Imagine competing in a football game where one team has only five players on the field compared to the opposing team’s full squad of 11. The outcome of that game would be relatively easy to predict.
Welcome to the 3rd Congressional District where Republican candidates have consistently trounced their Democratic counterparts – with the exception of Bill Orton, who won three terms and represented the District from January 1991 to December 1996.
Those were different times.
Fast forward to 2022 where two-term incumbent Republican John Curtis faces off with Democratic challenger Glenn Wright – a Vietnam veteran who has served on the Summit County Council since 2017.
On his party’s website, Wright explained why he jumped into the lopsided contest.
“I am running for Congress in a heavily Republican district,” Wright said. “This is an opportunity for me, as a Democrat, to listen to a diverse community of interests and bring an alternative path to solving common problems facing our society.”
Campaign cash clash
In a hard-fought race in 2017, Curtis – former mayor of Provo – managed to nab the U.S. House seat vacated by Jason Chaffetz, who left to become a commentator for Fox News.
The mild-mannered Curtis seems somewhat moderate for the Utah Republican Party that lurched further to the right this year. But if campaign contributions gauge support, Curtis has nothing to worry about.
As of Oct. 19, he had amassed over $2 million from a multitude of Political Action Committees and individuals, and had spent in excess of $1.8 million as he battled his way through convention, primary and general election challenges.
In contrast, Wright raised just over $16,000 and spent $12,100.
According to OpenSecrets.org, top industry donations for Curtis flowed from 1) pharmaceuticals/health products, 2) lobbyists, 3) telecom services, 4) real estate, and 5) oil and gas. PAC contributions made up almost 65 percent of his total receipts.
For Wright’s much smaller stash of cash, OpenSecrets logged 1.25 percent from PACs, 65 percent from small individual donors and 25 percent from large individual donors. Wright also contributed $1,400 of his own funds to the daunting effort to unseat Curtis.
On the issues
During an Oct. 6 debate hosted by the Utah Debate Commission on the BYU campus, Curtis and Wright went head-to-head on several issues without calling each other names, reminiscent of times when politicians could disagree without being disagreeable.
When moderator Natalie Gochnour asked about the current POLITICAL DYSFUNCTION, Wright decried the use of cheap soundbites to belittle an opponent.
“We can agree what the problems are,” Wright said of the common ground he manages to find with most people. But “we may not agree on the solutions.”
That’s where dialogue plays an important part, Wright said. ”But you don’t start that dialogue by calling somebody a nasty name.”
Curtis defended his own demeanor and relationship-building in Congress.
“If anybody rolls back the tapes, looks at my social media, looks at my statements, they’ll find I go out of my way to speak in a way that protects the relationship with people that I disagree with,” Curtis said, adding that they generally return the kindness.
On INFLATION, Curtis laid the blame on government spending and excessive regulation.
“We’re putting way too much money into the economy and we’re over-regulating businesses so the free market can’t work to get goods there,” Curtis said. “D.C. can fix this – and they need to start to turn down that faucet of money.”
But Wright had a different take, recommending mitigation for individuals who have been seriously impacted by rising costs
“One of the things Congress did recently was to start negotiating prices on pharmaceuticals and over time reduce out of pocket expenses for medicare,” Wright said.
Wright also recommended reducing U.S. reliance on foreign oil: “We do that in the long term by electrifying our transportation infrastructure.”
The gap between the two candidates widened further on the subject of ABORTION.
Curtis defended the June 24, 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that got rid of a woman’s Constitutional right to an abortion and pushed the issue back to the individual states.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a dozen states have already banned abortion. Utah’s trigger law that banned almost all abortions has not taken effect due to a court challenge.
“I get it, if you’re a woman it stinks,” Curtis said. “Most of these legislators are men, I wish it was other than that. I wish as a man that I didn’t have to make this decision. I wish women could make this decision.”
But Wright considers the current patchwork of abortion access across the U.S. as a healthcare issue: “Putting women in jeopardy in a significant portion of our states is not a good idea.”
Curtis spoke against TRANSGENDER girls being allowed to play on girls’ sports teams, calling it a matter of “fairness.”
“I have four daughters. I do not want a man competing with them in sports. If it’s more complicated than that, I’m happy to sit down and talk about it,” Curtis said. “But I don’t see where there’s a place for that.”
But Wright views Utah’s new ban on transgender girls participating in girls’ sports as legislative overreach based in fear and ignorance.
“The Utah High School (Activities) Association had rules, the NCAA has rules and various sports organizations have rules” that already speak to the issue, Wright said. “The really bad part of the bill was that it came from a segment of our society that is afraid of the LGBTQ community and just found transgender folks as the latest whipping person.”
Curtis and Wright also diverged on STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS.
“What President Biden did was wrong on many levels,” Curtis said. “Every one of those students not paying off student debt is out buying TVs and microwaves – and causing inflation to go up even more.”
But Wright described forgiving student debt as a “good thing” and advocated for lowering the costs of college.
“If you look historically, interest rates were very high – sometimes usurious. I know people who graduated with $25,000 worth of debt and now have $80,000,” Wright said.
Regarding Pres. Biden’s federal pardon for MARIJUANA possession, along with the need to declassify it as a schedule 1 drug, Wright and Curtis also give voters a clear choice.
“Excellent idea. I think marijuana use among adults is a victimless crime,” Wright said. “Most states now have either recreational or medical marijuana, but financing of those industries is almost impossible because of the class 1 status.”
But Curtis scoffed at the “victimless crime” notion, pointing to Colorado where he said crime and traffic accident statistics had worsened after marijuana use became legal.
“What the president did was an end run around Congress,” Curtis said. “A businessman once told me that if you want to get rid of a bad policy, enforce it to its fullest.”
Why so lopsided?
Utah’s Third Congressional District runs red as it sprawls across southern and eastern Utah – but also a tiny bit blue in Moab and newly added portions of Salt Lake County and Park City.
According to Nate Silver’s FiveThiryEight, all four of Utah’s Congressional Districts are now decidedly red. So the question really comes down to how badly Democrats will lose those races this November.
In 2021, Rex Facer chaired Utah’s first Independent Redistricting Commission, which functioned in an advisory capacity to the Legislature’s parallel work of redrawing boundaries.
At the end of the day, lawmakers scrapped most of the commission’s work.
“I think it’s clear that … they (lawmakers) had a strategy. If it was unintentional, it was done very well to strengthen the likelihood that Republican candidates would get elected,” Facer said recently by phone.
Facer believes that lawmakers aimed to strengthen the formerly competitive 4th Congressional District for Republicans by redirecting some of its Democratic votes to the overwhelmingly red 3rd District.
Democrat Ben McAdams narrowly won the 4th District race in 2018, only to lose to Republican Burgess Owens in 2020.
But Facer sees another way the state could become more balanced in representation.
”Voters in Utah need to vote for the candidate that they think best represents them, not the candidate who has the correct party identification,” Facer said. “Voters need to think carefully about who they’re electing. If we show that we care, we may be able to have a difference in the outcomes.”
Chris Karpowitz, who directs BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections & Democracy, attributed the lopsided nature of this year’s 3rd Congressional race to several factors.
“It’s a district that has been heavily Republican for a long period of time,” Karpowitz said. “The basic areas this district covers hasn’t had a Democratic representative since the early 90s with Bill Orton.”
Another factor could be how the Democratic Party’s brand or reputation is perceived in that region of the state, Karpowitz added.
“They haven’t run candidates in general who have been terribly well known or who have taken positions that would likely lead them to election,” he said.
Add to that the fact that this year is a midterm election and Democrats hold the White House – and the uphill climb gets even steeper.
“We’re facing significant inflation that’s on the minds of many people right now,” Karpowitz said. ”So it makes a tough job even tougher for Democratic candidates.”
But Karpowitz agreed that the Legislature’s recent redistricting solidified Republican advantages in all four Congressional districts.
“We could certainly draw districts to be more competitive. We could even draw three very red districts and one Democratic district if we wanted,” Karpowitz said. “But the state Legislature resisted the recommendations of the Independent Redistricting Commission that would have drawn the boundaries differently.”
