Salt Lake County GOP Delegates to Choose Walker's Replacement

Jul 08, 2008 by Jeff Robinson

May Give Republican Candidate Early Start

(KCPW News) Representative Mark Walker's resignation from the Utah Legislature opens up an opportunity for Brian Monsen, the Republican running for Walker's seat in November, to get an early start. Clark Aposhian, the Salt Lake GOP legislative chair for District 45, says Monsen definitely has the best chance of replacing Walker in the short term.

"He has already been through a convention process and has beat out three other candidates in the general election, and I think that it would be common sense that he'd be on the list of those designees, at least to be considered. I'm confident the delegates will be consistent in their choices," said Aposhian.

The 54 delegates from the district will meet on July 21st to select Walker's replacement, which will be forwarded to Governor Jon Huntsman, who must confirm the appointment.

Whether he's appointed or not, Monsen will have no easy task in facing challenger Laura Black this November, who's running for the third time after losing to Walker by only 18 votes in 2006. Matthew Burbank, chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Utah, points out that suburbia is normally Republican territory, but Sandy is changing.

"Ordinarily we would think of Sandy as being a fairly strong place for Republican candidates, and certainly that has been true historically," he said. "There is some change going on in Sandy, as it develops from sort of a developing suburb to a fairly well-established suburb; some of the dynamics are changing there a little bit."

Mark Walker himself was appointed as a replacement in 2004 before being elected that fall, defeating Black by a much wider margin than he did two years later.

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