SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson survived his first ever Democratic primary challenge Tuesday, turning back a bid by a retired school teacher who was recruited on Craisglist by party activists to run against him.

Matheson, 50, had not been challenged since he was first elected in 2000 and he spared no expense to earn a place on the November general election ballot.

Matheson easily defeated Wright. With nearly one-third of precincts reporting, Matheson had more than 67 percent of the vote to Wright's 32 percent.

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The son of a popular former Utah governor raised nearly $1 million and spent about $750,000 on the race, some 37 times more than Wright, according to the latest Federal Election Commission reports. Wright raised less than $20,000 for her campaign.

Matheson lined up nearly all the party establishment and flooded the airwaves to remind voters that, among other things, he opposes importing foreign nuclear waste into the country and that he voted to raise the minimum wage.

Wright, 61, was called the Craigslist candidate by Democratic activists who recruited her online because they said Matheson votes like a Republican too often. She hoped to win over rank-and-file Democrats angry at Matheson's votes against federal health care reform and an energy bill to curb climate change. He also voted for the war in Iraq.

Matheson will face Republican nominee Morgan Philpot, an attorney and former state lawmaker who resigned as vice chairman of the state Republican Party to challenge the Blue Dog Democrat.

Matheson was forced into the Democratic primary by Utah party delegates in May. "I get it: You're angry with some of my votes," he told conventioneers who denied him the outright nomination by giving Wright 45 percent of the vote.

Matheson has had to appeal to a broad section of Utah after the boundaries of his district were redrawn. His 2nd Congressional District runs from Salt Lake valley's liberal east bench into vast conservative terrain of rural eastern and southern Utah.

The lone Democrat among Utah's congressional delegation was more popular in Utah than the state's Republican senators and two GOP congressmen, according to a March poll.

Matheson co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats in the U.S. House.

When Democrats took over Congress in 2007, the former energy consultant who is open to oil shale development was rewarded with a seat on a powerful energy and commerce committee.

Party activists started tracking Matheson's actions on that committee and triggered a telephone tree that flooded Matheson's Washington office with hundreds of calls at a time.

"We were showing him we were paying attention," said Tim DeChristopher, a University of Utah graduate who faces federal charges for disrupting former President George W. Bush's final oil-and-gas lease sale in Utah.

DeChristopher posted the Craigslist ad for a "courageous" Democrat willing to take on Matheson.

Wright answered the call, but a panel of activists first chose a University of Utah professor over the retired school teacher. Soon John H. Weiss dropped out, and Wright stepped in as Matheson's challenger.

"These guys who set this up on Craigslist, they were hard-core Obama fans," said Weiss, a medical professor who decided to step aside for fear of neglecting his research lab.

Republicans watched the race closely, thinking the liberal Wright might be much easier to defeat than Matheson in November. Some advocated voting for Wright in the Democratic primary to boost Philpot's chances of winning. An anonymous group calling itself Conservatives for Claudia Wright bought the domain name jimmatheson.com to promote Wright's candidacy.

Philpot distanced himself from the strategy, and political experts say there was little chance of crossover voting affecting the outcome of the race.

Matheson becomes the favorite to win re-election. He has solidified his support with each re-election campaign. In 2006, Matheson grabbed 59 percent of the district vote. Two years later, in the last general election, he won with 63.4 percent of the vote.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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