Utah
Three hurdles Utah governor’s Democratic challenger will need to overcome to pose a threat – Washington Examiner
Rep. Brian King (D-UT) is looking to overcome critical challenges in his battle to unseat Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) this November.
Utah is a red state where Republican voters outnumber Democrats by over a 3-to-1 margin. The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won the state was in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson secured a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. Utah’s last Democratic governor was Scott Milne Matheson Jr., who served until 1985.
During a recent interview with the Deseret News, King, who has served as a Democratic lawmaker in the state since 2010, said he sees cracks in the Republican coalition that could galvanize a surprise victory over Cox this November.
“How do you win the election? Well, one of the ways is we appeal to folks who are disillusioned and disenchanted with today’s Republican Party,” King said.
Overcoming Republican majorities
King thinks he has a shot at drawing a large number of independent voters in the state into his camp. There are 482,145 registered unaffiliated voters in Utah, double the number of 232,466 registered Democrats.
However, the number of unaffiliated voters, though significant, has been trending down in the state in recent years. The voting bloc made up 509,374 registered voters in Utah in 2020, signaling that the move toward political independence, though solid, might not be as vibrant as King needs to make up for Utah’s solid Republican majority.
King is also working to win over disgruntled Republicans who supported former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley over former President Donald Trump during the state’s presidential primary. After she lost the primary election to Trump, King’s campaign told Haley voters, ”Consider this a formal invitation to join us in this movement. You will be welcomed with open arms.”
Intraparty turmoil among Republicans in the state has given King another golden opportunity to speak to voters tired of partisan bickering among their own.
The Utah GOP has been embroiled in multiple conflicts this year. Colby Jenkins mounted a challenge to Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-UT) and shocked the establishment by coming within inches of toppling the incumbent Republican. A recount and lawsuit to the state’s highest court ended in a razor-thin loss for Jenkins. He was 176 votes short of winning his primary, and Jenkins’s concerns over state election laws that allowed over a thousand ballots to be disqualified from being counted led him to declare the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling “undermines fundamental voting rights and sets a troubling precedent for future elections.”
Meanwhile, a gubernatorial challenge against Cox from a Republican colleague has set off shock waves within the state’s GOP. Rep. Phil Lyman (R-UT) won over 60% of delegate support during the GOP’s state nominating convention earlier this year. While Cox became his party’s gubernatorial nominee by winning the state’s primary, Lyman alleged party rules garnered him the win and launched a lawsuit against Cox in the Utah Supreme Court. Since losing his battle in court, the representative has gone to make a bid against Cox that is unaffiliated with the GOP and has been condemned by party leaders.
King has been strategic in building bridges with the Lyman camp, taking help wherever he can get it to win in a Republican-dominated state.
“I’ve never talked less about political party than I have in this election,” King said after Lyman suggested Republicans would be better off voting for the Democrat than supporting another Cox term. “We are building a coalition of pragmatists in this campaign.”
The two even teamed up last week in a joint campaign ad to tell voters there is one thing they agree on: “Spencer Cox should not be our next governor,” the pair said in unison.
The partnership ruffled feathers in the state’s establishment GOP, which warned, “We condemn Phil Lyman’s endorsement and promotion of Brian King, which will only benefit Democrat candidates whose extreme policies are out of step with Utahns.”
“Not-so-clever clickbait videos attempting to divide Republicans against each other only serve to remind us what is at stake,” Utah GOP Chairman Rob Axson continued in a post to X. “Utahns must not fall for it.”
Although King has seized on the GOP bickering, it is unlikely to fuel the momentum he needs to blow over Cox, who enjoys high favorability ratings among Utahns. The incumbent governor won the election by nearly 33 percentage points in 2020. Cox now enjoys the trappings of power that he can use to his advantage. He has had four years to build rapport with voters and donor support, while his high-profile status as governor gives him automatic access to the press.
Even King admitted he faces a “David versus Goliath kind of a situation.”
Matching centrist rhetoric with centrist policies
Moreover, King has indicated he is not willing to compromise on leftist positions many Utah conservatives might find distasteful, even if they are dissatisfied with the status quo of Republican politics.
King’s rhetoric is centrist. “Political balance is incredibly important,” he said. “If you have one party controlling both the executive and the legislative branches for 40 years … you’re going to not have the best results in terms of policies and priorities and a vision that takes into account all the perspectives and all the diversity of the state of Utah.”
His talking points are important in a state that prides itself on centrist politics.
Although Utah is firmly within the GOP’s grasp, top Republicans in the state are centrist-leaning. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) has remained fiercely critical of former President Donald Trump, the most high-profile Republican in the nation. Meanwhile, Cox has maintained a bipartisan rhetoric and, as chairman of the National Governors Association, launched a “Disagree Better” campaign aimed at reducing polarization in politics. Cox also declined to endorse Trump’s bid for reelection until late July.
But though King’s words convey the bipartisan mood Utahns might support, his policy positions could push his chances of booting Cox out of office further out of reach. The Democrat supports a legal right to abortion up to the point of viability, or around 24 weeks, when the baby is able to survive outside the womb.
Recent surveys indicate a majority or near majority of Utahns hold a more centrist position on the matter.
Nearly half of Utahns said abortion should only be legal in cases of rape, incest, and threats to mothers’ health in 2022. Over 50% of Utah registered voters favored a ban on elective abortions and endorsed allowing them only under limited circumstances in another survey.
King’s unwillingness to shift to the center on issues such as abortion could cost him votes in a state that bleeds red.
Reaching the Mormon voting bloc
King has made his Mormon faith a pillar of his campaign for governor, a strategic move in a state that holds the highest concentration of Latter-day Saints in the country.
“I’m a Democrat because of my faith, not despite it,” a post pinned to the top of his X platform states.
However, the Mormon church appears to be on the decline in the state. In 2020, over 60% of Utahns subscribed to the Latter-day Saints community. Three years later, that number dropped to 42%.
Additionally, Mormons heavily lean Republican. Seventy-seven percent described themselves as part of the GOP, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center.
Nationwide, support in the Latter-day Saints community for top Democrats appears to be dropping. A recent poll showed that in 2023, 1 in 5 Mormons approved of President Joe Biden, down from nearly a third of support in 2021.
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The Democratic representative is headed to a debate with Cox on Sept. 11.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the King and Cox campaigns for comment.
Utah
‘2.5 minutes of terror’: Passengers sue Delta, alleging crew flew into dangerous weather despite warnings, injuring dozens
Twenty passengers allege the airline ignored repeated weather warnings before the flight hit severe turbulence that sent dozens of people to hospitals
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Delta airplane travels down the runway at Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City last March. Passengers on a Delta flight last July are suing the airline over injuries suffered because of violent turbulence.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Environmental Protection Agency awarded Utah and Salt Lake County a total of $3.5 million in grants to assess potentially polluted properties for eventual cleanup and redevelopment.
The agency announced a $2 million grant to Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality and $1.5 million to Salt Lake County to conduct environmental assessments and inventory brownfield sites for cleanup. Brownfields are sites that may be difficult to redevelop or expand because of “the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant,” according to the agency.
“These brownfields grants will help Utah communities clean up contaminated sites and unlock opportunities for redevelopment and investment,” EPA Regional Administrator Cyrus Western said in a news release announcing the grants earlier this week. “By transforming underused properties into community assets, EPA is helping create healthier neighborhoods and stronger local economies.”
The two grants awarded to Utah and Salt Lake County are among more than $248 million awarded to nearly 200 communities nationwide for brownfield assessment and cleanup. Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality plans to focus the resources on several areas in Ogden, Heber City and Fillmore, among others, according to Bill Rees, who leads Utah’s brownfield cleanup program.
“What we do is work to secure the funding and then begin to reach out to our communities across the state, say, ‘Listen, there’s opportunity to do some assessment work in your community if you’re interested,’ and then work with our rural partners, work with our urban partners to see if there are sites that will fit that bill,” he told KSL.
The state has received similar grants in the past, and Rees said the money can help local governments determine what to do with ailing properties such as old schools, hospitals or private property that have gone to waste.
“Is there asbestos in it, or is there hazardous material in it? Or could there be something that’s impacting the soil or the groundwater, and a policymaker needs to make a decision?” asked Rees. “Knowledge allows you to make good decisions.”
The $1.5 million awarded to Salt Lake County is the largest brownfields assessment grant the county has ever received, according to a county press release.
“This grant is a real win for our communities,” said Mayor Jenny Wilson. “This funding will let us do vital environmental work on a larger scale and in more neighborhoods. It reflects exactly the kind of partnership between local and federal government that gets results for residents.”
The county grant funds will be used to help create cleanup plans in three areas, including a vehicle storage yard in Salt Lake City’s Ballpark Neighborhood, a 4.26-acre vacant lot in Millcreek and a small commercial building in Magna that was damaged during an earthquake in March 2020, according to the EPA.
Contributing: Don Brinkherhoff
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City issued red flag warning Friday morning as emergency workers continued to battle one of the state’s largest wildfires in its history.
The red flag warning, issued when critical fire warnings are occurring or imminent, was to be in place through midnight Saturday.
“This is the FIRST Particularly Dangerous Situation Red Flag Warning issued in NWS Salt Lake City history. This is an exceptionally rare event,” the federal agency said in its warning.
A map of the area under the warning covered much of central and southwest Utah, with an area of the southwest, central and southern mountains also outlined as “particularly dangerous red flag.”
The particularly dangerous area includes the Cottonwood Fire, near the town of Beaver, which started Monday and had grown to covering almost nearly 71,000 acres by Thursday, 15 News reported. The fire forced evacuations.
The NWS warned that gusty winds and dry conditions would lead to rapid fire growth.
Utah also was dealing with the Iron Fire, which started June 19, and nearly destroyed the town of Eureka. The fire was about 27% contained Friday morning.
The fire danger led Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to issue executive order restricting fireworks statewide during the July 4 holiday, which marks the nation’s 250th birthday this year. The ban is in effect through July 5.
“Nothing about this decision was easy,” Cox said in a statement issued by his office Thursday.
“This is unlike anything we’ve seen in recent memory. We’re seeing fires spread farther and faster under conditions that defy historical expectations” Jamie Barnes, Utah state forester and director of the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, added in the statement.
Cox allowed cities and local communities to set aside areas where fireworks could be safely used. The city of Provo announced it would enforce a citywide prohibition on fireworks and would not designate a safe area for fireworks.
“This year is different,” Provo Mayor Marsha Judkins said in a statement. “The wildfire danger facing our community is real, and protecting lives, homes, and our natural spaces must come first.”
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