Utah Congressional Roundup

The 3rd District GOP primary looks to be interesting. The issue that will define the race is immigration. Rep. Cannon is being challenged by the right on this one, where he faced a primary on the issue last time (before it was nearly as prominant of an issue as it is this year). ex-Rep. Cook is also challenging him from the center-right. They debated their ideas for the Deseret News and the others who were in attendence:

Jacob suggested taking away the "incentives" for illegal immigrants, to encourage more legal immigration. At the same time, Jacob touted stricter enforcement of existing laws.
Cannon referred to legislation he is currently involved with that would strengthen U.S. border security, as well as measures to help "innocent children who were dragged here by their parents" to obtain an education while in the United States.
Cook stressed forcing employers to adhere to existing immigration laws, instead of looking the other way. Cook said if employers do that, the number of illegal immigrants coming to America will decrease.

I actually agree with the businessman Cook on this one. If you really want to stop illegal immigation, the only real solution besides helping to improve the economies of the sending countries is to more strictly enforce punishments against companies that hire illegals.

Rep. Matheson, who seems safe despite being in one of the most (probabbly top 5) Republican district in the country, decided to play it even safer this year. In a move that is garnering him much flack from liberal bloggers and go-gos, Matheson voted for the weak loobying reform bill. The idea I guess was to avoid an attack ad, like when Matheson voted for the Medicare bill. Of course, that is not how he explained his vote to the Salt Lake Tribune.

While noting he wished the bill “did more” to reform the laws, Matheson said in an interview, “I think what plays into the decision is, something is better than nothing.”
“If we were less partisan around here we would accomplish more,” he added, But “if there's an opportunity to vote on something, I'm going to vote for it.”

It is true, something is better than nothing. But sometimes something bad is worse than nothing at all. We will see if this bill will delay the necessary reform process or if it is just an intermediate step.