Back in February, Claudia Wright came in a close second in the Utah Citizens Initiative's "primary" for a candidate to run against 2nd District Rep. Jim Matheson.

A week later, the winner bowed out, Wright bowed in, and she's been hitting it hard ever since. And as far as she and her volunteers are concerned, she'll be the real Democrat in the November election.

All this started when Tim DeChristopher, the guy who made those bogus oil-and-gas lease bids last year, put an ad on Craigslist seeking a "courageous person" not only to run, but to endorse the national Democratic Party's platform and progressive politics.

It's a grassroots, door-to-door, county-by-county campaign. None of her staff are paid. Those I spoke to describe her as tough, smart and honest.

"She keeps it real," says volunteer Ashley Anderson. "When we get worried about strategy, she says, 'being honest is what's important.' When we get all up in our heads about it, she asks, 'what's honest?' "

When I talked to Wright on Monday, I got the same sense, recalling that when we had lunch in March, she introduced herself as a progressive Democrat, a lesbian and a teacher.

Wright retired in 2003 from Cottonwood High School, where she taught AP American history and AP European history. And, she adds, the first women's studies class in a Utah high school. She's an adjunct professor of gender studies at the University of Utah, and teaches humanities and oversees student teachers at the University of Phoenix.

All that informs her political thinking, which she readily ticks off:

She would have voted for health care reform and against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She's pro-education and against the military's "don't-ask-don't-tell policy." She agrees with Matheson that Utah shouldn't accept radioactive waste from North Carolina or Italy.

She wants to protect the environment, but understands that, as a multiple-use state, we can't lock up everything as wilderness.

And she won't accept campaign funds from EnergySolutions, private health insurance and pharmaceutical companies and banks.

"In other words," she says, "those who are not serving the public good."

Now, the Utah Democratic Party is backing Matheson, which poses some financial and political obstacles for Wright. Salt Lake County Commissioner Randy Horiuchi, a former party chairman and student of Wright's, says Matheson gets things done in Washington that matter in Utah.

"The ability to win and have Democrats in office is of supreme importance," he said. "I'm supporting Matheson."

Still, Wright and her supporters think she has a good chance of forcing Matheson into a primary at Saturday's state Democratic convention.

Of course, Wright and the others would prefer to win the 60 percent of the votes that would knock out Matheson altogether. We'll have to see about that.

Still, she says, her campaign has done what the state party didn't think she could do: raise enough to pay the filing fee, round up plenty of Democrats, make it to the convention.

"Everything they tell us we can't do, we keep doing," she says.

That's what strong, smart women do. I think back to state Sen. Frances Farley, 2nd District Congresswoman Karen Shepherd, even Reva Beck Bosone, a jurist who went to Congress in 1948 and is, I'm proud to note, a distant kinswoman.

I'll echo what Bosone always said to women who sought her advice: "Raise more hell."