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SALT LAKE CITY — Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, handily defeated challenger Chia-Chi Teng in Utah's primary election Tuesday night.
Chaffetz held 78 percent of the vote when The Associated Press called the race in his favor about 9 p.m., and he maintained that lead throughout the night.
Chaffetz, 49, a four term-congressman and chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, raised more than $1 million over the two-year election cycle, much of it from out of state.
"It's a very humbling experience whenever you have people cast a ballot in your name," Chaffetz said Tuesday night, expressing his appreciation for voters in Utah's 3rd District.
Moving forward, Chaffetz said he will continue the record he is proud of, standing up to the "monster" that is Washington, D.C., politics and fighting against a possible Hillary Clinton presidency.
Chaffetz now moves on to face Democrat Stephen P. Tryon in the November general election. The 3rd District extends from Salt Lake and Utah counties through to the southeastern corner of the state.
Teng, 53, an information technology professor at BYU and a former Microsoft software engineer, spent more than $500,000 of his own money in his first bid for elected office.
"I knew it was a long shot, but I wanted to fix the way Utah’s 3rd District is being represented," Teng said in a statement Tuesday night. "I knew that even if I didn’t win, I could achieve some degree of change just by bringing certain things to light. I feel that my campaign did just that, and already we have seen some resulting changes in behavior."
Had Teng not gathered voter signatures to qualify for the primary election ballot, he would have been eliminated by delegates at the state GOP convention in April because he fell under the 40 percent threshold to advance.
But Teng, a native of Taiwan who became a U.S. citizen in 1998, continued to press Chaffetz on a number of issues, filing a request with the Federal Elections Commission to investigate Chaffetz's use of campaign funds.
Chaffetz dismissed all of the allegations and campaigned on his record, highlighting the pressure his committee has put on members of President Barack Obama's administration, including the head of the Internal Revenue Service. Email: lroche@ksl.com Twitter: DNewsPolitics
