Democratic delegates chose RaDene Hatfield as the party's nominee, soundly rejecting Fred Desposorio's bid to be the party's standard bearer in the Senate District 16 race. But Desposorio is staying in the race, running as an independent instead.

"I don't give up," Desposorio said after the convention.

Hatfield received 36 of the 45 delegate votes, giving her 80 percent, a third more than the 60 percent required to be declared the party's nominee at the convention.

In another contested race, delegates chose Mary Lou Huffmon over Terry L. Jensen to challenge incumbent Rep. Craig Frank, R-Pleasant Grove. Huffmon received 15 votes to Jensen's five. Jensen did not attend the convention, party Chairman Richard Davis said.

Hatfield, Provo PTA president, said voters need a change from Bramble's support for school vouchers and what she described as his questionable ethics, including accepting a trip to Italy from a lobbyist.

"Is he the kind of senator our founding fathers envisioned when they spoke of government of the people, by the people and for the people?" Hatfield said. As a social conservative, Hatfield said she can win support from Republicans as well as Democrats.

Desposorio, a business and immigration consultant who once ran for president of Peru in 1994, pledged to stand up for morality and immigrants' rights.

Davis and state Democratic leaders said the convention, with 250 delegates attending, was a hopeful sign that the Republican Party's 12-year monopoly in the county was coming to an end.

"Things are not the way they were," Davis said. He said the party has actively sought candidates that resonated with Utah County values. He said the school voucher issue also has motivated some people to come out and support the party, and file for office, such as Hatfield and Steven Baugh, former Alpine School District superintendent.

Former U.S. Rep. Bill Orton, who recalled attending a 1990 county Democratic convention where visiting state officials outnumbered the local delegates, said the convention attendees represented the tip of an iceberg of discontent with radical Republican politics. The voucher issue, Orton said, was a symptom of how far the Republicans have gone astray without anyone holding them to account.

"[Republicans] going so far a field they've left the people behind," Orton said.

U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, said the voucher referendum was a sign of frustration with the Republican status quo, in that the people went to the ballot box to repeal a law the Republican-dominated Legislature had passed.

dmeyers@sltrib.com