Orrin Hatch banks on Finance chairmanship ahead of Utah primary

SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. Orrin Hatch began laying the groundwork for the next state Republican convention even before he watched Sen. Bob Bennett go down to defeat two years ago. With a game plan designed to answer his critics’ every claim and with a boost from Mitt Romney, it’s becoming ever more likely that he won’t experience a similar fate.


His top challengers in Saturday’s primary, former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist and state Rep. Chris Herrod, are scrambling to survive against the powerful, well-financed incumbent.


To secure the Republican nomination, a candidate must win at least 60 percent of the vote from the 4,000 delegates chosen by their neighbors last month. By all accounts, Hatch is on the cusp of that threshold while the other candidates are trailing him by significant margins.


But what if Republicans don't win the Senate? One of Hatch's Republican challengers, former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist, is making the case that Republicans probably won't win a majority, making Hatch's main point moot. "Democrats are likely to keep the Senate," Liljenquist said at a town hall Thursday night in Ogden, Utah. And he added that Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo is more likely than Hatch to win the chairmanship.


But Hatch told Yahoo News in an interview prior to his open house Thursday night that he's confident Republicans can win the Senate. "There's no reason why we can't win the Senate and we will," Hatch said, after noting his role as Vice Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which coordinates party involvement in this year's Senate elections. "But even if we didn't, being the Republican leader on the Finance Committee is a very powerful position."


Hatch told the audience here Thursday night that if Democrats do maintain their majority "You'd better have me there, or they're going to walk all over us."


Anecdotally, the message appears to be resonating with delegates, who will choose their Senate nominee this weekend.

"For a little state like Utah, to have somebody chair of that committee would just be a wonderful opportunity to channel that money where we want it to go," Hatch supporter Pat Cory of Salt Lake City told Yahoo News Thursday. She said the potential chairmanship is the major reason why she and her husband-- a delegate-- are supporting the senator.