Tomorrow Utah holds primary elections. Among the positions at issue is replacement of Jason Chaffetz.As it is Utah, the Republican primary is often the only election. The Republicans have been upset for some time about a change in election law that permits people to collect signatures to get on the primary ballot. The prior method was exclusively though the party convention -- if no one obtained 60% of delegate votes, the top two went to primary. Now, that route is still open, but one can also collect signatures and go directly to the primary ballot. The party has not come to peace with this. They wasted a lot of money on a couple of lawsuits trying to nullify the law, talked for awhile of making signature collection a basis for expulsion from the party (and so from the primary ballot). I do not think the party has yet accepted the statute. That is a bit of background. There are three Republicans in the primary. The Demoncrats are settled on their candidate, who has reasonably good funding and is running newspaper ads. One place one of the Republicans is running TV ads is the Late Show With Stephen Colbert. The most conservative and pro-Trump of the three -- Herrod -- is running the ads. (I believe he has been endorsed by Ted Cruz as well.) Running ads for any conservative Republican on the Late Show is odd. Colbert has been one of the most aggressive critics of Trump. The opening monologues are normally all mockery of Trump. It has more or less made the show. So, Colbert finishes making fun of Trump and all things Trump-like. Then runs an ad from Herrod accusing the other Republicans of being closet liberals and not supportive of Trump. Why would anyone open to the ad be watching Colbert? Targeting ads a little bit can't be that hard. Do they just buy TV time and leave it to the station?
There are no useful polls (publicly available) so it is hard to tell who will come out as the Republican candidate. Despite the ads and money, Herrod looks like he may not be the guy (they are all men) even though he was the convention choice. The convention is stocked with the very most radical party members, so there is a chance that a slightly more moderate candidate may win. But these are shades of deep red.
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