History
Bennet 2010
The conventional wisdom is that CMV started with the Bennet race in 2010. Bob Bennett was the incumbent Senator in Utah and was expected to coast easily to victory that year. Bennett had two primary competitors in 2010, Mike Lee and one other. Some will say the spark in 2010 was the fact that Bennet lost at convention. The reality is that the spark was the fact that the convention system could be gamed - a realization that came to light in the 2010 race.
Club for Growth organized in 2010 to pack the caucuses with opponents to Bennett. Because of this effort, Bennet failed to make it into the second round of voting in 2010. The other guy won, but failed to get 60%. Mike lee and the other guy went to a primary. Mike Lee prevailed int he primary and became Utah's junior senator.
Hatch 2012
In 2012, Orrin Hatch took the hint and worked to pack the caucuses with his own supporters. Dan Liljenquist barely got enough votes to survive into a primary election, but lost decisively then. Freedomworks tried to pack the caucus with their own supporters and to game the system, but their efforts were leaked and the effort backfired.
CMV 2013
In 2013 Count My Vote launched a ballot initiative to replace the caucus system with direct primaries. The initiative was virtually assured of success since unaffiliated voters make up a large percentage of likely voters in Utah and the majority of Republicans don't participate in the caucus system.
In the face of the certain success of CMV, Thomas Wright began discussions with CMV to seek a compromise. CMV proposed that if the convention threshold were raised to 70%, they would drop the initiative. Thomas Wright brought the proposal to the SCC, but activists within the party (in particular Lisa Shepherd) worked hard to convince SCC members to reject the compromise. The consensus was that 67% was a good percentage, but the effort to compromise failed and CMV went forward with the ballot initiative.
SB54
Confronted with the eminent success of CMV, Senator Curt Bramble launched a legislative solution to stop CMV and save the caucus system. The legislation known as SB54 would allow a signature path to the primary ballot, in exchange for CMV pulling itself out of contention. The legislation passed and the compromise worked. The caucus system survived.
First Lawsuit