The Man Who Could Be Senator
April 30, 2012From: National Review Online
By: Brian Bolduc
In 1976, a little-known lawyer named Orrin Hatch won the Republican nomination to challenge Utah’s two-term Democratic senator, Frank Moss. That November, Hatch’s nine-point triumph over Moss was considered “the Cinderella campaign of the season,” according to the Deseret News.
Thirty-six years later, Dan Liljenquist is hoping to follow Hatch’s example — in a primary run against the six-term incumbent.
Hatch secured 59.2 percent of the vote at the Utah GOP’s state convention on April 21, only 32 votes shy of the 60 percent required to avoid a primary. Liljenquist, on the other hand, won 40.8 percent of the vote, slightly over the 40 percent threshold to qualify for the ballot. Now, the 37-year-old is making the same argument Hatch used against Moss in his 1976 campaign: He’s been in Washington too long.
The seventh of 15 children, Liljenquist grew up in Idaho Falls, Idaho. He attended Brigham Young University on an academic scholarship that required him to maintain a 3.9 GPA. After graduating with a degree in economics, he earned a law degree at the University of Chicago. In 2001, Liljenquist joined the management-consulting firm Bain & Company. Eventually, he made his way to Roy, Utah, where he became chief operating officer of Focus Services, a small call center that he helped double in size.
