Utah’s peculiar year in politics

“Peculiar” has long described the Beehive State. In 2024, it certainly applied to Utah politics.

From state Rep. Phil Lyman’s unprecedented write-in campaign for governor, to 2nd District Rep. Celeste Maloy’s near primary defeat at the hands of a Mike Lee-backed challenger, to Donald Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to pick a replacement for outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney, there was no shortage of Republican Party intrigue.

But despite a series of unusual electoral changes — which includes Gov. Spencer Cox’s surprising change of heart toward Trump — the political year was just as remarkable for what stayed the same.

Established candidates cruised to victory over numerous, and often wealthy, opponents, and President-elect Trump’s winning margin failed to grow in Utah in the same way it did in nearly every other state across the country.

Here’s a look at some of the most interesting stories and key takeaways from the 2024 election cycle in Utah.

Sen. Mike Lee’s primary power play

Lee surprised Utah politicos — and Maloy, of Utah’s 2nd Congressional District — with his endorsement of Maloy’s little known competitor, Army veteran Colby Jenkins, marking Lee’s first time intervening in a Utah congressional primary during his 13 years in office.

Jenkins went on to beat Maloy in an upset victory among state delegates, but fell 214 votes short of ousting the incumbent in the primary election. Following the failure of multiple lawsuits alleging voter discrimination, Jenkins requested a recount which narrowed Maloy’s lead to just 176 votes, making it the closest Republican congressional primary in Utah since at least 1994.

“I believe that Mike Lee’s endorsement played a role in keeping that race tight and tight enough for a recount,” said Renae Cowley, a GOP consultant in Utah and Deseret News columnist. “These aren’t clear decisive wins for him, but I think it does show the power and influence of his brand.”

However, Lee’s endorsement may have also shown the limit of his influence within Trump’s GOP. The now-president elect endorsed Maloy, who also received the support of Utah’s congressional delegation and House GOP leadership, a week before the primary election.

Months earlier, Trump had again endorsed against Lee’s recommendations by putting his thumb on the scale in favor of Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs in the U.S. Senate race even though Lee had reportedly lobbied for Moxie Pest Control CEO Jason Walton.

Sen.-elect John Curtis flies above crowded primary

While Trump expressed a desire to replace his archnemesis in the Republican Party with someone more in line with MAGA priorities, neither Staggs nor Walton got anywhere close to clinching Utah’s open seat for U.S. Senate.

Rep. John Curtis, of Utah’s 3rd Congressional District, who has gained national attention for his work on climate-conscious energy policy since entering office in 2017, rode his high name recognition and strong fundraising to a commanding victory in what was the most crowded and competitive primary for an open Utah Senate seat in 30 years.

After coming in a distant second place behind Staggs at the state party convention, Curtis won the five-way race with nearly 50% of the vote. Some of Curtis’ opponents — including former Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson, who, along with Walton, had loaned his own campaign at least $2.5 million — pinned Curtis’ win on the amount of outside money spent to support him.

Curtis received more fundraising dollars than his opponents and dwarfed the rest of the field when it came to money spent on his behalf by political action committees — with $7.8 million spent to support him and $2 million spent to oppose Staggs. However, Curtis’ dominant performance in the primary, after initially saying he wasn’t going to run, can’t be boiled down to money alone, according to Cowley. He handily won the general election.

“Getting in last-minute like that, and winning with such a decisive victory is pretty remarkable,” Cowley said. “Money wasn’t really the factor in that race, it was his record and reputation that won it for him.”

The same can be said of Rep.-elect Mike Kennedy, Cowley said. Kennedy, currently a state senator, was significantly outspent by entrepreneur Case Lawrence and Roosevelt Mayor JR Bird during the GOP primary but went on to win with nearly 40% of the vote among his five relatively well-known and well-moneyed opponents.

A record-breaking write-in campaign for governor

Cox may have had the most interesting year of anyone in Utah politics.

At the state party convention in April, where he was vigorously booed, Cox became the first signature-gathering incumbent to not meet the party’s 40% threshold to qualify for the primary ballot. Cox later beat the convention winner, Lyman, R-Blanding, in the June primary with over 54% of the vote. But his winning margin of 9 percentage points was far below that of his incumbent predecessors.

Lyman subsequently launched a write-in campaign for governor as he simultaneously filed multiple lawsuits to place himself on the general election ballot. Lyman’s write-in candidacy garnered the support of the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, state Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, who filmed an ad with Lyman promoting their respective campaigns against Cox and his “Disagree Better” approach to politics.

The November general election saw Cox win with 53% of the vote, which, according to Cowley, was a convincing confirmation that Cox, including his leadership style and the economy under his leadership, “is still popular in Utah.” But Lyman still received 13.6% of the vote — nearly half as much as the Democratic ticket — meaning that more than 200,500 Utah voters chose to write in Lyman’s name on their ballots instead of checking the box for Cox.

This makes Lyman’s write-in campaign likely the most successful in Utah history, with a greater overall number of votes than other famous examples of successful write-in campaigns, including Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s reelection bid in 2010 and South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond’s write-in win in 1954.

“That’s a big percentage, especially for a non-incumbent who wasn’t some sort of name with huge statewide name recognition,” said James Curry, a professor of political science at the University of Utah. “It really is sort of a signal of there are real divisions within this party, and those divisions are not going away.”

After his bruising primary, Cox appeared to turn his focus toward mending those divisions.

In July, following the Butler County, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt against Trump, Cox reversed his longtime position of distancing himself from the former president and endorsed him. Cox said his decision was based on a desire to practice “Disagree Better” within the Republican Party and “lower the temperature in this country.”

In August, Cox joined Trump as one of a handful of guests at Arlington National Cemetery. And following the general election, Cox revealed that since his primary he had hosted around a dozen meetings with some of his fiercest conservative critics in the state to find common ground.

What does Utah politics look like going forward?

But while Cox has moved toward Trump, Utah appears to be stuck stubbornly in place. In a year where nearly every county in the United States swung toward Trump, the majority of Utah counties shifted away from him compared to 2020.

While Trump increased his winning margin by more than 2 percentage points in most states — including 6.4 points in New York and nearly 5 points in New Jersey and California — he grew his margin of victory by just 1 percentage point in Utah.

This response to Trump’s candidacy in an otherwise solid year for Republican candidates points to Utah voters’ persistent hesitancy to fully endorse Trump’s brand of politics, according to Cowley.

The rejection of self-styled “America First” candidates, like Lyman and Staggs, who won with large majorities among state delegates only to lose by similar margins among all Republican primary voters, confirms that Utah voters prefer a different type of candidate than the kind usually supported by the caucus-convention system, Cowley said.

“It is just another nail in the coffin, frankly, of the caucus-convention system,” Cowley said. “Utahns like respect in politics. They like someone who is cordial. They like someone who is not defamatory, who isn’t a rabble-rouser. They like people to be compassionate and to show respect for one another.”

Utahns replaced Romney with Curtis, not Staggs; they chose Maloy over Jenkins; and they elected Cox instead of Lyman. But don’t let the success of these candidates hide the growing discontent among many within the Republican base, Curry said.

While Utah may stand apart with its peculiarly Trump-resistant strain of red-state politics, the national debate over where conservatism goes next may be more pronounced here than anywhere, Curry said. One indicator of this, according to Curry, was the lack of unity within the Republican Party concerning many of their own candidates.

“A lot of this is still the ramifications of Trump’s initial candidacy in 2016 which really brought these fissures within the Republican Party to the surface,” Cowley said. “And those fissures are visible everywhere in this country within the Republican Party, but I think especially in a place like Utah.”

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