SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. Orrin Hatch won the Republican primary in Utah on Tuesday, turning back a challenge from Tea Party forces hoping to jolt the party again by defeating an incumbent who occasionally strayed from the movement’s focus on shrinking the federal government.
Until this summer, Hatch, 78, had not faced a primary challenge since winning office in 1976. Former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist, who survived a 2008 plane crash in Guatemala that killed 11 of 14 on board, won just enough support at the state party’s nominating convention to advance to the primary.
But Liljenquist faced an overwhelming financial and organizational disadvantage. Hatch, learning from the defeat two years ago of his Senate colleague Robert Bennett, spent about $10 million blanketing the airwaves and building a campaign operation unlike anything Utah had seen before.
With 31 percent of precincts reporting, Hatch had 44,543 votes, or 68 percent, to Liljenquist’s 20,863, or 32 percent.
Hatch’s race was the premier event in Tuesday’s primaries. In New York, Rep. Charlie Rangel, 82, won the Democratic primary in spite of a House censure 18 months ago for failing to pay all his taxes and for filing misleading financial-disclosure statements.
With 81 percent of precincts reporting, Rangel had 15,300 votes, or 47 percent, while his nearest challenger, Adriano Espaillat, had 12,349, or 38 percent.
In Oklahoma, Rep. John Sullivan was in a close contest against political newcomer Jim Bridenstine, who ran to Sullivan’s right and criticized the incumbent for missing hundreds of House votes in the past decade.
With 58 percent of the precincts in, Bridenstine led with17,003 votes, or 54 percent, to Sullivan’s 14,753, or 46 percent.
A few months ago, Hatch was considered vulnerable like Bennett and six-term Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, who lost in last month’s Indiana Republican primary. But Hatch got an endorsement from presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who said he would need Hatch in the Senate if he wins the presidency.
Romney easily won his final presidential primary Tuesday, in Utah.
Hatch said that he wouldn’t be running again if it weren’t for the opportunity to serve as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee if the Republican Party wins control of the Senate. He also announced it would be his last term.
He also gravitated to the right with his comments and his votes, scoring a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union in 2010 and 2011. His lifetime rating of 89 percent from the American Conservative Union would place Hatch among the Senate’s most conservative lawmakers, but Hatch at times took stands that didn’t sit well with the right.
He worked with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy to establish a health-insurance program for poor and moderateincome children. He also voted to establish a prescription drug benefit under Medicare and to rescue financial firms facing bankruptcy.
With the primary victory, Hatch was a favorite to win the general election in November against Democratic candidate Scott Howell.
OBAMA, ROMNEY ATTACK
In the race for the White House, President Barack Obama escalated his campaign’s latest line of attack on Romney’s business career Tuesday, telling audiences at a series of fundraising events that when it came to job creation, the former Massachusetts governor excelled more at creating them overseas than in the United States.
A news article last week about how Romney’s old private-equity firm moved jobs overseas prompted a carefully parsed response from the Romney camp. Seeking to capitalize on it, Obama - and a team of campaign aides, operatives and surrogates - took to the airwaves, microphones and the Internet to call his rival out of touch.
At a fundraiser in Atlanta, Obama derided Romney’s advisers for trying to distinguish between “off-shoring” and outsourcing. The president said, “I’m not kidding, that’s what they said.”
As the audience laughed, he said, “Those workers who lost their jobs, they don’t know the difference.”
Over in the Romney camp, the response was swift and scathing.
“If President Obama had even half of Mitt Romney’s record on jobs, he’d be running on it,” Andrea Saul, aRomney spokesman, said in an e-mail statement. “But President Obama has the worst record on jobs and the economy of any president in modern history, which is why he is running a campaign based on distractions, not solutions.”
Appearing Tuesday in Salem, Va., Romney kept the focus squarely on the president’s record, and offered a preview of his likely responses when the Supreme Court rules later in the week on Obama’s health-care law.
“If Obamacare is notdeemed constitutional, then the first 3 1/2 years of this president’s term will have been wasted on something that has not helped the American people,” Romney said. “If it is deemed to stand, then I’ll tell you one thing: We’re going to have a president, and I’m that one, that’s going to get rid of Obamacare. We’re going to stop it on Day 1.” Information for this article was contributed by Kevin Freking, Paul Foy, Beth Fouhy and Anne Gearan of The Associated Press and by Helene Cooper and Ashley Parker of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 06/27/2012