This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The era of crazy infighting in the Utah Republican Party may be getting even crazier in the coming months as the hard-core party purists push an agenda that could actually help Democrats in the end.

To be sure, Republicans as a dominant force in Utah politics have little to worry about in terms of threats to their power. They will continue to have supermajorities in the Utah House and Senate, will hold every state-wide elected position and control every seat in state's six-member congressional delegation.

But if there ever could be a chink in the GOP armor, the threat of that happening is stronger from those within the party than it is from Democrats.

The anti-SB54 zealots — those who demand a repeal of the law that allows for alternative paths to the primary ballot as a compromise to the Count My Vote movement for a direct primary — could be screwing things up again for the party to which they pledge such religious allegiance.

Those party purists say allowing Republican candidates to qualify for the primary ballot by getting signatures rather than going through the caucus convention system where the real Republicans toil is blasphemy.

They already have caused splits between Republican Party officers who have supported an expensive and unsuccessful lawsuit against SB54 and Republican elected officials who voted for it and consider themselves under siege from their own party.

The result has been a virtual boycott of contributions from those elected officials to the party, which has left the vaunted Utah GOP in perilous debt.

Now those purists, the ones who raise up arms in defense of the party, are arguing for something that could crack open the door to Democrats in future races.

Still harping on SB54, they are complaining that the dual path to the primary — through petitions or through the delegate vote at the convention, could leave so many candidates on the primary ballot that nobody gets a majority and the party nominee would be one with a simple plurality under 50 percent.

Hardly a mandate.

To remedy that, State Republican Chairman James Evans is working with Republican legislators on legislation to tweak SB54 and include a runoff of the top two primary election vote getters if no candidate reaches a certain threshold in the primary.

The threshold is still being determined, but would probably be between 35 percent and 50 percent.

Here's the rub.

Having a runoff between the top two after the primary election would push the date of the party actually having a nominee back several months. The primary election first would have go be certified. The new ballots would need to be printed and mailed out with enough time allowed for registered voters living overseas to receive the ballots and get them returned.

By the time all those requirements are fulfilled, it could be September before the party has a nominee.

That is the exact thing the Republican Party sought to avoid when the Legislature changed the date of the primary election from its previous date of September to June in the 1990s after suffering a stunning defeat in the 3rd Congressional District in 1990.

The September date was in effect that year, allowing the two Republican survivors of the spring GOP convention to beat each other up for several months before the primary, leading to bitter grudges within the party by the time the general election was held less than two months after the primary.

The GOP primary candidates were arch conservative John Harmer and the more moderate and better known Karl Snow, who had been longtime state senator.

Their intra-party fight was a nasty affair that left both sides bruised.

In the general, the Democrat, Bill Orton, who had no primary, defeated Snow in what was considered the most Republican congressional district in the nation and was hailed as the biggest political upset in the country that year.

There were other factors involved, including an unfortunate ad run by the Snow campaign that boomeranged against the Republican, but the divisive primary campaign may have been the primary reason for the Snow loss.

After that, the Republican Legislature moved the primary from September to June so the Republican candidate could be chosen early in the campaign year and spend the ensuing months beating up on the Democratic candidate rather than on a fellow Republican.

Now, thanks to the hard core faction trying to preserve the purity of the Republican Party, that type of albatross on the Republican Party neck could occur once again. —