On May 10, as his surprise opponent took backslaps and handshakes from supporters, Chris Cannon stood apart at the state Republican convention.

The six-term incumbent in U.S. House District 3 was on one hand downplaying Jason Chaffetz's landslide delegate count and on the other hand saying there are indeed "a lot of mad people" looking for change.

"It's not hard to get 600 people to vote for you," said Cannon, who nevertheless has been unable to reach that number of delegates for years to avoid a primary. This year and in 2006, challengers garnered enough delegates to push him dangerously close to losing his seat altogether. Chaffetz fell just nine votes short in May.

But the challenges have also turned Cannon into a savvy campaigner. He has handily turned contenders into pretenders when the primary election rolls around then cruised through the general election in the heavily Republican district that includes much of Utah County.

Cannon now faces perhaps his greatest challenge to date in Chaffetz, a well-known figure who has been the governor's chief of staff and is an antithesis to the incumbent in many ways. But Cannon has been in politics a long time and doesn't dwell on the near miss. He isn't afraid to get right back into the fray.

"With all due respect," he says, "it ought to be a rough-and-tumble sport."

Getting the party back?

Convention delegates have been getting rough with Cannon for six years, creating a bloc of "ABC" votes, as in "Anybody But Cannon" (or "Chris," as they say inside his office). At the May 10 state convention, even with David Leavitt throwing his support to Cannon after being ousted, many of his delegates still went for Chaffetz.

What of a party core that seems to be abandoning him in droves? Cannon contends that conventions don't reflect the true face of the GOP anymore.

"I think it was pretty boring, weird and nutty," he said of the 12-hour marathon, calling many of the delegates "harsh, loud, mean and narrow."

Quin Monson, of BYU's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, said there are two reasons Cannon can't seem to shake off challengers. The first is that he took early positions on issues that core Republicans strongly disagree with. He voted in favor of the expansion of the federal government in education via President George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, and his plan to fix immigration includes a way for some of those here illegally to stay here and work.

The second is that even though Cannon's voting record is strongly conservative in many ways, people just don't seem to like him. His likability rating places him at the bottom of the Utah congressional delegation.

"There is a personality thing there," Monson said. "People don't seem to identify with him."

So instead of cruising through conventions like Rob Bishop in the 1st District and Jim Matheson in the 2nd District, Cannon faces challenger after challenger in primary elections.

"It generates people who are opportunistic or angry or both," Monson said.

House calls

To neutralize the anger -- or bypass it for more mainstream voters -- Cannon relies on conservative watchdog groups. While he is accused in Utah of offering amnesty for illegal immigrants and for helping to increase the federal budget, he scores high marks from conservative organizations. For example:

• The National Taxpayers Union gave recently gave him an "A."

• The Americans for Tax Reform named him "Hero of the Taxpayer."

• The free-trade Club for Growth says Cannon scores a 97 percent, good for 14th-best in the House.

• The Family Research Council says Cannon scores 100 percent in his voting record.

• The NRA has previously given him an A+ rating.

• The National Right to Life Committee gives him a 100-percent rating.

• The American Conservation Union gives him 96-percent rating.

All that conservative voting may not mean much now that Republicans are in the minority and likely to stay there after the November elections. Several members of the Democratic party in the U.S. House declined to comment for this story, including Utah's Jim Matheson. But fellow Utah Republican Rob Bishop from the 1st District said there's more to Cannon's oft-perceived partisanship.

"There's always a time and a place for partisanship ... but he still seems to have a working relationship with those working on the committee with him," he said.

He cites a bill several years ago that would have allowed the federal government to have some curriculum control over private schools like BYU. Cannon went to work on Democrats and Republicans with private institutions in their districts to ensure that particular piece of legislation didn't see the light of day. Those kinds of things (which Bishop describes as "significant, important and boring as hell") are what Cannon often excels at but for which he never receives public acknowledgment.

He may be able to reach across the aisle on occasion, but Cannon also hasn't been without controversy during his tenure. He was given a dishonorable mention in 2006 by the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for working with his brother Joe on lobbying issues. (Cannon points out that the center removed his name from the list the next year.)

He also roiled the waters during the debate over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, a favorite topic of his because of his position on the House Committee on the Judiciary. The attorneys were fired last year, contend Democrats, because they didn't prosecute voter fraud cases alleged by Republicans. The attorneys are supposed to be able to make independent choices about cases.

During the heat of the debate, Cannon appeared on Fox News to defend the firings and said one of the attorneys -- David Iglesias --¬ was fired not for failing to follow political orders but "because he was an idiot." The terminology further exacerbated the situation, though Cannon said later that Iglesias was an idiot because he reported the congressional contacts to the media instead of, as required, to his superiors.

Those kinds of quiet successes but public spats may be what is contributing to Cannon's near-misses in state conventions and narrowing margins in primary elections. But Cannon has rarely apologized for his approach to issues, even when it grates against constituents or opponents.

Finding a course

Cannon first learned in college that getting what you want sometimes means getting dirty: While pursuing a law degree at BYU he scrubbed toilets as a janitor. He also worked as a teamster in a grocery warehouse earning "more money in an hour than most guys made in a week" in Guatemala, where he served an LDS Church mission.

While at BYU he interned for the U.S. Supreme Court in the Office of the Administrative Assistant under his uncle Mark Cannon. He also spent time in the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a researcher. It was there that he started finding contradictions between consensus and reality. In 1974, on the heels of best-sellers such as "The Population Bomb," he was asked by the Secretary of Agriculture to research the claim from the World Health Organization that the world would face a food crisis by 1986. Cannon contended that food reserves wouldn't dwindle but rather grow substantially.

"I was right," he says simply.

After graduating with a bachelor's degree and a law degree from BYU, Cannon entered private practice for four years. He had married Claudia Fox in 1978, and the two would eventually have eight children, though one daughter, Rachel, died in 2005 after a battle with cancer.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a solicitor in the Department of Interior, where he eventually supervised approximately 100 attorneys working on surface coal-mining issues.

The mining experience came to a head during the recent Crandall Canyon collapse. As many were calling for more regulation and bemoaning the state of the industry, Cannon could be heard on Fox News -- his favorite venue -- talking about the overall mine safety record in the U.S. compared to that in China, where thousands die every year. While even a few deaths are tragic, he said, mining is an inherently dangerous business.

His lengthy stint in government jobs is a wedge issue Chaffetz uses time and again, saying lawyers have had their chance and now it's time for businessmen to reform the federal government. Though Cannon has indeed spent much of his life as a lawyer and lawmaker, he has dipped his toes in the world of business.

In the late 1980s, Cannon, his brother Joe and others saw an opportunity to resurrect Geneva Steel, the dormant steel plant on the shore of Utah Lake. While the company made "a ton of money" in the first few years and provided thousands of jobs, the brothers quickly disagreed on how it should be run. Cannon was fired from his position barely a year after the plant was reopened, and he eventually sued his brother Joe and the company.

The Cannons settled out of court with Chris receiving several million dollars.

Geneva eventually went bankrupt in 1999, and even with the backing of a $110 million federal loan, reorganization proved too difficult and it shuttered for good in 2002.

12 years, one congressman

In 1996, Cannon saw his opening. Rep. Bill Orton, the last elected Democrat from Utah County, was taking heat for his part in the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Cannon, who had participated in GOP politics for decades, ran against Orton and defeated him by fewer than 10,000 votes -- 4 percent of the electorate. He uses that experience to point out that Chaffetz should be running against Rep. Jim Matheson, a Democrat in the 2nd District where Chaffetz lives.

Cannon's entry into Congress was on the heels of the 1994 Republican Revolution. And until 2006, Cannon was in the party with the majority, including control of the White House since 2000. But it's a party that also increased the federal budget in that time by more than a trillion dollars. Cannon has voted in favor of every budget until this year's, which was largely controlled by Democrats.

It's a point Chaffetz has hammered home repeatedly, saying that Republicans in Congress have lost their way. He's won over longtime Cannon supporters like state Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper and president of the Utah Taxpayers Association.

"Since [1994] the incumbents have voted to expand government. They actually defend the earmarking and pork-barrel bills that are passed," Stephenson said.

When asked what Chaffetz will be able to accomplish in Congress as a freshman representative in the minority party, Stephenson said "leadership." The party has to build up again on its principles, which he claims Cannon has abandoned.

"He gives lip service to it and then does nothing in Congress," he said. "Talk is cheap. That's all we've got from the incumbent."

Cannon counters the argument, saying there are two factions of Republicans in Congress: one that is there for the power and one that adheres to the principles of fiscal conservatives. He says he belongs in the latter group and that not voting for previous budgets only means that Republicans in it for the power will simply offer a Democrat financial incentives, thus getting the vote anyway and increasing the budget even more in the process.

His leadership, he says, came behind closed doors as he worked to maintain smaller government despite his party. He admits that many in his party have failed the American people and that they need to refocus on a positive message and viable alternatives to the Democratic agenda.

"You have to have those kinds of messages or there's no future for Republicans," he said.

Whether Cannon is part of the establishment or a rogue trying to hold back the tide, he has difficulty conveying the intricacies of the federal government along with his successes, which are rarely front-page news.

Chaffetz, on the other hand, knows how to get a crowd excited.

A former BYU football placekicker, Chaffetz is tall, athletic and gives a rousing stump speech. At GOP conventions he brings people to their feet and draws the loudest cheers. The incumbent, in contrast, tends to ramble and even occasionally mutter.

It's a difference not lost on Cannon, who tends to do better in smaller settings where details of issues can be bandied about. For instance, when talking about the death of his daughter from a rare form of cancer, he not only throws around medical acronyms but launches into a discussion about how medical research regulations need to be changed to allow for changes in technology and the need for different specialists to communicate to quickly find solutions that might otherwise take much longer.

He compares broad political speeches to talks he sat through in church as a kid in which he was "infinitely bored by the same speech and same tone and same lack of information as the same 100 previous Sundays."

"I owe them more than a chuckle or a good feeling," he said.