Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Richard Piatt ReportingUtah Republicans continue to hope they can topple Democrat Jim Matheson in this year's Congressional race, but new fundraising reports show the national Republican party is not forking out the cash to help challenger LaVar Christensen, who is behind in the polls.
LaVar Christensen has had to put just under 600-thousand dollars of his own money into his campaign. Jim Matheson has raised a total of 1.6 million dollars so far. Neither candidate is getting help from their national parties, but for Christensen, that reality could affect his campaign.
Christensen is working hard, campaigning across the district, in Saint George last week. He says he'd rather do this than raise money, which is why he's chipping in his personal cash.
Jim Matheson continues to work the phones for money, not taking anything for granted. Right now, Matheson is way ahead in the polls, which means Christensen is not on the national Republican party radar screen. The result is a Congressional race that is used to be a priority, but that isn't this year.
Kurt Jowers, Hinckley Institute of Politics: "Right now, out of the 30 most vulnerable seats, 28 are republican. That means that unless your race is within the margin of error, you're just not going to get money this year."
In years past, the national Republican party has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the second district race for Congress, but Matheson has beat the partisian political machine twice so far, and this year the money isn't there--yet.
So right now, it looks like Christensen may be the victim of some hard decisions that are being made: Deciding which races are battles worth fighting.
