Everyone expected a few close calls, but beating an incumbent soundly enough to skip the primary all together?

Rep. Aaron Tilton, R-Springville, lost his seat at the Utah County Republican convention on Saturday. Running in his place will be Francis Gibson, a Mapleton resident who gathered 60.8 percent of the district's delegate vote.

At the GOP convention, any candidate with more than 60 percent of the delegate vote wins the party nomination and skips a primary race.

Tilton has been under fire repeatedly for conflict-of-issue questions, including his role in the potential construction of a nuclear power plant in Utah. Tilton is on the state Public Utilities and Technology Committee, but says that there is no conflict because nuclear power is regulated by the federal government. He was appointed in 2004 when his incumbent opponent quit after being caught soliciting a prostitute. He was elected in 2005 and re-elected in 2006.

He won't get a chance at a third term.

"I am humbled that this happened," Gibson said afterward. "The constituents in District 65 wanted to make a change. I'm exited about it."

Other incumbents were able to fend off challengers by the narrowest of margins on Saturday. Rep. Keith Grover, R-Provo, received 60.6 percent of the delegate vote, and Rep. Brad Daw, R-Orem, received 60.4. A vote that close typically means one more vote the other way could have swung it to a primary.

Sen. Curt Bramble avoided a primary in the hotly contested race for the Senate District 16 seat by winning 67 percent of the vote.

With no contested county races this year, the bulk of the floor time was given to state and federal candidates and their issues. A top subject was energy, even drawing a rare motion from the floor to encourage Utah's federal delegation to push efforts to develop the state's hoard of oil shale. The motion failed a two-thirds vote but had enough support to give pause to convention chairman Doyle Mortimer.

Oil shale was brought up again by Rep. Chris Cannon, who said gas prices would be as high as $4.50 a gallon by November. He said the country needs to increase its nuclear power and increase coal and oil exploration. He blasted the effects that ethanol legislation is having on food prices, saying instead that Utah is sitting on a trillion barrels of oil locked in shale that should be developed.

That brought a roar from the crowd, and while there was plenty of it for much of the morning it wasn't all cheer leading for the county's dominant party.

"When we look at problems in Washington, we have got to stop pointing our fingers at Democrats," said Cannon's opponent David Leavitt, adding that the party failed to get things done when they controlled both houses of Congress for six years.

"Republicans got what they deserved in 2006 because they lost face with America," he said.

He also brought up a current hot-button issue that he feels cost him his job as the Juab County attorney years ago.

"For three years I stood alone on the issue of polygamy," he said, with the backdrop of the recent FLDS raids in Texas.

Leavitt wasn't the only candidate to bring up an issue sensitive to Utahns and their religious history.

"Right now I'm getting beat up by the rest of the country. That I ought to cowboy up," said Attorney General Mark Shurtleff about calls to crack down on polygamy in Utah. But he countered that the FLDS church is only in Texas because "we drove them out of here."

While Utah County votes overwhelmingly Republican, a portion of the county belongs to Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson who has withstood well-financed challenges for years. Biennial candidate Merrill Cook said he plans to bring the seat back to the Republicans, "where it belongs" and get rid of the federal income tax in favor of a national sales tax while he's at it.

Another GOP challenger, Bill Dew, said he's the guy "who can help Jim Matheson sleep like a baby on Nov. 4."

That would be two hours of restless sleep followed by an hour of crying.