates then whittled the field again – that was where Bennett lost, coming in third with about 27 percent delegate support. A final round of voting was inconclusive. Neither candidate captured the 60 percent required to clinch the nomination, so Lee and Bridgewater will face off in the primary next month.
In a brief news conference after the vote, Bennett thanked his staff, but he declined to make an endorsement in the senate race and took no questions.
Questions of risk and reward hung over the convention. Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican regarded by many conservatives as a kind of a savior after years under Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. – a social moderate who resigned last year to become ambassador to China – stayed on the sidelines. Herbert is facing his first run for a full term this fall.
But Romney’s backing of Bennett was not likely to hurt him, delegates said. Romney, who is expected to seek the Republican presidential nomination again in 2012, is hugely popular here, where he led the 2002 Winter Olympics and raised lots of money for his 2008 campaign.
In the nexus of politics and religion that defines Utah races, Bennett’s resume was never in question. His grandfather was a president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his father, Wallace F. Bennett, was a senator from 1951 to 1974.
But some recent votes and positions – including his vote for the Toxic Asset Relief Program and support for a bipartisan health care bill – hurt him with many delegates and speech-makers, for whom a hearty bashing of “Obamacare” and bank bailouts were guaranteed applause lines.
One delegate who supported Bennett, Shem Liechty, an engineer, said the chorus against Bennett was so strong going into the convention that he believed people were not looking closely enough at who, or what, might come next.
“I said, ‘Figure it out,'” he said. “You might not want any of them.”