Morning Digest: Boogeyman Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz will resign from Congress

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● UT-03: On Thursday, Utah GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz announced that he was resigning from the House, effective June 30. Chaffetz, who surprisingly announced last month that he would not seek re-election, did not reveal why he was stepping down. However, The Salt Lake City Tribune says there are rumors Chaffetz is talking with Fox News about a job. In any case, Democrats won't be sad to see the House Oversight chair go: Chaffetz infamously delighted in aggressively looking into Hillary Clinton's emails, but showed absolutely none of the same zeal in going after Donald Trump.

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Trump carried Chaffetz's 3rd District, which includes Provo and much of the southeast corner of Utah, with 47 percent of the vote, while conservative independent Evan McMullin edged Clinton 24-23 for second place. This seat has been reliably red for decades, and it's unlikely Democrats will make a serious play for it in the upcoming special election, though Utah's apathy towards Trump could conceivably make things interesting.

However, it may take a long time before we know anything about the upcoming special election. As we've mentioned before, Utah law requires that "the governor shall issue a proclamation calling an election to fill the vacancy." That is all it says: There's nothing about when the special needs to be called, how the parties will choose their nominees, or even if the parties are allowed to nominate anyone. And it doesn't sound like this ambiguous law will get fixed for a while. Earlier this week, the GOP state House caucus threatened to sue Republican Gov. Gary Herbert if he didn't call a special session to allow them to clarify the special election rules.

State House Speaker Greg Hughes claims that the current law requires 328 days to hold the special election, while his caucus wants to shorten that to a more reasonable 180 days. Herbert says he wants the parties to pick their nominees through a primary, while GOP legislative leaders are considering having the nominees be chosen through conventions instead. We'll see if Chaffetz's departure speeds things along, or if this seat will be vacant until well into 2018.

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