Leaders of the Utah Legislature have publicly said the voucher fight is over because voters made it indelibly clear they are opposed to taxpayer money funding tuition for private schools, and the lawmakers have accepted that.

I take them at their word and concur that there is virtually no chance a bill similar to the one that passed the 2007 Legislature and ultimately repealed by public referendum will re-emerge anytime soon. But the pro-voucher forces and the anti-voucher forces are still at it. The war has not subsided. It's just being fought on different terrain.

There will be no tuition tax credit bill. But there are proposals on the horizon to give the Legislature more say over curriculum in the schools, to relax regulations of charter schools that could give them more of an appearance of publicly funded private schools and to change the ways teachers are certified in the state.

The classic philosophical fight is still being waged: Who will guide the future of Utah's educational system -- school boards and teacher organizations or the Legislature? To that end, the skirmishes in this last election cycle were fierce, with mixed results.

Utahns for Public Schools, the group that successfully organized to defeat vouchers at the ballot box last year, were aggressively involved in several legislative races this year with the express purpose of defeating pro-voucher lawmakers.

Those anti-voucher warriors in the north developed a strategy to take out pro-voucher Republicans with other Republicans. The premise was that no matter how disappointed the voters are with their

incumbent -- and voters displayed a good deal of disappointment in the voucher referendum -- they will still vote Republican.

Voucher opponents in Utah County, where much of the strength of the pro-voucher movement is centered, decided on a different path. They would find some of the most respected leaders in the community, people with basic conservative leanings, and run them as Democrats, hoping the voucher debacle would form a crack in the Republican stronghold.

The northern strategy was largely successful. The Utah County strategy was not.

The Utah County legislators did have strong opposition within their own party. And if those challengers somehow could have gotten out of the party-controlled county conventions they might have gained traction in the Republican primary. But challengers to pro-voucher Republican Reps. Brad Dee and Keith Grover fell just short in the conventions.

Meanwhile, strong Democrats like former Weber State University President Paul Thompson, former Alpine School District Superintendent Steve Baugh and former Highland City Councilwoman Gwyn Franson lost their races by landslides.

Had more resources been put into Republican convention fights, perhaps the outcome would have been as satisfactory to the anti-voucher group as it was in Davis and Weber counties. There, the anti-incumbent forces didn't bother with the Democratic model. They poured their support into the races of Becky Edwards, who defeated voucher supporter Paul Neuenschwander in Bountiful, and Ryan Wilcox, who defeated Conservative Caucus darling Glenn Donnelson of North Ogden, in the Republican primaries.

With the loss of House Speaker Greg Curtis in Sandy, of Rep. Aaron Tilton in the Utah County Republican Convention (over issues other than vouchers), and the seat held by former Rep. Mark Walker in Sandy, the voucher side lost at least five members of the House. And they were replaced by three Republicans and two Democrats who appear to be more sympathetic to the Utahns for Public Schools argument.