Romney, New Primary Date Put Utah on the Political Map

They got louder as the speech grew longer.

"Terrorist!" (Gulp.) "Evil!!" (Glug.) "Nine-eleven!" (Burp.) When the president named America's greatest enemy, the students roared -- "Osama bin Laden!" -- and, as stipulated in the rules, ran outside to roll in the snow.

Brigham Young University is run by the Mormon Church and may have the most conservative campus in the country. Provo has been called America's most conservative city. You'd think a Democrat around here would be about as hard to find as Sasquatch. "It's the same as being a conservative at Berkeley," said Hyrum Salmond, a junior.

What's amazing about Utah this year is not so much the presence of outspoken Democrats, but the fact that the state is on the national radar to begin with. As one of the Super Tuesday states that will hold primaries Feb. 5, Utah is finally in play.

This may be a geologically spectacular place, with the jagged white wall of the snow-laden Wasatch Mountains forming a backdrop to the gleaming temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but when it comes to political machinations it has been one of the dullest states in the country.

The Republican Party has dominated the state, and the church has dominated the party. In the general election, Utah has been slotted, like neighboring Wyoming, as a redder-than-red state. And in past primary seasons, it held neighborhood caucuses late in the cycle, after the nominations were wrapped up.

So behold now the flowering of politics in the desert. Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are running multiple TV spots. It's a bargain for the campaigns, what with just one media market in the entire state. It is also utterly novel: No one here can recall ever -- ever -- having seen a presidential TV ad in Utah.

Juicing interest all the more is the candidacy of Mitt Romney. Romney, the former governor (and current resident) of Massachusetts, is one of the nation's most prominent Mormons, famously turned around the 2002 Winter Olympics here, and might as well be a native son. Political observers expect him to win here Tuesday by a wide margin. "If he gets under 80 percent, I'd be amazed," said J. Quin Monson, a BYU professor of political science. Romney will be in Utah on Saturday, but not to campaign. He'll join thousands of church members at the funeral of Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the Mormon Church, who died Sunday night. "Our Prophet has passed," said a text message that raced among BYU students soon after Hinckley's death. Students wore their Sunday best to class the next day.

The funeral forced Obama to cancel a campaign stop scheduled for Saturday in Salt Lake City. His wife, Michelle, will make the pitch for him here Monday. The biggest campaign event in recent days has been the appearance of Chelsea Clinton, who stumped for her mother at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. About 200 people showed up, many of them Republicans just curious to see a young woman who spent her teenage years in the White House.

She showed herself an able surrogate, deftly handling questions from the audience, then shaking hands and posing for pictures with anyone and everyone. She let several young men take turns giving her a hug, and then said, "That sealed the deal, right?"

One recent poll in Utah showed Hillary Clinton with a sizable lead, but Monson, one of the leading pollsters here, cautions that the lack of a history of primary voting makes it impossible to know how Democrats or Republicans will behave on Feb. 5. For what it's worth, Obama has an overwhelming advantage among the BYU College Democrats, who have an e-mail list of about 600 names on a campus with 30,000 students. Obama is pushing so hard in the state that he opened a campaign office in the remote southwest town of St. George.