Sen. Orrin Hatch won the GOP primary in Utah on Tuesday, handily turning back a challenge from tea party forces hoping to jolt the Republican Party again by defeating an incumbent who occasionally strayed from the movement's focus on shrinking the federal government. 
 
 U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, greets members of his family on a street corner outside his campaign headquarters, Tuesday, June 26, 2012, in Salt Lake City. The 78-year-old, six term senator is facing... (Associated Press) 
 
 Former Utah state senator, Dan Liljenquist, right, waves to motorists during last minute campaigning in a primary election against incumbent senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Tuesday, June 26, 2012, in Salt... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., shakes hands with a poll worker as he arrives to vote in the Democratic primary, Tuesday, June 26, 2012 in New York. He faces State Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who would be the... (Associated Press) 
 
 U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, holds his 3-month-old great grandson, Beckham Wilson after arriving at his campaign headquarters to thank his staff and volunteers, Tuesday, June 26, 2012, in Salt Lake... (Associated Press) 
 
 U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, greets members of his family on a street corner outside his campaign headquarters, Tuesday, June 26, 2012, in Salt Lake City. The 78-year-old, six term senator is facing... (Associated Press) 
 
 U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, holds his 3-month-old great grandson, Beckham Wilson, as he greets his great grand daughter, 8-month-old Maggie Jennings, and her mother, Callie Jennings, after arriving... (Associated Press) 
 
 Until this summer, Hatch, 78, had not faced a primary challenge since winning office in 1976. Former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist, who survived a 2008 plane crash in Guatemala that killed 11 of 14 on board, won just enough support at the state GOP's nominating convention to advance to the primary. 
 
 But Liljenquist faced an overwhelming financial and organizational disadvantage. Hatch, learning from the defeat two years ago of his Senate colleague Robert Bennett, spent about $10 million blanketing the airwaves and building a campaign operation unlike anything Utah had seen before. 
 
 Hatch's race was the premier event in Tuesday's primaries. In New York, 82-year-old Rep. Charlie Rangel won the Democratic primary in spite of a House censure 18 months ago for failing to pay all his taxes and for filing misleading financial disclosure statements. 
 
 In Oklahoma, Rep. John Sullivan was in a close contest against political newcomer Jim Bridenstine, who ran to Sullivan's right and criticized the incumbent for missing hundreds of House votes in the past decade. 
 
 A few months ago, Hatch was considered vulnerable like Bennett and six-term Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, who lost in last month's Indiana GOP primary. But Hatch got a huge endorsement from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who said he would need Hatch in the Senate if he wins the presidency. 
 
 Romney easily won his final presidential primary Tuesday as GOP voters in Utah relished the chance to show their support for the Brigham Young University graduate. 
 
 Hatch seemed to have an answer to every criticism in his quest for a seventh term. For those who said that 36 years in office was enough, he said that he wouldn't be running again if it weren't for the opportunity to serve as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee if the GOP wins control of the Senate. He also announced it would be his last term. 
 
 For those who said he wasn't conservative enough, he gravitated to the right with his comments and his votes, scoring a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union in 2010 and 2011. His lifetime rating of 89 percent from the ACU would place Hatch among the Senate's most conservative lawmakers, but Hatch at times took stands that didn't sit well with the right. He worked with the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to establish a health insurance program for poor and moderate-income children. He also voted to establish a prescription drug benefit under Medicare and to rescue financial firms facing bankruptcy without government help. 
 
 Liljenquist, 37, a relative newcomer to the Utah political scene, seized on voters' concerns about the growing national debt and tried to make the case that Hatch had been a major contributor to that debt. 
 
 Hatch was widely viewed as most vulnerable when about 4,000 GOP stalwarts gathered at the state's nominating convention in April. Delegates at the convention tend to be more conservative than the GOP electorate, and the Hatch campaign team spent months trying to generate a new crop of delegates. That work paid off, with the large majority of delegates being new to the process. In the end, Hatch won 59.2 percent of the delegates, just shy of the 60 percent he needed to avoid a runoff with Liljenquist. 
 
 The Hatch campaign included many of the state's top political consultants and strategists. It also hired some of the tea party activists who had helped generate Sen. Mike Lee's victory two years ago. 
 
 With the primary victory, Hatch was a huge favorite to win the general election in November against Democratic candidate Scott Howell. 
 
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 Freking reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Beth Fouhy in New York and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| FILE - In this Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016 file photo, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney talks with reporters in New York. Former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden is encouraging former... (Associated Press) 
 
 PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Former Vice President Joe Biden has encouraged onetime GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney to run for the Senate in Utah if longtime Republican incumbent Orrin Hatch decides to retire next year. 
 
 Biden made the recommendation to Romney on Friday evening at the Utah resort where Romney was hosting an annual invitation-only business and politics summit. 
 
 The Biden-Romney event, like most of the discussions and speeches at the gathering, was closed to reporters. But people who were there confirmed the conversation and described it as a warm, bipartisan talk. 
 
 Romney did not give any indication he was considering a run, should Hatch, 83, decide not to run again next year, said one person in attendance, Maryland videographer Dean Dykema. 
 
 "Mitt didn't have a chance to ask many questions because Joe pretty much took over the show," Dykema said. 
 
 Hatch, who has been in office since 1977, has said he hasn't decided if he'll seek another term but he might step aside if Romney ran. 
 
 The 70-year-old former Massachusetts governor now lives in Utah, where he's remained popular as the man who led a turnaround of the scandal-plagued 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and as a prominent Mormon businessman and politician in a state that's home to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 
 
 In April, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he reached out to Romney about running for Hatch's seat, but said he'd support the longtime senator if he decided to run again. 
 
 Hatch has said that he hopes everyone in Utah could get behind Romney and avoid a divisive primary contest like the one in 2010 that ousted his close friend, the late Utah Republican Sen. Robert Bennett. Bennett was defeated by a tea party-backed Republican, Mike Lee. 
 
 On Friday in Utah, Romney and Biden did not discuss the 2012 election where they ran on opposing tickets, but Biden did discuss the 2016 election. 
 
 He made some comments critical of President Donald Trump, but said he felt his own party and its candidate Hillary Clinton failed to connect with some key voting blocs, including millennials and those in working-class states where Biden was sent as a surrogate for the campaign. 
 
 Biden also discussed a need for bipartisanship in Congress, lamenting how Republicans and Democrats don't sit together anymore in the Capitol dining room, and spoke of his efforts to improve cancer research, a cause he has focused on since his son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, died in 2015 of brain cancer.
– The Tea Party failed to claim another victim in Utah after Sen. Orrin Hatch easily won the state's Republican primary. Hatch—facing his first primary challenge since taking office in 1976—beat former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist after spending close to $10 million on advertising, and building one of the biggest campaign operations Utah has ever seen, reports AP. Mitt Romney, to nobody's surprise, scored upwards of 90% in Utah's Republican presidential primary, the final primary before the convention. In New York, Rep. Charles Rangel survived a tough re-election fight to win the Democratic primary, despite concerns about his age and ethics, reports Politico. The 82-year-old Harlem politician, who was censured by the House 18 months ago for ethics violations, was more than 5 points ahead of state Sen. Adriano Espaillat with 85% of precincts reporting. In another House race in New York, state lawmaker Hakeem Jeffries scored a resounding win over New York City Councilman Charles Barron, a former Black Panther who received a controversial endorsement from David Duke.