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WASHINGTON - If Utah gets a fourth congressional seat, the occupant may be elected statewide after all.
Congressional leaders are looking to tweak a bill now before the House that would grant Utah a fourth seat while giving the District of Columbia its first full-voting member of Congress.
The bill now says Utah's new seat would be elected under a four-district map approved by the Legislature last fall, but the federal legislation will be amended to make the seat at-large until after the 2010 census, according to a senior Hill staffer.
Such a move relieves Utah's incumbent members who - if the current bill passes and is signed by President Bush - would have been shoved into a different district and forced to run for re-election again this year. Such an election could have cost the state up to $6 million.
The at-large seat provision would mean Utah's House districts remain the same until redistricting around 2012.
"If the desire is to move something, you look for the path with the most bipartisan support and the least controversy," says Rep. Jim Matheson's spokeswoman Alyson Heyrend. "That's the path of least resistance."
A version of the legislation that included an at-large seat passed the House Government Reform Committee by a bipartisan 29-4 vote last year but failed to get a needed vote in the Judiciary Committee.
Then-Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner opposed an at-large seat, but now that Democrats control Congress and Michigan Rep. John Conyers is chairman, the at-large seat provision will be returned to the bill.
The legislation's primary focus is to give the District of Columbia a vote in Congress; the heavily Democratic district would be balanced with a seat in Republican Utah, the state in line to get the next congressional seat, according to the last census.
Leaders at the Utah Legislature weren't pleased to hear that Congress was again tinkering with the bill but hoped the legislation would make it to a vote and the state would get a fourth seat it lost out on after the 2000 Census.
"It is very disturbing that Washington feels like it should dictate how a state elects its congressmen," said Utah Senate President John Valentine. "Even with that, I'm anxious to have representation in Washington in the amount that is fair for Utah. If, in fact, it comes out as a statute requiring the seat to be at-large, I would support that fourth seat for Utah so we would have that representation. For me, that is the primary issue."
House Majority Leader Dave Clark was more blunt.
"It's a little disturbing that Washington, D.C., would take something like the local elections in the state of Utah and try to usurp state rights," he said.
Some U.S. House Democrats had feared that Matheson, the state's only Democrat in Congress, might be drawn into an unfavorable district if the state gets a fourth seat and the Legislature carves up the districts again. To allay that concern, the Legislature passed a four-seat map in November that created a Democratic-leaning district for Matheson.
Rep. Chris Cannon's chief of staff, Joe Hunter, said an at-large seat is a "reasonable option," and that Cannon - along with the rest of Utah's House delegation - co-sponsored legislation with that at-large seat provision last session.
"Our position remains that Utah absolutely deserves a fourth seat," Hunter said. An at-large seat also allows a cadre of Utahns to seek the seat, which, since it's elected statewide, could be a stepping stone for higher office.
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* Tribune reporter GLEN WARCHOL contributed to this story.