How Utah’s tightly fought, feisty 4th District became a yawner
In its decade-long life, Utah’s 4th Congressional District has been a politically fraught teeter-totter, flipping from Democrat to Republican back to Democrat then back again.
The contests always competitive, some were settled by razor-thin margins and one, in 2018, was won by a whisker — 694 votes out of nearly 270,000.
The district is no stranger to cash infusions from outside friends and foes as well as national party money. It has also left voters bruised by bare-knuckle rhetoric from both sides of the political ring.
Utah’s 4th has also seen its share of trailblazing. Three Black candidates have now stepped up — two punching tickets to Washington — in the sweeping white boundary stretching from southwestern Salt Lake County through swaths of Utah County, Juab and Sanpete. In 2014, Mia Love became the first Black female Republican, and first Haitian American, elected to Congress. And in 2018, Ben McAdams overcame a R+19 rating by the Cook Partisan Voting Index to make the 4th the most Republican district in the country to be represented by a Democrat.
The 10-year-old district has yet to reach its turbulent teenage years but has already produced a lifetime of milestones. It’s been consistently interesting, and the only glidepath to Congress where Democrats in Utah dare spread their wings.
Until now.
‘Get Out Of Your Own Way And Everything Will Be Fine’
After narrowly losing to Jim Matheson in 2012, Love was first elected in 2014, beating Democrat Doug Owens 50-45. In a 2016 rematch, Love beat Owens 53-41. Now it is a different Owens, Rep. Burgess Owens, who appears to have a lock on what until recently was a topsy-turvy district. Cook Political Report categorizes the 2022 race as “Solid Republican,” even stronger than “Safe Republican.” Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball has it “Safe Republican.”
Both belie recent history. The last two incumbents in the 4th District, McAdams and Love, lost their re-elect campaigns, albeit by a point and a tenth of a point respectively. That should seemingly make Owens vulnerable now, but the Democrats do not appear primed to take advantage. For her part, Democratic candidate, Darlene McDonald, a national committeewoman for the DNC and a vocal advocate for racial justice, concedes she has an uphill climb.
“It took me a while to jump into this race because I knew what it would be,” says McDonald, who nonetheless argues it is worth it to expose what she calls Owens’ dangerous extremism. “If there’s a sacrificial lamb, I kind of put myself on that block to be chopped up.”
Some of the loudest criticism of Owens came during the GOP primary when Jake Hunsaker blasted the incumbent for skipping debates. Owens topped Hunsaker 60 to 40 percent in the June 28 Republican primary. Most of the chirping now comes from Owens’ Twitter account.
“I do think it’s a missed opportunity,” says Matthew Burbank, Political Science professor and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and Faculty at the University of Utah. “It’s also fair to say when they were doing their nomination process, the reality was things looked so grim for Democrats. That’s not an excuse to not have a strong candidate in the one district where you have a chance to be competitive.”
During the 2018 midterms, Democrats were highly motivated, repulsed by then-President Donald Trump. Burbank says McAdams was effective at raising money in that amped up atmosphere, leveraging contacts inside and outside Utah as a former elected official.
“I don’t think Burgess Owens is a very strong candidate, but the reality is the political winds have shifted,” he says. “This year there has been very little going on. Democrats did something that Republicans used to do: pick a candidate that the delegates like but who doesn’t have a whole lot of name recognition or resources. Darlene McDonald is a perfectly fine candidate, but she isn’t particularly well known and she hasn’t raised a lot of money.”
Burbank points out Owens has not done much constituency service or the district visits typical for first-term congressmen. “He has not distinguished himself.” But he will likely survive it, the political scientist says, noting McDonald is not the type of candidate who can take votes away from Owens.
“Burgess Owens probably wins this race only because he’s Republican,” Burbank adds. “He certainly appeals to Trump voters but that is not the strongest contingency of voters even in his district.”
The Owens campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The midterm poses unique challenges for both parties, Burbank says. For instance, if the GOP retakes control of the House as expected, “will they have any coherent agenda at all, or will it be a clown show like we’ve seen in recent history. It raises serious questions about where the Republicans are going and yet, within the state, you don’t see Democrats picking up anything over that.”
In fact, he argues Democrats’ gamble to hitch their Senate hopes to oust Mike Lee with Independent Evan McMullin is “a pretty weak strategy.” Since McMullin has pledged not to caucus with either party, Burbank argues Democrats stand to get nothing from it.
“You’ve replaced a guy you didn’t like with someone who’s irrelevant and that’s your big win?” he asks.
So far in the campaign, Owens has not really been pressed to defend Trump, which Burbank characterizes as about the best position he could want.
“Nothing has gone bad for him and we don’t see any indication that it will,” Burbank explains. “It’s not an overwhelming endorsement of him as a candidate but it’s like saying, ‘get out of your own way and everything will be fine.’”
You Had Me At Redistricting
Forgive former Congressman McAdams for having a blunt assessment of the place he represented in Washington that, in all likelihood, no Democrat will win again anytime soon.
“The Legislature essentially dismantled the 4th Congressional District,” he laments, referring to the 2020 redistricting.
In his view, it follows a pattern. McAdams says the 4th District was designed through the 2011 redistricting process to be unwinnable by a Democrat in order to get Matheson out. Matheson survived in 2012 anyway, barely, before bowing out in 2014.
After two Love terms, McAdams then made a little political history in 2018, outperforming the GOP-skewed district by 19 points. That blue flag was plucked in 2020, when Owens bested McAdams by fewer than 3,800 votes.
The 2020 redistricting has made the 4th District even more lopsided, splintering Millcreek and extending the Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+19 to R+30.
“The dynamics of the district are completely different,” McAdams says. “When you move the needle 11 percentage points to the right, it really makes for a tough race.”
McDonald, who also served as chair of Utah Black Roundtable and on the Salt Lake City Racial Equity in Policing Commission, concurs.
“It was slated and gerrymandered not to be competitive,” McDonald says. “I don’t believe I would be the candidate running if it was not gerrymandered the way it was. I believe Ben McAdams would have been in the race if it was not gerrymandered the way it was.”
By dicing Millcreek into four separate districts, McDonald argues lawmakers “totally eliminated the liberal, progressive voice in Millcreek.” Redistricting, she notes, also cut out chunks of South Salt Lake and West Valley City that were favorable to Democrats.
“It doesn’t mean we’re going to win — it doesn’t mean it’s going to be a blowout either,” McDonald predicts. “We are doing everything we can to let people know they have an alternative.”
Race On The Ballot
According to the 2019 U.S. Census, Utah’s 4th district is 86 percent white, 14 percent Hispanic/Latino, 2.3 percent Asian and 1.2 percent Black/African American. Despite that breakdown, both the incumbent Owens and challenger McDonald are Black.
Love, who is Haitian American, also did not fit the prevailing demographic of the district. But Burbank, the University of Utah political scientist, notes she had established roots, became well known and ran good campaigns.
“It’s really odd to have Mia Love and then Burgess Owens, a Haitian American and an African American be the major candidates in the district,” Burbank says. “You wouldn’t pick this out.”
At the same time, he says Republicans have tried hard this election cycle to change their candidate profile after recognizing their weaknesses with the changing demographics across the country.
So, was it strategic for Democrats to run a Black challenger against the incumbent? McAdams doesn’t see it that way. He notes McDonald ran in the 2018 4th District primary — where he got to know her — and has been active since.
“Burgess Owens was not the first choice by the Utah Republican Party,” McAdams says. “But Darlene has actually been involved as an activist and has got her name out there. People kind of saw it as her turn.”
For McDonald, the race issue runs deeper. Owens, she says, likes to talk about his biography as a descendant of family from the Jim Crow South. She too, has roots in the deep South and argues Owens takes that legacy and twists it.
“What he has become is a danger to black people, people like myself,” McDonald says. “He goes around to these far-right wing tours and calls Democrats evil, socialist, Marxists. It is as if we don’t love our country. We are godless. We don’t believe in family.
This is who he is and it’s not okay. They gerrymandered this district to insulate him but I will bring it out and call it out in a way that Ben McAdams couldn’t. He’s playing the race card in the negative and it’s dangerous.”
Neither Owens’ district office in West Jordan nor his congressional office in Washington would respond to requests for comment.
A 4th District debate is scheduled October 12 at the University of Utah.
