This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Ronald Reagan's big tent can be an angry one at times, particularly in Utah where the boundaries between right and wrong are so rigidly defined and no coloring outside the lines is allowed.
The race for the new chair of the Utah Republican Party is to be decided in a special GOP Central Committee vote Jan. 22, and a lopsided win is forecast for Salt Lake County party chairman Thomas Wright. He is being lauded inside the party for its success this year in the state's most populous county, which tends to swing from time to time between Republicans and Democrats.
But the race already is swirling with controversy due to complaints that party bosses are manipulating the process to protect their own power cliques and shut out everyone else.
The special election is necessary because of the resignation of state GOP chairman Dave Hansen, who is leaving party leadership to work on Sen. Orrin Hatch's re-election campaign for 2012. The winner of the Jan. 22 vote of the 150 members of the State Central Committee will serve out Hansen's term. Then another leadership election will be held at the party's state organizing convention in June, where the chairman and other officers will be picked by the 3,500 statewide delegates.
Wright is being challenged by Utah County Republican activist Dave Duncan, whose supporters include other activists who have become well known and, in party establishment circles, suspect, for their challenges to the way the party conducts its business and due to allegations that it too often violates its own constitution and bylaws.
Those challengers already have thrown up the red flag, claiming the party establishment is cheating to prevent a fair fight and allow Duncan to run against Wright on an equal playing field.
The party officers being accused of chicanery, though, counter that these so-called dissidents have been known to badger delegates and central committee members whose e-mails they obtain, often engaging in personal attacks that border on defamation.
The Duncan supporters include Mike Ridgway and Nancy Lord. Ridgway has been made officially unwelcome at Salt Lake County Republican events and has even had the police called on him for alleged trespassing when he has attempted to attend a meeting.
Lord, a former Utah member of the Republican National Committee, was recently kicked off the party's state central committee for her participation in a lawsuit against the party's practice of appointing automatic, or ex-officio, delegates rather than letting all convention delegates be elected at their neighborhood caucuses.
Now Ridgway and Lord claim that when Duncan requested a list of Salt Lake County delegates, it was given to him in a nearly unreadable font and in a computer format that made it impossible to download or copy or use in any practical way.
Salt Lake County GOP vice chairman Rick Votaw, who provided that list to the Duncan campaign, said it was given that way because of the history of Duncan's group purportedly using lists in nefarious ways — read personal attacks — not for legitimate party use. Besides, Votaw said, he was under no obligation to give Duncan a list since Duncan is running for a statewide party position, not a county one.
Indeed, state chairman Hansen said his office gave Duncan a complete state delegate and central committee list as soon as he asked for it.
Ridgway says the Duncan group wanted the county delegate lists because state central committee members are elected through their county conventions and the challengers to the party establishment wanted the chance to communicate with those delegates about central committee activities.
The establishment types say that is just a polite way of saying they wanted the list to inundate delegates with unfair allegations against establishment figures.
In the end, the Duncan group got a workable list from Salt Lake County.
But don't expect either group to be any less agitated with the other.
E-mail Paul Rolly at prolly@sltrib.com