This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Once again, a mysterious higher power has intervened in Rep.LaVar Christensen's legislative race.
Although Christensen, a Republican from Draper, has always denied involvement, last-minute concerns about his opponents have popped up in several of his races, helping the longtime moral crusader surge to victory.
This year, Christensen was challenged in the Republican Party by Austin Linford, whose delegate counting before the Salt Lake County Convention last Saturday made him confident he was going to force the incumbent into a primary.
Then, suddenly on Friday night, Linford began getting calls from delegates who had two questions: Was he in favor of gay marriage and was he being supported by Log Cabin, a Republican gay-rights organization.
Linford answered that he supports the Utah law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and that his campaign manager is a member of Log Cabin, although he received no financial support from the group.
The concern in the voices of the delegates told him he would have a hard time the next day.
And sure enough, delegates he thought were in his camp flipped at the convention and he was eliminated.
Linford now joins Democrat Trisha Beck, whose Mormon credentials were questioned through whispering campaigns near Election Day the two times she was defeated by Christensen in legislative races.
And he joins Art Hadow, a Republican who was defeated in the GOP primary by Christensen several years ago after an 11th-hour flier appeared on doorsteps questioning his commitment to his LDS faith.
And there was Republican Sylvia Andersen, who won Christensen's seat the year he stepped down to challenge Democrat Jim Matheson for Congress. The following election cycle, when Christensen wanted his seat back, Andersen was told that it was the Lord's will that she step aside. She refused, but lost in the GOP primary to Christensen after word spread that a priesthood holder should represent the district.
At least there is consistency here.
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Balancing budgets • Once the political races are over this election year, any personal storage company contracting with Republican gubernatorial candidate Morgan Philpot to store his left-over campaign signs might want to get the cash up front.
Last summer, Fort Knox Storage of Lehi held an auction to sell property in several of its storage units because the owners of those units had fallen behind on the rental payments.
One of those was Philpot, whose campaign signs from his 2010 congressional race against Jim Matheson were advertised as for sale in a legal notice publicizing the auction.
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Warning to grandparents • When Dick Arner of Salt Lake County picked up his phone Wednesday morning, the caller said: "Hi, Grandpa, do you know who this is?"
Arner has two grandsons in their 20s living in Southern California and both are going to college there. He figured it was the grandson in San Diego at a community college.
The caller went on to say he had gone to Peru to attend a friend's wedding, had too much to drink and got into an accident. He was in jail and needed several hundred dollars wired to a certain address, where an acquaintance would pick it up and bail him out of jail. He also needed money to fly home.
When Arner contacted Western Union to make arrangements, he was told by the experts that this is a classic fraud and it has become quite frequent in the Salt Lake area the past few weeks. He called the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office and was told the same thing. Lists of names of people from certain age groups, he was told, can be bought on the Internet.