US Sen. Bob Bennett ousted at Utah GOP convention
SALT LAKE CITY — Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah has lost his bid to serve a fourth term after failing to advance past the GOP state convention.
Bennett is the first incumbent to lose his seat in Washington this year, the victim of a conservative movement angered by rising taxes and the growth of government.
Bennett was targeted by tea party activists and other groups for supporting a massive bailout of the financial industry, securing earmarks for his state and for co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill to mandate health insurance coverage.
"Don't take a chance on a newcomer," Bennett said in his brief speech to the delegates before the second round of voting began. "There's too much at stake."
But convention delegate Argie Shumway, like many, dismissed the importance of seniority, which Bennett made the centerpiece of his campaign.
"We want principled senators in there, even if they're freshman senators," said Shumway, 70, a retired flight attendant from Provo, who supported attorney Mike Lee.
Bennett became the first sitting U.S. senator to be voted out office this year amid a growing conservative movement that insists on cutting taxes, federal spending and the reach of government.
It's a position being heard elsewhere in the country as some Republicans shun moderate candidates in favor of those backed by tea party activists, such as with Senate races in Arizona, Kentucky and New Hampshire.
"It's time to get rid of the incumbents," said Kyle Hosman, a 39-year-old North Ogden delegate supporting Lee. "Quite frankly I'm disgusted by what I've seen in Congress the past 10 years."
Bennett is under fire for voting to bail out Wall Street, co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill mandating health insurance coverage and for aggressively pursuing earmarks.
"I'm ashamed of him," said 56-year-old delegate Paul Smith, from Farmington. "He's a career politician who has forgotten his roots."
Bennett tried to reassure delegates he is a fiscal conservative.
Bennett's best hope for survival was to get more than 40 percent of the delegates' votes and force one of his opponents into the June primary. To help accomplish that, he enlisted the help of former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Romney ran the 2002 Winter Olympics here, is a Mormon like Bennett and most of the delegates and is wildly popular in Utah, where he won 90 percent of the presidential primary vote in 2008.
Romney introduced Bennett, 76, on Saturday — to a mix of cheers and boos.
Bennett's elimination from the ballot likely will send shock waves throughout the political community with more incumbents worried they will also become the victims of the anti-Washington, anti-incumbency fervor that is being fueled at least in part by the Tea Party movement.
While Bennett had won the support of several conservative organizations and has received negative ratings from liberal groups, some of Bennett's critics focused on his vote for the 2008 financial bailout, known as TARP.
"I don't think it's a matter of conservative. I think it's a matter of fiscal or financial responsibility, what the Tea Party people are about and the vote for TARP and the vote for the bailout was, in our opinion, pretty fiscally irresponsible and that's what's raised the ire of most people," David Kirkham, a Tea Party activist, told CNN in an interview.
Kirkham, a businessman who builds and restores sports cars, was so upset about the bailout issue that he was motivated to form the Utah Tea Party chapter last year.
"That one vote was pretty toxic," he said. "That one vote affected a lot of things, changed the rules of the game. President Bush said that where we have to abandon free market principles to save the free market and fundamentally, we just don't agree. There's just no way."
"He's had his chance," said Nick Whitehead, 17, a volunteer who greeted delegates at the downtown convention center with a giant placard touting businessman Tim Bridgewater, one of seven Bennett rivals. "It's time for new blood."
Other Republican incumbents are feeling the Tea Party heat. In Idaho, Chick Heileson is gaining momentum in his challenge against the GOP establishment RINO, Shamful Simpson.
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