As 2022 winds down, Utah’s newly elected and re-elected lawmakers now pivot from campaigning to legislating. And while many are seasoned regulars on Capitol Hill, some take on the titles of representative or senator for the first time.

With the recent shuffling of district boundaries through redistricting, the Republican supermajority in the 75-seat House and 29-seat Senate bulked up even more from November’s midterm election – underscoring that Utah is mostly a red state with a few concentrated pockets of blue.

At last vote count, House Republicans had gained three seats, expanding their 58 seats to 61 while Democrats dropped from 17 to 14. 

In the Senate, Republicans continue to hold 23 seats to the Democrats’ six. 

A whopping 32 of the 91 seats up for grabs this season had candidates running unopposed in the general election, indicative of the difficulty in fielding Democratic candidates to challenge Republicans in some areas. 

But two of those unopposed races involved Democrats in Utah’s decidedly blue urban districts where Republicans have little hope of getting the win.

Albeit lopsided with Democrats holding fewer than 20 percent of the Legislature’s seats, the imbalance surprisingly has not rendered the minority party totally ineffective.

Reaching across the aisle?

Incoming Democratic Senator Jen Plumb recognizes the need to reach across the partisan divide.

“As a superminority, you have to rely on relationships. So I’ve been working really hard to build those,” Plumb said recently by phone.

Plumb, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah and an attending physician at Primary Children’s Hospital, may be new to the Senate but not to legislative activism in Utah’s halls of power. 

“I’ve worked on 14 bills that got passed before getting elected,” Plumb said.

After losing her brother to a heroin overdose in 1996, Plumb played a major role in efforts to make Naloxone readily available to prevent those deaths.

When someone told her they didn’t think she needed another title (Senator) – Plumb said that she agreed, but replied that she “really really needed the parking space.” 

Plumb was recently named assistant minority whip in the Senate Democratic Caucus, joining three other women in its remaining leadership positions. 

For Layton Republican Trevor Lee, this was his first campaign for elected office. As Davis County party delegates lurched further to the right, Lee managed to oust long time moderate incumbent Steve Handy.

Handy fought to hang on to his House District 16 seat by waging a write-in campaign that actually netted 35 percent of the vote this November – impressive for a write-in but far short of Lee’s 49 percent. Libertarian Brent Zimmerman peeled off 16 percent of the vote in that three-way race. 

At 31, Lee welcomes his new role and said he’s doing a lot of research to prepare. 

We caught up with him by phone recently as he was attending a conference with Glenn Beck and David Barton – two favorites of the Utah Eagle Forum. He also plans to attend upcoming American Legislative Exchange Council sessions in D.C.

“One thing I’m realizing is that relationships with other legislators are critical,” Lee said.

While “Democrats have been very kind,” Lee said he  hasn’t seen many good ideas come out of the party in a long time. “But on housekeeping issues I think we’ll definitely be able to reach across the aisle.”

Lee described himself as “very pro-parental choice” in education, clarifying that he supports teachers but opposes how administrators spend funding. 

He also backed last year’s HB 11 that  barred transgender girls from competing on female sports teams in grades K-12. 

“This year there’s probably going to be some other things to help protect children from abuse and gender mutilation,” Lee said. “Those will be considered controversial.” 

But when it comes to 2nd Amendment and pro-life legislation, Lee said “I’m 100 percent on board and they can always count on me with that stuff.”

We caught up with Plumb Saturday – she’d been attending the Genderevolution conference at Westminster Saturday with her daughter. 

“My daughter is transgender, so I have this lived experience,” Plumb said. “This kiddo thrives – she’s always a straight A student, does her own laundry, she’s just a great kid.” 

Plumb acknowledged that it’s “going to be hard for me to exist in that space and to hear people speak about our beloveds pretty heinously.”

But she believes last year’s transgender ban addresses a problem that doesn’t exist.

“I can tell you as a trauma doc for two-plus decades – and polling every single one of my colleagues at Primary Children’s – none of us have ever seen an injury related to a transgender athlete participating in sports,” Plumb said. 

So many bills, so little time

About 1,400 bills are expected to be filed for the 2023 session, dealing with a broad spectrum of needs and roughly $26 billion to allocate appropriately.

Plumb has her eye on the $288 million in opioid settlement funding coming to Utah over 18 years. She’d like to be part of charting the path to best spend those dollars.

She also hopes to decriminalize the use of fentanyl test strips, which she said are currently viewed as drug paraphernalia. 

“Are we encouraging drug use? No, we’re really just encouraging living,” Plumb said,  “just staying alive.”

She also plans to introduce a bill for Great Salt Lake license plates that would raise funds for organizations working to educate, raise awareness and develop policy to conserve water and preserve the shrinking lake.

Health care also registers high on her radar. 

“I’m interested in pediatric trauma programs being broadened statewide,” Plumb said, “so that those who are injured anywhere in the state can have access to our services.” 

Republican Rep. Ray Ward, a family physician in Bountiful, also got bumped by Davis County delegates at convention, but he’d gathered enough signatures to secure a spot on the June primary ballot where he came away with a win.

“There’s always a battle of who’s going to represent the Republican party,” Ward said. “So far, the majority of the voters have said yes, what you bring to the table is what we want – and I’ve won those elections.”

Ward hopes to pass legislation to revise the medical records system so that patients always have access to their personal information.

“If you stay within one healthcare system you’re good. But if you go to an Intermountain Clinic and then you land at the U of U emergency room and an HCA Hospital, none of that information will be there when you need it,” Ward said. And that means paying for new tests even though you might have just had them done, he added.

“It’s just not right. That information belongs to the patient,” Ward said.

He’d also like to increase funding for disability benefits, noting some people have languished on the waiting list for two decades.

“I’d like to find some way to have a better long-term funding mechanism,” Ward said.

Medicaid expansion needs a few tweaks as well, Ward added.

“One relates to contraception. Women on Medicaid can get it and it’s a big help,” Ward said. “Women who make a little too much to qualify for Medicaid may have to go to the Obamacare market, and often those plans are too expensive. So … they go without.”

Ward also anticipates big changes to Utah’s abortion law, underscoring the need for women to have easy access to contraception.

Ward said he expects multiple lawmakers to file bills dealing with Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scores that some financial institutions use to show investors how companies conduct business.

“I’m not running any of those, but there will be plenty of talk about it at the session,” Ward said.

Retired Ob-Gyn Rosemary Lesser won re-election this November in House District 10, making her the only Democratic lawmaker elected from districts north of Salt Lake County.

“I started preparing for the session before the (last) session even ended,” Lesser said in a recent phone interview, noting that expanding postpartum care beyond 60 days and raising the income threshold under Medicaid are two issues weighing heavily on her mind. 

Lesser was able to present those ideas to Gov. Spencer Cox’s team and then to fellow lawmakers during interim sessions.  

“I would love to see those two proposals in the Governor’s budget,” Lesser said. “It’s an important investment in the next generation of Utahns.”

She also refiled her bill to eliminate sales tax on groceries.

And as a physician who spent her entire career addressing women’s health care, Lesser sees several serious problems with Utah’s abortion ban, a trigger law currently held up in the courts and not yet in effect.

“When the trigger bill was drafted, it was rushed through without really any public input or medical input,” Lesser said. “The verbiage has the potential to be extraordinarily dangerous to women across our state, including women who may not even understand its implications.”

Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, a retired teacher and Democrat who has served in the House since 2001, saw her district recently reshaped to include portions of Millcreek as well as Murray and Holladay.

Moss said she plans to run her consent bill again, to teach students physical and emotional boundaries and to helpguard against sexual assault and violence.

The measure – which would require parents to opt in for their children to partipate -– failed late in last year’s session after a state School Board member characterized it as instruction on how to say yes to sex.

But Moss believes that “kids need to know this stuff for their future physical and emotional health.” 

A 2016 report compiled by the Utah Women & Leadership Project indicated that one in three Utah females had been sexually assaulted and one in six had been raped. Unfortunately many of those victims were children.

Moss said she’s also teaming again with Republican Sen. Todd Weiler on a bill to prevent suicide in correctional facilities. They co-sponsored a bill in 2018 that required jails to report numbers and causes of inmate deaths.

“Data showed that the majority of deaths were suicide and most occurred within two weeks of being incarcerated,” Moss said, noting at that point they’d only been charged with a crime but not convicted.

With jail death rates again on the rise, Moss said it’s time to better address the drug addictions and mental health issues that helped put those individuals behind bars.

Rough road ahead?

In spite of her longevity in the Legislature, Moss isn’t placing any bets on how the upcoming session will play out. With several new faces, she is anticipating some change.

“I’m going to prepare for the worst but hope for the best,” Moss said. “Politics is about relationships and results, and you can’t get results unless you have good relationships.” 

Plumb said she intends to build bridges, work hard and yes, even compromise when needed. 

“Better, not worse. That’s always my goal,” Plumb said.

Ward also plans to put in the effort required to get a massive amount of work done in a short period of time – while dealing with people from multiple backgrounds and philosophical viewpoints.

“All bills require a medium amount of work and some require a lot of work,” Ward said, adding that it often involves working with people who disagree with or dislike you. 

On Tuesday (Nov. 22) House Democrats are expected to elect their Caucus leaders. 

“Our goal is to have leadership who are able to negotiate with members of the majority,” Lesser said. “By coming up with good policy, the Democratic Caucus has been amazingly effective in bringing forth some very good bills that have been well received. We’re going to continue to push on those.”

And newcomer Lee hopes he can help block compromise on certain bills. 

“The incumbent (Handy) voted to reach across the aisle, and conservative legislators couldn’t count on him for a lot of important issues,” Lee said. “I feel like I will side with the more conservative body on those things that are controversial and are not housekeeping items. That will be important.”

Earlier this month, Republican lawmakers voted to keep Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Brad Wilson at the helm in 2023.