male announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

Jason Perry: Tonight, on "The Hinckley Report."

Who is in and who is out?

Politicians declare their candidacies, setting the stage for Utah's 2024 election.

Lawmakers gear up for the legislative session as they announce their major priorities.

And our panel reacts to national headlines.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinkley Report."

I'm Jason Perry, director of the Hinkley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week we have Kate Bradshaw, member of the Bountiful City Council.

Bryan Schott, political correspondent with the "Salt Lake Tribune."

And Marty Carpenter, partner at Northbound Strategy.

So glad you are all here this evening because a lot of it's happening in politics, but this is where we start seeing who is going to be up for election for this next cycle.

And we're watching, there's some surprises, there are some names we know pretty well, but let's jump right in because, Kate, on Monday, this coming Monday is the filing deadline.

So names are starting to pour in even right now.

So let's talk about the Senate race, for example.

Senator Mitt Romney, he's decided not to run.

This race has become quite crowded.

Kate Bradshaw: It has, there are a lot of Republicans that have filed and this week we had surprises.

Utah moved up their filing to the first week of January.

So we're seeing all this action, you know, right at the start of the new year.

We've got, of course, those that we've known would be in the race from the beginning.

Former speaker, Brad Wilson, for instance.

Mayor Trent Staggs, for instance.

But Congressman John Curtis, you know, the will he won't he will he won't he?

He is, he's running.

And so now you have quite frankly, what is looking like a really crowded Republican field for that open US Senate seat for Utah.

Jason Perry: Bryan, you're one of the people who are really breaking the news about this Congressman Curtis jumping into this race.

Talk about what that does in terms of the race overall and for Utahns, particularly in that district, that have got to know him pretty well over the years.

Bryan Schott: Well, he does have the most name ID of any of the candidates in the race right now.

There was an independent poll done by a Super PAC that was supporting him.

That came out last month in December.

And it showed that he had a big lead over Wilson, over Staggs in a three-way race among Republican voters and a big lead over Wilson if it was a head-to-head.

So he is the front-runner right now.

NameID is going to play a big part of this because it is a crowded field, but that's not unusual for this state.

Remember in 2018 when Orrin Hatch stepped down, there were a dozen Republicans in that race.

Last year with Chris Stewart, 11 Republicans got in.

And in 2017 after Jason Chaffetz stepped down, once again, 11 Republicans, and that race was won by John Curtis.

Marty Carpenter: I look at that poll and say that's a bit of a ground softening poll to enter the race like it's a Super PAC that's supporting him.

So numbers are numbers, but numbers are also designed to get you where you want to go.

There's a difference between a crowded field and a viably crowded field.

There are gonna be a lot of people in that race.

There are two viable candidates in that race right now.

It's Brad Wilson, the former speaker, and it's John Curtis.

Curtis may have some additional name ID.

That's helpful, I guess, initially in raising money, but that's not gonna be a problem for Brad Wilson, who's been out shaking people down, I guess, is not the nicest way to say it, but out raising money already.

So I still look at that's going to be a two person race.

I don't think that name ID advantage for Curtis is something that he's necessarily going to hold on to the entire way.

Jason Perry: But how does it impact sort of the the voting field for the people on the various parts of the spectrum?

We have seven Republicans so far as of today that have filed for that race.

But, Kate, they're battling for certain segments of the Republican Party and it sounds like we have several that are to the more conservative end.

I don't know who's on the more moderate side.

How does this play out and how do they campaign?

Because it seems like a lot are trying to do the--on the more conservative candidate message right now.

Kate Bradshaw: Yeah, we still have the dual path to the primary ballot.

So you'll have some candidates that are gonna be playing to a caucus convention crowd, right?

And that tends to be a little bit more of a conservative crowd.

And you have those that are gonna pick the dual path and those that are most serious will likely pick the dual path.

And, you know, those that may opt into maybe even just a signature gathering path.

Traditionally, a serious candidate is going to do both paths, but you are looking at various slices of lanes and trying to depict where those issues are going to be.

There's a lot that probably overlaps between Brad Wilson and John Curtis in terms of their brand of republicanness.

So they're gonna be looking for ways to try and, you know, take more space and gain more Republican voters.

Jason Perry: Go ahead, Bryan.

Bryan Schott: Well, sure Brad Brad Wilson has been the speaker, but he's been elected in a safe Republican district.

And I went back and looked at the number of votes he had to get to get office.

Last year, it was 12,000.

The year before it was 19,000, or the cycle before that, it was 19,000.

The number of votes that Spencer Cox got in the 2020 GOP primary was 190,000.

So it's a lot different running in a safe Republican seat where you have to get a small number of votes and trying to go to a statewide race.

Curtis, yes, is coming from a congressional district, but he's a higher profile candidate.

He will be able to tap into his Washington, D.C., fundraising, I guess, groups, and be able to fund his campaign.

So, you know, it's like I've said, the Utah political landscape is littered with the bodies of former Speakers of the House who thought that they could parlay that into a higher office.

Jason Perry: So, Marty, how are they differentiating themselves?

And if what you're saying is there you would say they're too, you said too viable--I mean, the front-runners I guess you would say right there.

I mean, but this plurality issue could still happen.

Are these other ends of the spectrum not going to have that much of an impact on voters generally?

Or do you really think it's just going to consolidate almost immediately?

Marty Carpenter: It's really still fascinating to me how much candidates are inclined to go far right for that convention side of the process when it really, in practicality, does not matter and has proven to not matter in most cases ever since the second path to the ballot came into play.

I think the much smarter and safer place to say, here's my record, or here's what I'm running on, and position that so that you are ready for a primary.

Go get the signatures, position yourself for the race that actually matters.

That would be my advice to anybody in that race.

Jason Perry: Before I leave this and go into some other races, because it's come up a couple of times, the signature gathering process.

I mean, do any of you have an opinion about whether or not that is just the way it is now?

Are there negative ramifications from the party faithful if you get signatures now?

Kate Bradshaw: There are ramifications from the party faithful if you get signatures but any serious candidate needs to get signatures and will get signatures.

Marty has correctly identified that, you know, the caucus convention path hasn't been as impactful.

If you want to get to the primary, if you're a serious candidate, that's your path and that's what you need to focus on.

And I think it's political malpractice not to go get signatures if you're really serious about this race.

Marty Carpenter: There's pushback from the party faithful but there's not enough of the party faithful once you get into the race that counts in the primary.

They're vastly outnumbered by regular Republican voters who just have not aligned with what the caucus convention group cares about.

Jason Perry: Well, Steve, we'll probably see more names in this particular race.

The Democrats have put forward a candidate, Archie Williams III, and the independent American candidate, Robert Newcomb, also has filed.

We'll watch this race very closely to see where that one goes.

Let's go through our congressional districts because of course they're all up.

And the first congressional district, Marty, Blake Moore, Congressman Blake Moore has a couple of challengers.

Marty Carpenter: Has a couple of challengers.

Jason Perry: Inter-party challengers.

Marty Carpenter: He has a couple of challengers.

That's probably in the sense of like just enough to make it so you have to do more than roll the ball out there and say you played the game.

You know, he's gonna be in a pretty safe spot.

I'm not at all worried about where Blake Moore is right now.

Jason Perry: Bryan, same?

Bryan Schott: Yeah, I agree, Moore is an up and comer in Congress.

He's in leadership in the Republican caucus.

He should be re-elected pretty easily.

Jason Perry: So far, no Democrats filed for that particular race.

Any other names you're seeing come forward in that?

Kate Bradshaw: Not seeing a lot in that first congressional district.

And I think it is because of Congressman Moore's new leadership position.

And that does unlock a really interesting new fundraising realm for him that he can tap into, which will make him obviously a very strong candidate and someone that would be difficult to beat.

Jason Perry: The second congressional district, Congresswoman Celeste Malloy, so far doesn't have anyone filed but I understand we may have someone, an interparty challenge there, Bryan?

Bryan Schott: The name is escaping me-- Jason Perry: Colby Jenkins.

Bryan Schott: Colby Jenkins, he's a former green beret and a business consultant.

He's also from St. George.

Congresswoman Malloy has decided she's only going to go through the caucus and convention system.

She will not be getting six signatures, which is what she did the last time.

So she's staking her claim on that.

If Jenkins can get some money and spend the money to get on the ballot with six signatures That could be a real race because she doesn't have much much of a record to run on.

She's only been in office for for about a month or so.

Jason Perry: Go ahead, Marty.

Marty Carpenter: Incumbency is usually an advantage a three-month incumbency is a little bit more limited, certainly more limited in how much of an advantage it is.

She has essentially been campaigning now for a few months and even though she's won and got to go to DC, that's still sort of an ongoing campaign to show the voters, "This is who I am and my argument for reelection."

Jason Perry: What's interesting about this one too, Kate, is that if Colby jumps in this race, which we understand he may, it's sort of another rural candidate, which was a big part of her approach, was rural Utah getting representation in Congress.

Kate Bradshaw: It is interesting.

I'm a resident of that district and I live in Davis County.

And so to see the district now become very divided between the South end and the North end is really interesting.

I hope that my North end doesn't seem like it's forgotten by the candidates.

So hopefully they'll be spending an equal amount of time learning about the issues of the Northern Wasatch part of that district.

You know, Celeste has not stopped campaigning because she knew that she'd have to head right in.

So she's lucky in a sense that she can just keep that machine going and has staff and people in place.

You know, she did a fantastic job securing endorsements from local officials from running that, quite frankly, a smaller dollar amount campaign against significant names.

And so I'm a fan, and I think that she's going to continue to wow us and surprise us with her ability to run a very smart, targeted, strategic campaign.

Marty Carpenter: But so far the thing that wows me is that political malpractice.

Go get the signatures.

If there's an advantage you have by having already won, it's that little bit of an advantage in name ID.

Go out and use that to your advantage by making sure you get on the primary ballot.

Bryan Schott: And I wonder if there's going to be a hangover from the way that she won the nomination at the hastily called convention after Congressman Stewart stepped down.

She was not registered to vote in the district and did not fix that until after the filing deadline had closed.

She had moved to Virginia.

There were a lot of things about her background that we didn't know about until after she had secured the nomination.

And I wonder if the delegates are going to be so forgiving because that might leave a bad taste in their mouth.

She also did not vote in the 2022 and the 2020 election.

And so you wonder if that's going to impact her, I guess, popularity with the delegates who she's relying on to put her back in Washington.

Marty Carpenter: If you've won before, go to the larger field of voters.

Instead of keeping it to a smaller group, you just have better odds.

Jason Perry: All of these changes have brought about a really interesting race in the third congressional district, Kate, and a lot of names that we've been seeing for a little while are eyeing this potential race, but with Congressman Curtis saying he's not gonna run, this is like a rare open spot for one of these races.

We have a couple people that we've seen recently, like Utah State Senator Mike Kennedy, former Utah GOP Chair Stewart Peay, Mayor Rod Bird, just name a couple of these candidates.

This is a pretty interesting wide open race right now.

Kate Bradshaw: It is, and it is rare.

When you get one of those open seats you've got these people who've been thinking about it and planning and all of a sudden they jump and shift.

And of course, John Curtis making his big announcement this week really shifted who was maybe looking at the the third district seat.

One name I'm not seeing that I've been looking for and hitting refresh on the filing, so that I would know when it came up, is state auditor John Dugal.

He has announced that he's not going to run to continue to be our state auditor and I have been expecting him to maybe show up filed for that seat.

And I think that would be an interesting move and it would definitely shake up that list of candidates.

Jason Perry: What are you all hearing about this one?

Bryan Schott: You know, he's been rumored to be looking at the Senate race, at the Governor's race and CCD3.

I think he'll show up in CCD3, but who knows?

Marty Carpenter: This one feels like the most wide open of all of the congressional races, whether it's the House or the Senate, right?

Even though there's a crowded field that we talked about on the Senate side.

This just feels like the most wide open where there's no one stepping in to say, oh, that guy's the front runner for sure.

You could make the argument for Kennedy because he ran against Romney, so he's got some name ID there and some conservative bona fides, but you could also make the argument that if Dugal gets in.

No one has sort of like above the state legislative level of popularity or of proven ability to win, even though the auditor is a statewide office, but, you know, it's a little bit different than running for the Senate.

Jason Perry: We do have a Democrat in that race, Glenn Wright has filed already for that open seat.

We'll watch this one closely.

And just for a second to finish this off, the fourth congressional district.

So Bryan, Burgess-Owen, so far, no other Republicans challenging him.

Bryan Schott: Yeah, and I don't think that he'll get a serious challenger, at least from the GOP.

He's gonna cruise to nomination.

He would be hard to beat.

Marty Carpenter: That one actually surprised me a little bit.

That no one would just sort of jump in and throw their hat in the ring.

I think that there are some folks who are running for the Senate who might have said, well, maybe I got a better option.

Not that there's anything, you know, that I see terrible weakness in Congressman Owens, but just that nobody would say, "I don't know, like that's usually a fairly open seat or a seat that's in play.

Maybe I could throw my hat in the ring there."

It just surprises me that the more people haven't considered that.

Kate Bradshaw: Maybe we have fourth district fatigue.

I mean, we've had such battles in the fourth district, right?

Year over year, you know, every cycle, just a lot of battles there.

Maybe we finally hit the point where we've, like, fatigued out the fourth district.

Jason Perry: Well, we do have two Democrats filed in that race: Jonathan Lopez and Katrina Fallick-Wing.

So watch to see if anyone changes and decides to jump into that one.

The governor's race, can we talk about that?

Wow, this is shaping up to be an interesting group of candidates.

So, Bryan, you've been talking about this one, and you had a great story even today on this one right here.

So Spencer Cox has filed; Phil Lyman, former Utah GOP chair; and GOP chair, Carson Jorgensen.

Those are the three primary challenges right now.

Bryan Schott: And this one is, I think, is going to be fascinating to watch because Lyman and Jorgensen are clearly staking out positions to Cox's political right.

I don't know how much room there is over there, but they're going to be fighting over the same group.

An interesting tidbit, though, and back to Marty's point about gathering signatures.

Phil Lyman, staunch defender of the caucus, person who's tried to get rid of mail-in voting and talked about election integrity, he has filed together signatures, which has surprised a lot of people.

They're really shocked that he would do that.

But I think he realizes that he's going to need that safety net to ensure that he gets to the primary.

Marty Carpenter: The question then becomes, for a candidate like Phil Lyman, who definitely is more in line with the caucus, can he get the number of signatures that he needs?

That's what's gonna be interesting to me.

I look at the governor's race as shouldn't be surprising to anybody.

We have an incumbent who's very popular.

He's gonna get on to the primary ballot and he's gonna be perfectly fine.

This may be kind of interesting for politicos to watch.

At the end of the day, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, Spencer Cox is gonna get reelected.

Jason Perry: It's interesting that there are challengers to Governor Cox, the names that we've known so well, but certainly they're trying to carve out some space on the more conservative end of the political spectrum.

Kate Bradshaw: It's interesting to me because Phil Lyman and Carson Jorgensen have very similar, you know, belief structures and they fall in really the same spot on the Republican Party spectrum of being to the right.

And so how they intend to differentiate each other, you know, they'll be fighting for the same core group of, you know, staunch Republican caucus supporters.

And so I see them just dividing what is a small group among themselves and again, leaving the path very clear for the governor to be reelected.

Marty Carpenter: Wouldn't shock me at all that if at the convention, presuming Governor Cox goes to the convention, that you see Lyman-Jorgensen one, two in some order; Spencer Cox in third; and then six weeks later, when we get to the primary, he's gonna win it by 35 plus points.

Bryan Schott: Well, but if you go back to 2020, Cox only got 36% of the vote in a four-way primary.

I've spoken to people close to Jorgensen, and they believe that if they can get into a one-on-one in the primary against Cox, and Jorgensen is only going through the convention path, their theory is, if they can get into a one-on-one, they might have a shot against him because of the way Cox won the GOP nomination four years ago.

It was only about a third of the party who voted for him.

It was only about a third of the GOP.

And as Jorgensen told me in my story today, you know, we really haven't settled whether he is the choice of the GOP because, you know, he didn't get over 40%.

So I wonder if that's going to be a factor.

Marty Carpenter: So that would be, in my mind, making an assumption that all of the Huntsman voters are going to go right instead of to the Cox side that's more sort of in the mainstream of the party.

I would not make that assumption.

I don't think they all will go Cox, but I think the majority of them end up aligning with the current governor.

Jason Perry: The next race, the attorney general's office.

So, Kate, our Attorney General, Sean Reyes, announced that he's not going to be running again.

Immediately we saw former GOP chair, Derek Brown, with Governor Herbert behind him announcing, but a couple other names this past week: Frank Mylar and former assistant AG, Rachel Terry, have filed this week.

Kate Bradshaw: Yes, I think this is an interesting race.

Obviously now that is also an open seat.

Derek came out strong early with a big list of supporters.

I'm particularly interested though to see Rachel Terry file.

I've known her for a number of years.

She worked for the Utah League of Cities and Towns.

She's currently the state's risk manager.

She's a, you know, very active practicing attorney.

Derek has, you know, an interesting political background, you know, in being a party chair, working back in D.C, for Congress, and, you know, working in government affairs and lobbying.

He is an attorney, obviously, an important criteria for the job, but it'll be interesting to see whether voters are focused on somebody who's maybe more, you know, a manager of the office or somebody maybe who's been more actively involved in the practice of law going forward.

Jason Perry: Is that what you're hearing, Bryan?

Bryan Schott: Yeah, I think that Derek Brown has one big advantage.

He worked for Mike Lee.

Mike Lee is a supporter of his.

And that is just magic at these GOP conventions.

The delegates love Mike Lee.

So Mike Lee endorses you, you've got a really good shot.

So that, I think, is one thing we're working in his favor.

I really think that this race, the best way that these candidates could position themselves is to just clean up the office.

I mean, there's been so much scandal over the last three attorneys general that we've had that, you know, if you come in and say, "I'm gonna clean this up, I'm gonna get it back to doing the job it was supposed to do rather than writing movie scripts or hanging out with Tim Ballard or whatever."

I think that that is the kind of thing that voters are really gonna be looking for.

Marty Carpenter: Derek Brown seems to have somehow become like the model politician because he's done all the things that the caucus convention side and the party like.

He's been the party chair.

He's worked for Mike Lee.

He's served in the legislature.

But he's also done that in a way where he hasn't had to charge far to the right on any issues.

And for an attorney general, I think you're right.

What we're looking for, most voters I think would say what we're looking for is someone who can just do the job in a low drama kind of way.

Jason Perry: Yeah, reclaim the law office aspect of the attorney general's office.

I think people are talking about that.

Can I get through a couple of very local races?

Kate, you work so much with our state legislature.

A lot of movement right now, including a few people who decided they're not going to run, which is opening up some spots.

Senator Dave Buxton not going to run.

Dan Thatcher not going to run for that race, for his Senate race again.

Kind of talk about some of the movement you're seeing and how this is going to impact the legislation and maybe the priorities of the coming year.

Kate Bradshaw: You know, we mentioned kind of at the start of the show, the filing deadline has moved up to before the start of the legislative session.

We haven't had that.

And so it really changes whether you know that somebody is going to have a challenger, whether an incumbent is going to be retiring and how that factors into how they vote or they, you know, worried about an inner party challenge at the caucus.

And so that will be a new factor we haven't had.

It'll be interesting to see that play out.

You know, we are seeing some retirements.

There's always some natural turnover, particularly in the state house.

We know they're up every two years.

You know, Greg Buxton had served in the House, served in the Senate, and has decided it's time and he's going to retire.

No surprise there with Cal Musselman, who's in the overlapping House seat, who's long signaled that he would be interested in moving over to the House side.

But, you know, you have some of these others in, you know, Brian King, who's decided to move to governor; Mark Wheatley; longtime Democrats who have decided they would make a move.

Senator Thatcher who's interestingly leaving the Senate potentially to serve on the County Council.

Bryan Schott: He would not have to leave his seat if he loses because he's not up this year.

He won re-election in 2012.

It's a free run for him.

Kate Bradshaw: It's an interesting move, though, to go from the Senate to the county, I think is, you know, where you wanna have an influence on state policy, and he's very much signaled in his announcement, "I wanna have an influence" on what he feels is happening at the county.

Bryan Schott: I also think that Thatcher's move, which is fascinating, is motivated by what happened in redistricting.

He lives in West Valley, he's lived there his entire life, and his neighborhood is now barely in his Senate district.

His district covers Salt Lake, Utah, and Tooele County.

And he really likes working on the local issues for that area.

That's what he told me.

And so I think that that's one of the reasons why this County Council race is so attractive to him.

Marty Carpenter: The one that surprised me was Robert Spendlove leaving after he made his way onto the executive appropriations and I would say he was, you know, right, he's one of the most influential members of the legislature when it comes to the dollars and cents and putting the money in everybody's pocket where it needs to go in each part of the executive branch.

That one just surprised me.

I actually think it's a big loss for the legislature, someone with his, not only institutional knowledge, having worked in the Herbert administration, but as an economist and someone who really knows the budget.

That to me was one of the more surprising ones to see that he won't be running again.

Bryan Schott: And it also caught a bunch of his colleagues by surprise.

They were not ready for that.

And if you look, there's not a lot of candidates who have filed yet to take his place.

Jason Perry: That's right and you mentioned Brian King, who is not running because he is running for governor for the state as well.

Just really quickly in our last couple of minutes, how is this impacting, first, the filing deadline?

Because that was such a good point.

It used to be you could get through the session and tackle some of those issues, but now they're filing beforehand, Kate.

So is that going to flavor how they approach some of these more difficult issues during this session, knowing what we know now, and maybe give a preview of what we are going to see.

Kate Bradshaw: Yeah, they may, you know, they used to be able to hold those things really close to the vest, and now potentially they are not.

You know, interestingly, both the House and the Senate last year, they moved some really tough legislation, controversial legislation in the early weeks of the session, first two weeks, moved it through and moved it fast.

It was an interesting tactic.

And, you know, one question we've all been wondering from those watching from the cheap seats is, will those same kind of maneuvers happen again this year where they're looking to move some things through quickly in the early days of the session?

And they've definitely forecasted some interesting issues that haven't been as big on their priority list, but are this year energy policy significantly being one of them.

Jason Perry: So Bryan, we're gonna see a couple big ones, right?

We probably can see some some bills dealing with EDI, Equity Diversity and Inclusion, others including lotteries.

Bryan Schott: A lot of culture war bills because this is an election year.

And I think that because Governor Cox does have two primary challengers, that's going to put him in a really hard spot because he is liked among a number of Democrats as well, but if he signs some of these really controversial bills, you know, I know that there are probably going to be some anti-trans legislation come up there.

You'll see the DEI stuff, and you'll see about free speech on college campuses, things along those lines that really are hot button issues that play well to the Republican base.

It could put him in a really tough spot deciding what to do, And I think that because of that, you're going to see legislative leadership push him on some of these issues, because they know that he's gonna be in a really tough spot.

Jason Perry: That's gonna have to be our last comment there.

We're gonna watch this session very closely.

Thank you so much for your comments tonight.

And thank you for watching "The Hinkley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast on pbsutah.org/HinkleyReport or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

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