Kevin Freking

SALT LAKE CITY — It was an entertaining exchange, as one-man debates go.

Dan Liljenquist, hoping to shock the political world on Tuesday, didn’t let Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch’s absence this month stop him. The GOP challenger opened his show with the usual call for new leadership in Washington, took questions from a pretend moderator and used a video recording of old Hatch interviews and speeches to provide the incumbent’s response.

Hatch had his own play for the cameras the next afternoon. He met Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the Salt Lake City airport and walked with him to an awaiting car as TV stations got the shot.

SALT LAKE CITY — The Tea Party movement solidified its presence as a force within the Republican Party two years ago when it helped orchestrate the defeat of three-term Sen. Bob Bennett at Utah GOP’s nominating convention. But it fell short this weekend of doing the same to Sen. Orrin Hatch.

The different outcomes raise at least one question: Has the Tea Party lost some momentum or was it simply outflanked this time by Hatch, who had superior resources and tacked to the right on certain issues?

A national leader of Tea Party efforts, FreedomWorks, spent more than $700,000 through a super PAC to defeat Hatch. Yet, Hatch was able to easily advance to a primary and only fell 32 votes short of earning the nomination outright.

SANDY — Utah Republicans denied U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch a clear path to a seventh and final term Saturday, forcing the 78-year-old lawmaker into a June primary with 37-year-old former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist. Hatch fell short of the outright nomination by fewer than three dozen votes from the nearly 4,000 delegates at the party convention.

WASHINGTON -- Key federal lawmakers say they're confident that Congress will renew a program this year that has become a lifeline for rural communities suffering from a decline in timber harvests on federal lands, but they can't say when or how.

WASHINGTON — A Utah state senator picked up an extra prize while he’s in Washington this week, and it’s a sign that some tea partiers haven’t given up on defeating six-term Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch next year.

FreedomWorks, which helps mobilize local tea party groups, named State Sen. Dan Liljenquist, R-Bountiful,  its “Legislative Entrepreneur of the Year” for his work on pensions and Medicaid.

WASHINGTON — Democratic officials sense a rare opportunity to win a U.S. Senate race in Utah and are laying the groundwork to help if Rep. Jim Matheson decides to run for the seat now held by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch.

WASHINGTON -- What does a longtime Republican senator with a national reputation for working well with Democrats do in the face of a potentially career-ending Tea Party challenge?