HEIDI TOTH - Daily Herald | Posted: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 11:00 pm
Bryan Horn is not a traitor. He's just a registered Republican working for a Democrat's campaign.
The situation is simultaneously simple and complex. Horn, a Utah Valley State College student, is taking the semester off to work for Christian Burridge, a Democratic candidate running against U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah. Up until June 27, he worked for John Jacob, the Republican challenger to Cannon.
On Tuesday, Burridge's camp sent out a news release, heralding "many former Jacob supporters" who found Burridge to be the best candidate in the Nov. 7 general election. However, the press release didn't name anyone.
Horn says he's the only actual worker he knows of who made the switch, but he's talked to several delegates and voters alike who say they voted for Jacob in the primary and will vote for Burridge in November. He declined to give names of those delegates and voters.
When Jacob lost the primary, Horn, the former president of the College Republicans at UVSC -- he said he would have given up the position regardless of who he was working for because of time constraints -- offered his services to the Cannon camp. Four e-mails and no answer later, he said, he went to Burridge.
One, he needed a job. He'd planned to work for a state congressional campaign, and those plans didn't work out, he said. He went first to the Republicans, then to Burridge.
"They should have offered me a job when they had the chance," he said.
Nathan Rathbun, Cannon's campaign manager, said Horn did come to him. Already overstaffed, he declined the offer; the e-mail stated Horn was looking for a job, he said. Rathbun commended Horn for wanting to be involved, and declined to comment further on what he felt was a non-issue.
Second, the self-described devout Republican said he found in Burridge a conservative, bipartisan, religious "Mathesonian Democrat," while in Cannon he perceived a Republican who had abandoned the ideals of the party.
"He might be a Democrat in name, but he is reaching across party lines to really bring change to Utah," Horn said of Burridge, adding he simply agreed with Burridge's positions more than he did Cannon's. "I'm not switching Democratic; I will always be a registered Republican."
Horn's switch differs from his former boss's position; Jacob, upon conceding the nomination to Cannon, offered his support and volunteered to help raise funds. Jacob did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Quin Monson, an assistant professor of political science at Brigham Young University, said there most likely will be a number of Republican voters and/or Jacob supporters who vote for Burridge in the general election; the question remains if they'll be enough to swing the results in favor of the challenger. He cited exit poll numbers taken after the 1990 congressional race, which was similar but involved a much uglier primary between Republicans Karl Snow and John Harmer. Snow won the nomination and faced Democrat Bill Orton in the general election. Orton won.
According to those statistics, more than 80 percent of the people who said they voted against a particular candidate voted for Orton. Almost 30 percent of those polled said they voted against a candidate instead of specifically for a candidate.
The Cannon-Jacob race was a much cleaner one, though, as indicated by Jacob's concession and offer to help.
"It was all about immigration," Monson said. "It wasn't their personal financial dealings or how nasty the campaign got."
And even if all the people who voted for Jacob based solely on immigration voted against Cannon, there probably aren't enough of them to lose the incumbent his re-election.
But Horn's going to try. He's doing this, he said, so Republicans will know it's OK to vote for a Democrat with whom they agree. And while he admits he didn't want news of his working for Burridge to get out, citing an "elite Republican base" that doesn't want him doing this, he's hoping to use his Republicanism to open doors that someone with a "D" next to his name might not be able to do.
"He is one of us," Horn said of Burridge.
Heidi Toth can be reached at 344-2543 or htoth@heraldextra.com.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.