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National tea party leaders, still stunned by Rep. Jason Chaffetz's abrupt decision not to run against Sen. Orrin Hatch, are in Utah this week conducting informal meetings in hopes of finding a candidate to enter the race.
Matt Kibbe, president and chief executive officer of FreedomWorks, said the executive director of the organization's PAC already met with state Sen. Dan Liljenquist, R-Bountiful, and said he would be talking Friday with Utah tea party leader David Kirkham about possibly mounting a challenge.
"I think Chaffetz, well, everybody sort of viewed him as the clear leader of the pack," Kibbe said. "But now that he's out of it, I think it changes the whole calculus and we have to essentially start over and look at all the people who are interested."
Kibbe was also in town to gather ideas and discuss strategy regarding the formation of the national Tea Party Debt Commission.
"Guess what?" he said at the beginning of the meeting. "We're not a protest movement anymore."
That meeting, dubbed Tea Party 3.0, drew about 250 at Noah's in South Jordan and included Kirkham and Liljenquist — the latter arrived late due to a scheduling conflict. He did, however, draw loud cheers when he ripped the federal government and compared Washington D.C. lawmakers to �"a high stakes game of Hungry, Hungry Hippos."
"The time has come for this country to rebalance spending and rebalance the shift and concentration of power in Washington back to the states," he said. "We have become unbalanced."
Hatch has been a top target of the tea party and FreedomWorks for almost two years, Kibbe said. Hatch has been seen as vulnerable ever since Sen. Bob Bennett was ousted in 2010 by Sen. Mike Lee.
A campaign spokeswoman for the six-term senator, Evelyn Call, said the campaign doesn't believe voters would be influenced by "out of state groups" seeking to unseat the incumbent.
"The Hatch campaign will continue to work hard in the state, regardless of who gets into the Senate race," Call said.
Liljenquist said he won't make a decision until later in the fall.
"I have a young family," he said. "I have six kids. My oldest is 11 and my youngest is one, so that is the primary consideration for us. So we want to make sure if we do it, we're going in eyes wide open as to what it means."
And Kirkham said he couldn't make any decisions until after Sept. 10 due to commitment with his motor-sports company. However, he said he has thought about a run and said he was meeting informally with Kibbe on Friday.
"Yeah, I'm thinking and I'm seriously considering it, but I can't seriously, seriously consider it until I get some things handled with my company," Kirkham said.
Kirkham also said there "are plenty of good candidates" out there to challenge Hatch. At the meeting, he urged people to get involved at the neighborhood caucus meetings.
The decision by Chaffetz caught Kibbe off-guard and said there was no advance notice of his choice to not run against Hatch.
"We were surprised by it," Kibbe said.
FreedomWorks, which is chaired by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, was founded in 1984 but has been active in the tea party movement since it exploded on the scene in 2009. In Utah, FreedomWorks endorsed Morgan Philpot in his bid last year to replace U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Kibbe said the group would likely support him again if he chose to run in the 2nd Congressional District.
Philpot, who led the prayer at the tea party meeting, has not formally announced a decision to run.
The meeting, which lasted for about three hours, sought ideas from the crowd on ways to cut spending. There were repeated calls to eliminate the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Dept. of Education and the privatization of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Twitter: @davemontero