So when Utah's 2nd District Rep. Jim Matheson is assailed by Republicans for being - gasp! - a Democrat, and by Salt Lake City's left-leaners for not being Democrat enough, it suggests that Matheson is just what he says he is: a Utah Democrat.
Matheson's independent positions have helped get him elected to Congress three times already, and they earn him the fourth term he now seeks.
The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board has been among those unhappy with Matheson's initial vote for President Bush's tax cuts, for the first version of the Patriot Act (though not, thankfully, its renewal), for the Military Commissions Act, for repealing the federal inheritance tax and supporting a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
But all that is more than balanced by Matheson's calls for budget restraint, focusing tax cuts on those that benefit working families and reining in pork-spending projects. He also is a leader in the movement to stop the testing of new generations of nuclear weapons, which would threaten both world stability and Utah's environmental quality. And he sees the need to restore congressional oversight on matters from the war on terror to the silencing of politically inconvenient scientific evidence within the current administration.
The incumbent's independent stands not only reflect his district, they present a more useful view than would this year's Republican challenger, state Rep. LaVar Christensen.
Christensen's simplistic view of the war in Iraq - nothing short of victory - is as troubling as his inability to see that the giant tax cuts he champions are a major cause of the deficits he decries.
And the image Christensen built in the Utah Legislature, that of a radically conservative busybody less concerned with proper government than with needless attempts to punish nontraditional families, does little to recommend him for higher office.
Rep. Jim Matheson deserves re-election.
* UTAH'S 2nd CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT includes eastern Salt Lake County, a sliver of northeastern Utah County, and all of Carbon, Daggett, Duchesne, Emery, Garfield, Grand, Iron, Kane, Piute, San Juan, Uintah, Wasatch, Washington and Wayne counties.
