Ashdown vs Urquhart for Utah Senate seat

So, now there are two challengers for Orrin Hatch’s seat in the US Senate. Despite the fact that Hatch is nominally from Utah, he’s getting a lot of attention in the upcoming race because of his persistent anti-technology stand (here’s just one example). Now there are two challengers. Yesterday, Doc Searls mentioned Steve Urquhart, the Republican majority whip in the Utah House; he’s going to challenge Hatch in the Republican primary. Boing Boing mentioned Democratic challenger Pete Ashdown yesterday, too (although so far they haven’t responded to my email pointing out Urquhart’s candidacy).

Interestingly, both candidates blog. However, on Urquhart’s blog, he links to news stories at the original source. On Ashdown’s site, he’s copied most of the articles to his own server and modified them by removing ads. I asked Ashdown about that, and he said that he had permission from the reporters, but he hasn’t answered my follow-up question about whether he has permission from the rights holders- a critical distinction.

Neither candidate has defined his platform in much detail; Ashdown seems to be saying (in this article) that he’ll position himself as “not-Hatch” and choose whatever platform seems to resonate with potential voters. Urquhart has a slightly better defined platform, going after Hatch’s anti-tech attitude and his support for stem-cell research, among other things. It’ll be fascinating to see how these two tech-savvy candidates use the Internet to mobilize support both inside and outside Utah. After all, since both are gunning for Hatch based in part on his support of DMCA and copyright extensions, it seems to me that both will be fighting over the same support dollars from organizations like the EFF and Downhill Battle. We’ll have to wait and see…