Cannon combines dreaming, analysis
The calf nearly froze to death, but Cannon's two young sons, Matt and John, came to its rescue. The boys wrapped it in their mother's heating pads and coaxed it back to health.
Cannon decided two things when he heard the story. One, the family needed to cut its herd because he was gone too often and, two, he would come home from Congress when he felt his influence begin to wane.
His theory faces a test Tuesday when Cannon will try to fend off challenger Matt Throckmorton in the Republican primary.
These aren't uncharted waters for Cannon, but they are unfamiliar.
Until this year, the four-term congressman had never won less than 61 percent of the votes at the GOP convention, and it had been six years since he faced a primary challenge.
He still topped Throckmorton, 58 percent to 42, at this spring's Republican convention, but national groups opposed to Cannon's proposed immigration bills saw the slight slippage — which resulted in a primary because Cannon didn't break 60 percent — as a sign their issue has traction, and Throckmorton continues to pound on Cannon over immigration.
That doesn't make it a slam dunk, however.
Cannon has been attacked on billboards and in radio ads and e-mail campaigns paid for by national lobbying groups. He bristles at the broadsides, which paint him as soft on borders.
Both sides want to reform American immigration policy. Cannon wants to streamline documentation and employment opportunities. His opponents seek tougher borders and tough stands on illegal activity.
With that backdrop, if the agricultural jobs (AgJOBS) bill passes this fall, it could provide a boost for a second, larger immigration reform bill with Cannon's name on it.
"When my influence stops rising, when I'm not able to do more, I'll leave" Congress, he says. If those bills pass, "my influence will rise."
It's no surprise Cannon is in the middle of controversy or is the center of an ambitious project.
Cannon is an excitable man smitten with big ideas.
He is the son of Adrian and Pauline Cannon. His father was a dreamer who bounced between blue-collar and white-collar jobs and even ran a bookstore near the LDS temple in Los Angeles. Pauline, who is alive and living in Salt Lake City, is the opposite, very practical.
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