“Bush is very good for Utah,” said Rep. Chris Cannon. “Utah gave him a very good margin. Now we can make our demands.”

Utah's wish list includes reforming public land policy, preserving Hill Air Force Base and stopping a proposed nuclear waste dump on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation.

Bush's 44-point margin of victory in Utah was the largest in the nation, the eighth straight election in which Utah has given the Republican his widest margin.

“I think President Bush will be better for Utah, no question about it,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch. “We could have been totally ignored by a Kerry administration."

Cannon said the delegation will be looking for backing from the White House to get the federal government to compensate the state for revenue lost because of restrictions on public lands. The federal government controls about 70 percent of Utah's land, but the state only receives a small portion of the lost revenues. Utah legislators have proposed pumping additional money into Utah schools.

It is widely believed that there will be major changes in leadership at the Interior Department, which manages federal lands. Interior Secretary Gale Norton may pursue a judgeship and others may return to the private sector. Some speculate that former Gov. Mike Leavitt, now head of the Environmental Protection Agency, may take over at Interior, but some close to Leavitt say he has not had much interest in the post.

Scott Groene, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said he expects an accelerated attack on environmental protection as the administration “repays their industry backers.” If Bush does pursue an anti-wilderness perspective, it could force groups like SUWA into more lawsuits, Groene said.

Former Rep. James Hansen, who clashed with Kerry during his tenure in Congress, said Utah could have suffered if the senator had been elected.

“Every dumb idea - close all the forest service roads and BLM roads like Clinton tried to do, let the forests burn, drain Lake Powell - every one of those ideas Kerry was in on and I thought, 'Oh my, if he gets in we're in for a wild ride,' because those aren't moderate ideas,” said Hansen.

Hansen has been mentioned as a commissioner on the Base Realignment and Closure Commission that will recommend which military bases to close, which would have been out of the question under Kerry, Hansen said.

Kerry, however, had said if he were elected he would postpone the closures for two years.

Despite broad support for the president, Utah officials have not always seen eye-to-eye with Bush. Utah's Legislature voted to opt out of some of the unfunded mandates in the No Child Left Behind Act, and there have been calls to fix the education program. And Congress will debate renewal of the Patriot Act, which granted new powers to federal investigators, upsetting Utah conservatives.

Hatch, a leading backer of the Patriot Act, will turn over the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee when the new Congress convenes in January, but he expects that Bush will get to nominate between two and four Supreme Court justices - with Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who has been undergoing treatment for cancer, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor the most likely departures.

Once rumored as a potential nominee himself, Hatch now downplays that possibility.