He still doesn't want to pick between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
When Utah Democrats cast their ballots for Obama on Super Tuesday, he was mum. After Texas and Ohio, he said he was "willing to see how this plays out." Then, when Clinton and Obama split Indiana and North Carolina, he said he would wait "until all 50 states are done."
Well, they are. And Matheson hasn't made up his mind.
Now, he hopes the candidates will make his choice moot. "Superdelegates, in my view, should not rush this," he said in a statement this week, after Obama clinched the nomination and Clinton refused to concede.
Utah's lone elected Democratic superdelegate is starting to look like the least decisive.
Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Holland has pledged his support to Obama, all the while noting it may conflict with his personal preferences. Karen Hale, Salt Lake City communications director and a former state legislator, has switched her allegiance to the Illinois senator in deference to Utah voters. Mayor Ralph Becker's spokeswoman, Helen Langan, is thinking about doing the same.
Matheson is the last holdout.
"His superdelegate vote has become almost irrelevant at this point," says Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics and a supporter of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. "He either throws it to a losing candidate or adds yet another pebble onto the Obama mountain. It honestly doesn't matter."
Whether, like a certain candidate, Matheson keeps moving his mark, or he is sincerely uncomfortable with his role as a superdelegate, the congressman should stop playing coy and choose. It's his job as a Democratic Party leader. But then, that's a spot Matheson's never been comfortable in.
From his first election in 2000 - when his challenger tried to paint him as a liberal - Matheson has shied away from the Democratic Party. He skipped the 2004 national convention. He said he wanted to focus on his campaign - "Those are five days I don't want to lose." Two years ago, after he trounced former state legislator LaVar Christensen by 20 points, he still boasted his independence, his membership in the conservative Blue Dog Democrats. Much like McCain, he paints himself as a maverick, an apolitical politician who bucks party labels.
It's a brilliant campaign strategy that has worked for the congressman for 8 years, helping him keep a seat that by all the laws of physics - and legislative redistricting - should go to a moderate Republican.
But it's unnecessary now. Matheson faces a slate of unknowns and also-rans this year. Even if his GOP opponent, homebuilder Bill Dew, tries to parrot McCain's talking points and paint him as an "Obama Democrat," it won't work. Matheson's record of voting like a conservative more often than not speaks for itself.
"His seat's always going to be contested. But he's shown he can run well there and defend it," says Matthew Burbank, a University of Utah political scientist. "I don't know if there's a big risk of what happens at the top of the ticket affecting him."
Burbank figures Matheson is looking down the road - to two or four years from now, when he may face a stronger opponent or an Obama presidency could have collapsed.
It's pragmatic. But it's not leadership.
