Breaking: Has Jon Greiner Officially Dropped Out of the Senate 18 Race?

Assuming the data on the Lt. Governor's web page is accurate, it appears that Chief/Senator Greiner may have made his decision

The Deseret News is running a chirpy story this morning, touting the 2010 legislature's passage of new legal provisions requiring that 2010 General Election candidates disclose possible conflicts of interest.

The DNews invites its readers to navigate to the Lt. Governor's newly-designed page where all such statements are listed and displayed. The list contained thereon purportedly "includes all candidates who have filed a declaration of candidacy for the 2010 election":

• 2010 Candidates

Being the curious type, we scrolled down the page to Jon Greiner's Senate District 18, where we stumbled upon this interesting notation:

Jon J Greiner (W) - District 18

In the legend at the top of the same web page we find this additional explanatory notation:

(W) = Withdrawal

Back on 3/25/10 we posted this article, noting that Senator/Chief Greiner was faced with a difficult choice, i.e., either to resign his Ogden Police Chief job, or withdraw from the State Senate race. Assuming the data on the Lt. Governor's web page is accurate, it appears that Chief/Senator Greiner may have made his decision, leaving the Weber County Republican Party with the politically flip-flopping D'oh Boy himself (Stuart Reid) as the only legally declared candidate for the 2010 Senate 18 Republican nomination.

Speaking as a warhorse Weber County Republican, your blogmeister will offer that it only hurts when we laugh.

We will make an effort this morning to contact Jon Greiner, to verify whether the Governor's information is indeed correct; and we'll be sure to report back here by way of an update with any new information we are able to glean.

Nevertheless, we're going to take a wild guess, at least for the moment, and assume that even for a few of our WCF GOP readers, Democratic party candidate Betty Sawyer is looking like a mighty attractive Senate 18 alternative right about now.

Don't let the cat get your tongues, O Gentle Ones.

Update 3/31/10 11:40 a.m.: Thanks to a tip from gentle reader Mass Media in our lower comments section, we learn that the Standard-Examiner went online @ 11: 10 a.m. with a Scott Schwebke story confirming Greiner's withdrawal form the Senate 18 race:

• Greiner drops re-election bid for state senate

It only hurts when we laugh, as we said.

Update 3/31/10 11:55 a.m.: In response to our attempt to reach Senator Greiner for confirmation of this story earlier this morning, we're now in receipt of Jon's detailed and candid explanatory public statement, which he graciously transmitted to us by email only moments ago:

• Jon Greiner Statement of Withdrawal of Candidacy

We'd also like to express our appreciation to Sen. Greiner for promptly getting back to us with this.