More candidates are earning a spot on the ballot
There have been a few surprises in previous years at Utah Republican Party conventions.
In 2003, then-Lt. Gov. Olene Walker became governor after previous officeholder Mike Leavitt left to head the Environmental Protection Agency and she ran for a term in her own right the next year. Despite her 84% approval rating statewide, delegates picked Jon Huntsman Jr. and Nolan Karras to run in the primary, making Walker the first sitting chief executive to lose election to the office in 48 years. Huntsman ultimately won.
When U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett ran for a fourth term in 2010, he had an endorsement from Mitt Romney but didn’t make it onto the GOP primary ballot. He came in third after a surge of Tea Party opposition, becoming the first U.S. senator representing Utah to fail to get his party’s nomination since Democrats rejected Sen. William King in 1940.
Neither of the second- or third-place finishers in 2010, businessman Tim Bridgewater and attorney Mike Lee, received the minimum 60% of delegate votes to win the nomination outright at the convention. Lee won the primary and general election and is now running for a third term.
This year, the GOP state convention is being held on Saturday, April 23, but three candidates for U.S. senator already know they’ll be on the primary ballot no matter how delegates vote.
Since the passage of Senate Bill 54, candidates can get on the primary ballot by winning a specified number of delegate votes at the convention or by gathering a specified number of signatures from voters. They also can take both paths.
Four other candidates have filed to run as Republicans in the Senate race but have not collected signatures. They are Evan Barlow, Loy Brunson, Jeremy Friedbaum and Laird Fetzer Hamblin.
Two paths to the primary
The dual-path nominating system stemmed from the Count My Vote citizens’ initiative to increase civic engagement and voter participation by dropping the caucus-convention process to pick candidates and implementing a direct primary election in its place.
SB54, which was a compromise between the initiative’s organizers and lawmakers, was passed by the Utah Legislature in 2014 and signed into law by Gov. Gary Herbert.
Rich McKeown, a Count My Vote leader, said the reason for the initiative “was all about voter participation and the historic and dramatic drop in participation that had occurred between 1960 and 2016.”
Utah went from being in the top five states in voter turnout to being in the bottom ten because of the antiquated nature of the caucus-convention system, McKeown said. Delegates were picking more than 80% of the candidates and there were limited number of primaries, he said.
In addition, an exclusive caucus-convention system discriminates against military service members, police officers, firefighters, families with small children and others whose circumstances restrict them from going to delegate meetings and the convention, McKeown said.
He said the SB54 dual path has allowed more people to engage in primary elections and the law, along with voting by mail, has increased voter participation and access to the ballot.
Count My Vote attempted to do a second initiative that would have reduced the number of signatures required by the law to get on the ballot but the effort failed. Keep My Voice, a group that wanted to return to the caucus-convention system only, persuaded enough people who signed the initiative to remove their names, which reduced the number of remaining signatures to below the required threshold to get on the ballot.
In addition, the Utah Republican Party waged a court battle to overturn the SB54 compromise, alleging that requiring it to allow candidates to qualify for the primary ballot through the alternative signature-gathering path violated its freedom of association under the First Amendment. A panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument and upheld the law in a 2-1 decision handed down in March 2018.
Increasing voter participation
Jason Perry, the director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah, said there is a benefit to taking both tracks, including for candidates who already have a spot on the ballot. He compared going to the convention to attending a family reunion where there will be people who are not your fans “but you still go because that’s your family.”
“It is a necessary step in my opinion,” Perry said. “You might not win. Several candidates go into the convention process knowing they are unlikely to be No. 1 but it’s still a stop they need to make.”
He added that not attending could open up a candidate to criticism from the other side.
“It’s about not giving ammunition to the opponents and it’s about staying connected to your party, as well,” Perry said.
A disadvantage for candidates is the cost of the signature route.
“It’s just really expensive to get signatures,” Perry said. “Most elected officials would rather spend money on getting their message out and improving their name ID. We largely see the candidates with bigger races hiring people to get the signatures.”
The GOP convention delegates tend to be more conservative than the GOP rank-and-file, while Democratic delegates skew a little more to the left than their party members, according to Perry.
He also said the convention winner doesn’t necessarily win in the primary.
In 2016, Herbert came in second to Jonathan Johnson in the contest for the nomination for governor, then won 72% of the primary vote.
John Curtis ran in a 2017 special election to represent Utah’s 3rd Congressional District and prevailed in the primary with 43% of the vote against two opponents, nominee Chris Herrod and Tanner Ainge.
In the 2018 U.S. Senate race, candidate Mitt Romney came in second to opponent Mike Kennedy in the delegate vote and got 71% of the vote in the primary.
The three, who all collected signatures and won in the general election, were more moderate than their primary opponents, Perry said.
The enactment of the dual path system has been a benefit for Utahns, he said.
“We have seen without question an increased variety of options for voters in the state,” Perry said. “It has increased voter participation because people are showing up for the candidate they like more than just the candidate that was given to them.”
Battling for the nomination
Delegates will gather at the Mountain America Expo Center to hear from the candidates.
In the Senate race, Lee, who is the heavy campaign favorite, is encouraging voters to keep him in office so he can continue to work for constitutionally limited government.
Edwards and Isom, who both say it’s time for a change, also are campaigning on a platform of limited government. The two challengers have promised to serve no more than two terms in the Senate if elected and have criticized Lee for seeking a third term.
Lee criticized Bennet in the 2010 campaign for serving three terms and has supported 12-year term limits for members of Congress. However, he said in a 2017 blog post on his website that his support of term limits does not mean he will voluntarily impose one on himself.
Instead, Lee wrote, he will continue the fight for term limits and abide by them when they are in the Constitution.
Edwards likes Utah’s nomination process, which she calls one of the most unique in the country, as well as the routes to the ballot.
“Our caucus/convention system provides voters with an opportunity to have their voices represented by delegates who genuinely listen,” Edwards said in an email.
“Paired with increasingly accessible routes to candidacy like petitions, supporting the caucus/convention system’s longevity will keep Utah at the forefront of effective elections. Convention delegates are some of the nation’s most committed and engaged citizens, spending hours meeting and vetting candidates. Precinct, county, and state conventions give Utahns everywhere a chance to have their voice heard.”
Isom said both the convention and signature routes are essential and they provide an opportunity for candidates to meet Utahns statewide.
“I chose to go both paths because, first and foremost, I value the opinion of core Republican voters,” she said. “I recognize that I’m the underdog here and I need as many as possible to know who I am and share my message.”
As an incumbent, Lee has financial and practical advantages, Isom said. In addition, the convention process is tilted in his favor, she said.
Speaking slots for candidates were set at five or six minutes at past conventions but are limited to three minutes each this year, according to Isom, adding that “you can barely say ‘hello’ in three minutes.”
Utah Democrats also are holding their convention on April 23.
Democrat Kael Weston, a former U.S. State Department official who tried unsuccessfully to unseat Republican Rep. Chris Stewart in 2020, and unaffiliated candidate Evan McMullin, who ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential race, also are running for the U.S. Senate seat.
Two Libertarians, Lucky Bobo and James Arthur Hansen, and Tommy Williams of the Independent American Party, also filed to run for the seat.
In an unconventional effort, some Democrats are trying to convince their delegates to keep Weston off the ballot and instead unite behind McMullin, who they believe could defeat Lee. Former Congressman Ben McAdams, who is heading the charge, has said for independents, Democrats and moderate Republicans need to join together path to push back on a “far-right surge” in Utah.
According to a Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics survey conducted in March, 67% of Republican voters who plan to vote in the June primary would choose Lee. Edwards got 19% support; Barlow, a supply chain management professor at Weber State University, came in third with 6%; and Isom had 4%, the Deseret News reported.
Dan Jones & Associates conducted the poll of 804 registered Utah voters and asked the 484 respondents planning to vote in the primary who among the seven Republicans running for the Senate seat would they vote for. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.45 percentage points.
The poll also looked at how Lee, Weston and McMullin would come out in a three-candidate general election. Of the 804 voters, 43% said they most likely would vote for Lee, 19% supported McMullin and 11% would pick Weston, according to the Deseret News.
Another 3% would vote for someone else and 24% were undecided.
This poll had a margin of error of was plus or minus 3.45 percentage points.
The 24% figure is typical for this far out from a general election and it could go in any direction, Perry said.
“It leaves some room for several of these potential candidates to get some of those ‘don’t knows,’ ” he said.
