Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. Leading Off: ' UT-Sen: In case you missed it over the weekend, the state parties held their nominating conventions in Utah. The marquee event was the Utah Senate race, where various hardcore conservatives were hoping to send insufficiently right-wing Orrin Hatch down the same road as Bob Bennett in 2010 (who finished third at convention, ending his career then and there). Hatch was much better prepared than Bennett, though, and going into Saturday the real question wasn't whether he'd survive the convention but whether he'd clear the 60% needed to win the nomination outright and avoid a primary.
In the end, he didn't, despite most polls showing he would: he got 59.2%, forcing him into a primary with second-place finisher ex-state Sen. Dan Liljenquist. Hatch remains the favorite here, given that the June 26 primary is a broader, less doctrinaire slice of the population. We hadn't given much thought to who his Democratic opponent would be, but the name less familiar to the netroots (though probably more familiar to Dems on the ground in Utah) won: former state Sen. Scott Howell won the nomination outright against tech businessman (and 2006 Senate race loser) Pete Ashdown.
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