But maybe not conservative enough. Cannon recently lost the GOP primary in the 3rd District to Jason Chaffetz, who ran as a conservative alternative.

"For some reason his constituents could never focus on how loyal to the party he was, and it created this strange phenomenon with him always having to struggle," said Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics. "Really because of one issue - immigration - people were able to define him as not being as conservative as the overall data would suggest."

Cannon had been dogged for his support of the Bush immigration plan, which would allow some undocumented residents to stay in the country and gain legal status.

Cannon said his conservative vote history comes from his personal philosophy, not politics, but he does believe the CQ study shows some members of Congress are partisans for other reasons.

Many lawmakers are "more focused on themselves and their power than the good of the country."

- Matt Canham

Jim Matheson is something of a rarity in Washington, and not just because he's a Democrat from uber-conservative Utah.

Matheson is one of the few members of Congress who routinely sides with the other party, according to a new Congressional Quarterly study of partisan votes during the years President Bush has been in office.

In fact, CQ's rankings show Matheson is the seventh-most conservative Democrat on Capitol Hill.

The magazine's study gave each member of Congress a score for party unity and presidential support based on thousands of votes stretching from Bush's inauguration in 2001 up until lawmakers recessed this August. What it shows is that Capitol Hill has resembled a junior high dance, with Republicans lining up on one wall, Democrats on the other and few waltzing toward the middle.

The average party unity score for House Democrats was 93 percent during the Bush years and 92 percent for Republicans. The averages in the Senate were only slightly lower than that.

Other members of Utah's delegation, all of whom are Republicans, were even more loyal than the national average. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, backed his party 97 percent of the time. So did Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah.

But Matheson was far less predictable.

He went against Democratic leaders and voted with Republicans a fourth of the time. He sided with President Bush 41 percent of the time.

"I'm not a rubber stamp, and there are too many rubber stamps in Congress these days," Matheson said. "People just want to follow whatever their party leadership tells them."

Matheson, who prefers to be called "independent," has refused to support a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq and has supported new free-trade agreements with countries such as Colombia, two recent examples of his centrist ways. He backed Bush's No Child Left Behind education program, his tax cuts, the war in Iraq and the president's immigration policy.

On energy, the hottest issue in Congress these days, Matheson has been more receptive to new drilling than most Democrats.

Some Utah Democrats are infuriated by these positions, saying they are grateful Utah has a Democrat in Washington, but they wish he would take a step to the left. At the same time, Republicans try to lump Matheson in with the more liberal members in Congress during election years, saying the four-term House member doesn't represent GOP-dominated Utah.

"Both the left and the right like to beat up on me," said Matheson, but he believes his positions mirror the views of his constituents, even if they don't match perfectly with either party's platform.

Matheson soon may have a few more friends in Congress, according to Norman Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

Democrats have recruited moderate if not conservative candidates to challenge vulnerable Republicans in the South and West. And many political handicappers expect a number of them to prevail this fall.

"Matheson is going to have more like-minded people around," Ornstein predicted.

If that's true, the election could be a first step in reducing the partisanship that has enveloped Congress, a move strongly advocated by Kirk Jowers, the director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.

"As long as these [party unity] numbers stay in the 90s, I think Congress will continue to be a bitter and inept place," he said. "Congress' inability to tackle any of the important issues stems from this point: They don't vote independently."

mcanham@sltrib.com