Challengers take on five-term incumbent Chris Stewart in 2nd District race
As a five-term GOP incumbent in a heavily Republican state, U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart appears to be a sure winner in Utah’s 2nd Congressional District race.
In fact, FiveThirtyEight, a political poll aggregator, on Tuesday put the odds of the congressman retaining his seat at 99 to 1.
But his Democratic opponent, Nick Mitchell, isn’t giving up without a fight. The South Salt Lake resident believes he would be the best representative for the district.
Mitchell, who grew up in Utah, has a small tattooing business and is working on a new tattoo ink. As an innovator and scientist, he can see how and where to improve systems to make them run more smoothly, he said.
“The main difference versus me and every other opponent is I have actual solutions,” Mitchell told the Underground. “What I have is actual, tangible solutions that can be pretty bipartisan. They not be perfect. They may need a little bit of tweaking but at least it’s a start and it’s a solution and it’s a unique solution to me.”
The issues Utahns are most concerned about include economic resilience and inflation, water and the drought the state is experiencing, and women’s rights and abortion, he said. Workers’ rights, healthcare and environmental policies also are important, according to Mitchell.
Mitchell, who is Black, said two incidents prompted him to run. The first was when a motorist took exception to the Black Lives Matter message on his motorcycle while he was on a ride with his son, he said.
The driver yelled at him and he just ignored him, Mitchell said. The man then tried several times to hit him and his son with his truck but they managed to escape, Mitchell said.
He gave police the make and model of the truck, its temporary license plate and a description of the man and “they told me it wasn’t enough and then they blamed me and said there was nothing that they could do,” according to Mitchell.
“That was my first taste of the extreme partisanship that we are facing as a country,” he said.
The second incident was the violent protest on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump marched to the U.S. Capitol seeking to block certification of the presidential election results.
The decision by two Utah representatives, Stewart and fellow Republican Burgess Owens, to vote in support of an objection to Pennsylvania’s results “was not OK,” Mitchell said. He decided to take action.
“I’m the type of person who says ‘put up or shut up.’ So, I put up and I threw my hat in the ring,” he said.
A conservative state
Stewart also says he is the best person to represent the 2nd District in Congress.
“On the whole, Utah is a conservative state,” he said. “I represent those same conservative principles.”
His background as an Air Force pilot and owner and CEO of a small business that consulted on energy and the environment helps him understand the needs of people, giving him an advantage in his position, according to Stewart. The biggest concern of his constituents now is the economy, he said.
“Everywhere I go, it’s the same thing,” Stewart said. “It’s inflation. It’s the cost of energy. And that’s true of Republicans and independents and Democrats.”
Inflation is caused when the government creates and spends too much money and the way to combat it is to quit spending so much, Stewart said.
“If the Republicans take the House and the Senate, and I think both of those are increasingly likely, the most important thing we can do to help with inflation is put a brake on some of this excessive government spending we’ve seen in the last two years.”
Stewart also cited his knowledge about national security issues gained from years serving on the House Intelligence Committee as a plus.
“The Ukraine is a good example of the danger that we’re facing internationally right now and we need experienced leaders with a background in intelligence and military and international affairs,” Stewart said.
He added that other places of concern are the Gulf States, Iran and China.
In a debate this month for the 2nd District candidates, Stewart pushed back on Mitchell’s criticism about the Pennsylvania vote, saying he did recognize Joe Biden as president and had congratulated him within a few weeks of the election.
His one vote, which he cast because Pennsylvania violated the Constitution, would not have changed the results, the congressman added.
Also vying for the 2nd District seat are Cassie Easley of the Constitution Party and Jay Mcfarland of the United Utah Party.
Easley, an Enoch resident, says she wants the government to follow the Constitution.
Mcfarland, a podcast host, supports limited government, fiscal responsibility, protecting the environment and immigration reform, according to his website.
The 2nd Congressional District currently serves Salt Lake City and the largely rural western and southern portions of Utah, including St. George and Tooele.
The debate
A Utah Debate Commission poll conducted in September showed Stewart leading with about 50% of the polling and Mitchell next with nearly 31% and Easley had 5.7%. Mcfarland did not reach a threshold within the margin of error that would have allowed him to participate in the Oct. 14 debate.
At the debate – hosted by Southern Utah University Leavitt Center for Politics and Public Service in Cedar City and moderated by KSL’s Boyd Matheson – the candidates sparred over economic matters and trust in government, among other issues.
When asked what the government’s role should be in lifting economic burdens, Stewart focused on inflation and blamed the country’s “disastrous economic situation” on the Biden administration and Democratic leaders and on trillions of dollars of spending.
Easley said people need to get back to work and businesses need to be able to hire workers without being hampered by “having all the regulations and the high taxes so they can prosper and the community can prosper.”
Mitchell argued the country is not in a truly free market and gave as an example farmers, who he said are growing more food but seeing their profits shrink because middlemen who buy the produce and sell to grocery stores are profiting from the rate of inflation. He called for invoking antitrust laws so small businesses can have their fair share.
The three agreed there should be a reduction in government spending to reduce the nation’s $31 trillion debt. Mitchell did say “we should loosen our purse strings” in some areas, such as veterans’ health care.
Mitchell said a majority of Utahns thought Roe v. Wade was fine.
“They need to put it on the ballot and let the people decide like Kansas did,” he said of the abortion issue. “The people need to choose.”
In August, Kansans rejected by 59%-41% vote a ballot measure that would have removed abortion rights from the state’s constitution.
Restoring trust
The candidates also were asked what the government should be doing to regain the public’s trust.
Mitchell, who noted he has promised not to take money from PACs, said corporations should stay out of politics and the government should start addressing problems.
He also said transparency is “sorely needed” in Washington.
“I wish they would rely on facts and data, truth and transparency, instead of lies and misinformation,” Mitchell said.
Stewart said the greatest threat to the nation is no one knows what’s true anymore.
He also alleged congressional leaders and the White House had said inflation is transitory “when they knew it would be with us for years.”
“Be honest with us,” Stewart said. “We can take it.”
Easley said the government should follow the Constitution the way that it was written and it should stop making laws that are not in its scope.
At the end of the debate, the candidates were given the opportunity to make a closing statement.
Mitchell said he’s running for Congress to protect the people and to do what’s right.
Paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr., Mitchell said, “I have the audacity to believe that the people of Utah will pick a person, not a party. I have the audacity to believe that we could make America great for everyone. If you have the audacity to believe this, I humbly ask for your vote.”
Stewart said that many feel as if “the world has just been turned on its head.”
“Inflation, energy prices, the border, Afghanistan, the problems in Ukraine,” he said. The list goes on and on. We’re being led by people who can’t even identify what a woman is. How can we trust them? Conservative leadership is what’s essential to save our nations now. That’s what I represent and that’s what I want to continue to do in Congress.”
Easley said she is tired of watching the infighting between the two major parties and decided to stand up and be a representative of the people. She hopes that “people will see that choosing the Constitution over a political party will give the people what they need to be represented in the federal government.”
The ‘nationalization’ of issues
Leah Murray, a Weber State University political science and philosophy professor, said the issues 2nd District residents care about are the same issues that are important to Utahns in other parts of the state.
Among them are water issues, with a recent Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics showing 80% of the respondents are concerned about the extreme drought in the state and its impact on the Great Salt Lake, she said.
Utahns also are interested in what’s going on beyond state lines, according to Murray, who is academic director of Weber State University’s Walker Institute of Politics and Public Service.
“Basically, whatever matters to Americans writ large in the country is what’s mattering to Utahns locally,” she said.
Murray cites the contest for a U.S. Senate seat between Republican incumbent Mike Lee and independent challenger Evan McMullin as an example. McMullin is arguing the two parties are too polarized, Congress is dysfunctional and Lee is too close to former president Donald Trump, she said, while Lee is hammering on inflation, she said.
“So, I’m going to say that Utah’s Congressional District 2 cares about the economy as well,” Murray said. “But all of that could be true of the Senate race in Nevada.”
She added those same issues are seen in race after race in the country.
“One of the things I think is interesting is the nationalization of issues means that maybe politics isn’t all that local anymore,” she said.
Over the summer, abortion was on the top of people’s minds and Democrats “were kicking it” in special elections, Murray said. But a recent poll put the economy as the big concern, which benefits Republicans.
“What happens in a midterm election when the economy is bad is the president’s party is going to pay,” she said. “We fully expect it to be a wipeout for Democrats.”
Murray predicts Stewart will be reelected and the Republicans will win the U.S. House and maybe the Senate.
So, is it worth it for candidates to jump into a race when it’s almost a foregone conclusion they won’t win?
The answer is no when you consider just the person who’s running, Murray said.
“It’s embarrassing,” she said. “You put your name on the ballot and you get crushed. That hurts. That can kill your soul.”
But from another angle, “it is absolutely worth it” because the system needs that person to run, Murray said.
“It is so necessary for us to have challengers in every single election even if we know the incumbent is going to win because the incumbent has no reason otherwise to tell us anything that they’re doing,” she said. “This is a representative democracy. We are a republic and voters need to know what their elected officials are doing. Really, the only way to hold them accountable is to have debates. There’s no other way to do it and you’re only going to get a debate if you have a challenger.”
Mitchell, a first-time candidate for political office, said no matter what happens on Nov. 8, he will run again.
“I’ll be back in two years,” he said.
