Romney falls short in Utah GOP convention, forced into primary for Senate seat

Utah Senate hopeful Mitt Romney was narrowly defeated at Saturday’s state GOP convention and will be forced into a June primary, a setback in his political comeback bid.

Romney, who was the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, is still heavily favored to win the seat from which longtime Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch is retiring. But on Saturday, his path became slightly more complicated when he fell short at the convention to state Rep. Mike Kennedy. According to The Associated Press, Romney received 49 percent to Kennedy’s 51 percent.

Romney had already qualified for the June 26 primary ballot because he filed the needed number of signatures, the only candidate in the GOP field to have done so. But had he received 60 percent of the vote at the convention, he could have won the Republican nomination outright and avoided the two-month primary battle.

Instead, he will face Kennedy, who has cast himself as a conservative-minded outsider.

“Thank you to all the delegates who hung in there with us all day at the Convention,” Romney tweeted on Saturday evening. “I appreciate the support I received and look forward to the primary election.”