UT-04 Ben McAdams Officially in!!!

[Zioneer]

Well to be fair, Doug Owens did an impressive job in 2014 which made Mathesons victory in 2012 look slightly less impressive. 

Owens big screw up was seeking a rematch with Mia Love.  If he wanted to hold public office he would have had a better chance at running for the at large Salt Lake County council seat which I believe he could have won. Democrats barely lost it last year.  Owens seemed like a sore loser to Love and did not give anyone a good reason to vote for him.

Agreed, though I contend that our lackluster Senate and Gubernatorial candidates hurt our chances to win the County Council seat. And I liked Catherine Kanter's convention opponent, Kim Bowman (a dude, as an FYI). He was way more charismatic and entergetic than Kanter, and I feel like even with lackluster statewide candidates, he could have won the seat. Owens would have been pretty good too though.

Anyway, if McAdams runs for UT-04, I think he has an excellent chance at winning it. The no-name, no-money Berniecrats running now have absolutely no chance of defeating Mia Love.

[Zioneer]

This is definitely rapidly moving to a Lean R, away from Solid R. McAdams picked the best possible moment, Mia Love literally just spent all of her fundraising for the year on direct mail fundraising, and had to dig into some of the money she kept from last year.

[Zioneer]

I'm sorry, but I honestly think it's more likely that Love loses to a McMullin type in the primary than a Democrat.

Hillary did finish third in Utah after all (and I'm pretty sure she also finished either second or third in UT-04).

Nope. She got 32.4% of the vote to Trump's 39.1%. She barely beat Trump in the Salt Lake County portion of the seat, where McAdams would need to win by about ten points or more to win the seat. He did get 58% of the vote in the UT-04 portion of the seat in his partisan reelection race last year, indicating it is possible. Doug Owens also barely won SLC in 2014, hence why the district was surprisingly close that year.

I think it's reasonable to call this race leans R.

Are you sure he got 58%? I asked someone on Daily Kos Elections, and they said it was 55%. If you're right, then I'm even happier, but I just wanted to make sure on the numbers. Also, either one is higher than Jim Matheson's 52% in the SLCO portion of the district... and Matheson's strategy was based on running up the numbers in SLCO.