In a state where politics, religion and culture are so intertwined, that fight itself could have huge repercussions. The traditional links — that a good Mormon is a good conservative — has been broken, many Mormon Tea Party members say. “My mother says, ‘If he’s a bishop, he must be a good Republican,’ ” said Susan Southwick, state coordinator for a group called Utah Patriots. “I say, ‘Do your homework.’ ”

Jacqueline Smith fits no one’s stereotype of a political kingmaker. A home-schooling Mormon mother of five, Ms. Smith lives in a modest ranch-style house here in the mountains outside Salt Lake City with her husband, Cleve, a plumbing contractor.

But in the muscular arena of Tea Party and so-called Sept. 12 groups that have surged into dominance in Utah over the last year, places like Coalville and the Smith house have become unlikely stations for politicians to come kiss the ring.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a six-term Republican who faces re-election next year, has been among Ms. Smith’s supplicants, seeking the endorsement of her group, the STAR Forum, for Save The American Republic, and others like it. Ms. Smith is not sold on Mr. Hatch yet, and she does not think too many others in the Tea Party community are either.

“I don’t think he’s winning over anyone,” Ms. Smith said, smiling sweetly on a couch in her living room decorated with patriotic bunting and a giant engraved plaque of the Declaration of Independence.

In addition to Mr. Hatch, two other Republicans closely associated with Utah are likely to be in the national spotlight next year — Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, both possible presidential candidates.

And the three, Mormons all, are facing varying degrees of revolt where they might least like it or expect it — in their own backyard among mostly Mormon Tea Party members who are pushing for still more conservative fortitude.

“We oppose all three,” said David Kirkham, a businessman who helped found one of Utah’s first Tea Party groups.

Mr. Romney, who has family roots in Utah, blazed further into local life with his leadership of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. But he has since been besmirched, Mr. Kirkham and others said, by his involvement with a Massachusetts health care overhaul that is anathema to many Tea Party members who see it as a model for the Obama plan passed last year.

Mr. Huntsman took a moderate stance on many social issues as governor and also supported carbon emissions cap-and-trade legislation to reduce heat-trapping gases, another Tea Party no-no.

“On a good day, he’s a socialist,” said Darcy Van Orden, a co-founder of Utah Rising, a clearinghouse group, referring to Mr. Huntsman. “On a bad day, he’s a communist.”
As for Mr. Hatch, Mr. Kirkham said, “We have exactly the same game plan as we did last time with Bennett.”

That would be former Senator Bob Bennett, a Republican whose long political career was unceremoniously ended in 2010 when Mr. Kirkham and other Tea Party-inspired delegates swept into control at the party’s state convention.

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/us/politics/15utah.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all