"Spencer did a great job," said GOP Chairman Joe Cannon. "This is utterly voluntary on his part."

The party has been interviewing candidates for the position and expects to have a new director shortly, he said. Jenkins was the fourth party director in five years.

"There is high turnover in that job," Cannon said. "It's a great stepping-stone position."

Jenkins' tenure may have been brief, but it included the implosion of Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman's political career over criminal allegations of questionable hiring. She was later found innocent.

Many observers also considered the 2004 legislative races among Utah's dirtiest.

The state Republican Party paid $110,000 to produce a negative direct mail campaign on behalf of congressional candidate John Swallow. Cannon found himself feuding with the National Republican Congressional Committee over who was responsible for the mailings, and Cannon finally refused to mail the last two pieces to voters.

Jenkins, formerly GOP political director, earned degrees in economics and political science from the University of Utah. He had worked on the staff of the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee.

In 2003, he managed the unsuccessful Salt Lake City mayoral campaign of Frank Pignanelli, a Democrat, running in the officially nonpartisan race.