Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, failed to avoid a primary election today, as Tea Party rival Dan Liljenquist received enough support at the state party convention to force an election.
“We have the results, there will be a primary election,” said Utah’s GOP chairman, Thomas Wright. Dan Liljenquist received 1595 votes from the convention attendees — 40.81 percent — to Hatch’s 2313 votes (59.19 percent) on the second and final ballot. Hatch received 57 percent support on the first ballot.
“You have to get 60 percent to become the party’s nominee today and to avoid a primary,” Wright explained during the voting process. The primary election will be held on June 26.
Hatch asked convention attendees to help him avoid a primary so that he could “be freed up to go out and campaign for Mitt Romney” rather than campaign against Liljenquist.
Two years ago, Hatch’s longtime colleague and Utah Sen. Mike Bennett, R, was eliminated outright from contention for his Senate seat during the state convention. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, replaced him after winning the primary and general elections.
Liljenquist, a state senator supported by Tea Partiers, argues that Hatch will not reform entitlements as needed. “I’m looking for leadership on these entitlement issues, the issues I focused on in the Utah legislature: long term spending, the long term trajectory of our budgets, and trying to make sure those issues are tackled before they become disastrous,” he said in an interview with The Washington Examiner.
The Tea Partier even blamed Hatch for Obamacare, despite the senator’s vote against that bill. “It was this generation of politicians, Republicans and Democrats, that laid out the constitutional argument for individual mandates in the early 90s,” he said.
