There’s little doubt that a Republican will garner Utah’s six electoral votes in the November 2024 presidential election, but who that nominee will be is another question, and the state’s GOP primary is one of 15 contests that will be staged nationwide on “Super Tuesday,” March 5, 2024.
Seven months before that clash, it doesn’t appear that Beehive State voters are buzzed about the prospect of seeing former President Donald Trump’s name on the ballot, a glimmer of opportunity that the dozen candidates struggling for traction in the GOP presidential race against the dominant front-runner will seek to exploit.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s two July 21 campaign appearances in the Salt Lake City area are evidence that GOP underdog candidates seeking to derail Mr. Trump’s 2024 Republican presidential drive see Utah as a weak link in his path to the nomination.
“The more people see Gov. DeSantis and hear his forward-thinking plan for our nation’s comeback, the more inspired they become to vote for him for president,” DeSantis’s campaign spokesman, Andrew Romeo, said in a statement announcing that the Florida governor would meet with state lawmakers and Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox in Salt Lake City before attending an evening fundraiser.
It’s Mr. DeSantis’s second Utah trip since April, when—even before formally declaring his candidacy in May—he was the keynote speaker at the state Republican Party’s convention, where he called Florida the “Utah of the Southeast,” a line parallel to one he delivered in Iowa (where he called his state the “Iowa of the Southeast”) and perhaps to others he'll use elsewhere.
Reddest of the Red
Utah is among the reddest of red states. Republicans hold supermajorities in the state Legislature—23–9 in the Senate; 61–13 in the House—and a Democrat hasn’t been elected governor since 1980.For more than 80 years, Utah voters have almost exclusively sent Republicans to Congress. A Utah Democrat hasn’t been elected to the U.S. Senate since Frank Moss won a second term in 1970. Democrats have not been competitive in three of the state’s four congressional districts for decades.
The most recent Utah Democrat to win a congressional race was former Rep. Ben McAdams in 2018. He served one term before being ousted by Rep. Burgess Owens.
Republican candidates have won every presidential election since Lyndon Johnson took the state in 1964, including two victories by Mr. Trump.
But Utah voters have what often appears to be an arm’s-length relationship with the former president, who finished third in Utah’s 2016 Republican presidential caucuses behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
He went on to easily defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by a 45.5 percent to 27.5 percent margin, but it marked only the second time since 1968 that a GOP presidential candidate garnered less than 50 percent of the overall tally.
That shortfall was fostered by conservative and former Republican Evan McMullin’s 2016 third-party run as an independent. He was registered in only a handful of states, but in his native Utah, Mr. McMullin earned 21.5 percent of the vote, the best third-party performance by a presidential candidate in any single state since Ross Perot did better in several states in 1992.
Mr. McMullin essentially made Mr. Trump his sole campaign issue, and in the 2022 midterms, Mr. McMullin again ran as an independent on the same anti-Trump platform and nearly upset Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)—endorsed by Mr. Trump—in a bitter midterm general election.
In 2020, without a primary challenge or a third-party presence in the election, Mr. Trump easily defeated Joe Biden, 58.1 percent to 37.7 percent. But that 37.7 percent tally collected by Mr. Biden was the largest percentage of the general election vote for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964.
Beehive State of Trump Critics
Mr. McMullin isn’t alone among Utah’s conservatives in his outspoken criticism of Mr. Trump. Prominent Beehive State Republicans—from the governor’s office to the state legislature to Congress—challenged the former president while he was in office and have since.Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is among the former president’s most vocal disparagers. Despite his “RINO” denouncements from the party’s MAGA wing—and a promised primary challenge—the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee remains popular among Utahans and is not expected to be seriously challenged in securing reelection in 2024.
Mr. Cox has also been critical of Mr. Trump, claiming that the former president is responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach and “isn’t afraid to bring down the party” if he doesn’t get the nomination.
Recently elected as National Governors Association chair, Mr. Cox maintains that a governor should be elected president and was among the GOP governors who lobbied Mr. DeSantis to throw his hat into the 2024 ring. Mr. Cox has not, as yet, formally endorsed Mr. DeSantis or anyone else in the race.
“As chairman of the National Governors Association, Gov. Cox has been vocal about supporting candidates who are Republican governors—including Gov. DeSantis—because governors are executives who get things done,” Mr. Cox’s spokesperson Jennifer Napier Pearce said in a statement. “He looks forward to welcoming Gov. DeSantis to Utah.”
DeSantis is scheduled to meet with Mr. Cox and 13 state lawmakers—four senators and nine representatives—who will endorse him at the state Capitol in Salt Lake City at a late-afternoon press conference.
Most prominent among those lawmakers who will greet Mr. DeSantis are Senate President Stuart Adams, Sen. Todd Weiler, and House Majority Leader Mike Schultz.
Mr. Adams and Mr. Weiler have both endorsed Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Schultz has said he will welcome the Florida governor but won’t issue any endorsements this early in the campaign.
“Our nation stands at a crossroads. Joe Biden has been a disaster for families in Utah and across the country, And simply put, we cannot afford to lose the 2024 election,” Mr. Weiler said in a statement.
“We need a leader who can build coalitions, win, and strengthen and unify our nation. That candidate is Ron DeSantis, and I am proud to endorse him for President of the United States.”
Mr. Adams, among the first Utah Republicans to back Mr. Trump in 2016, was not as vocal in his support in 2020 and was among the first to endorse Mr. DeSantis in the 2024 race.
“I am proud to endorse Ron DeSantis for President of the United States,” Mr. Adams said in July 21 statement. “Governor DeSantis is a strong conservative leader who knows how to get things done and has the record to prove it.
“Now more than ever, our nation needs an energetic executive leader who will get right to work for the American people on Day One.”
Mr. Adams is hosting the Pioneer Day Barbecue in Pleasant Grove, a Salt Lake City suburb where the price of admission is a $1,000-per-plate donation to the DeSantis campaign. There is a VIP option of $6,600 individually or $13,200 per couple.
Among those Mr. DeSantis is likely to meet with at the barbecue is Don Peay, founder of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, who spearheaded the Trump campaigns in Utah in 2016 and 2020. But, as he told Deseret News early in 2023, he is no longer backing the former president.
Hot Issue: Public Lands Management
How Mr. DeSantis stands in the state is uncertain. The most recent poll, conducted in April by Noble Predictive Insights, found him trailing Mr. Trump by nearly 20 percentage points, but with the front-runner tabulating only about 40 percent.According to its July 1 Federal Elections Commission second-quarter campaign finance filing, the DeSantis campaign is outraising all competitors in the state, including Mr. Trump, collecting $113,000 in Utah donations in the two months after starting his campaign in May.
With the Biden administration on July 20 announcing proposed revisions to federal public lands leasing rules, the Florida governor is likely to address federal public lands and energy policy while in Utah, where U.S. government agencies manage nearly 65 percent of the state.
The proposed Interior Department rule would raise royalty rates for oil drilling by more than one-third—to 16.67 percent from 12.5 percent—and increase 10-fold the bonds companies must pay before they start drilling.
While Utah is not a significant oil and gas producer—it has ample coal resources, however—it has been a hotbed of agitation against federal public lands management with its state Legislature and congressional delegation repeatedly demanding that control be ceded to the states.
Campaign spokesman Bryan Griffin told The Epoch Times that Mr. DeSantis will address “federal mismanagement in the context of wildfire control, water, and land,” similar to the way he has while stumping in Nevada.
The Florida governor supports more state control of federal public lands, which he maintains will improve forest management in preventing wildfires and better managing water resources, a critical issue across the West.
As president, Mr. DeSantis says would “trust” the western states “to handle their environment” rather than the federal government, which is “not managing properly” the nation’s national resources.
