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

announcer: Tonight on "The Hinckley Report."

Divisions within the Utah Republican Party make national headlines.

Delegates line up to determine the fate of candidates as county conventions wrap up and state conventions loom.

And our panel discusses the wedge issues that will be at the forefront of the 2022 election.

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

I'm Jason Perry, Director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week, we have Doug Wilks, executive editor of the "Deseret News."

Sonja Hutson, political reporter with KUER and Chris Bleak, partner with R.R.J.

Consulting.

So glad to have you all with us tonight to talk about some of the big issues in the state and around the country.

We're gonna talk elections today.

We're gonna talk about the issues that are bringing some together and dividing people as well, so a lot to get to but I want to start with with you Doug on this interesting exchange happening on the national level.

We had Tucker Carlson did a show this week, which is so interesting because on his show he specifically called out a couple of our elected officials, Utah particular, was the governor and even a little bit on Senator Mitt Romney.

Why don't you talk about what happened right there and a little bit on the reaction throughout the state.

Doug Wilks: Well, it's kind of predictable.

Tucker Carlson makes his living by finding an issue that is far right.

They become wedge issues and the last thing Utah wants is for Tucker Carlson or anyone to define Utah.

He's constantly attacked Mitt Romney as a liberal.

Now he throws in our governor as a liberal.

They are clearly not liberals, but these definitions have gotten confused and from a national standpoint it doesn't help the state.

What makes a Utahn, if someone's hardworking, service-oriented, self-sufficient, empathetic to causes and compromising.

We talked about the Utah Compromise.

We talk about all these things that have made Utah the state that it is.

And to have outside people, particularly Tucker Carlson in that space, try to define Utah.

It's really counterproductive to the state.

Jason Perry: So it's interesting, he tries to characterize Utah as tryin' to be woke.

Particularly the governor, saying this is the problem right here is he's just tryin' to be woke.

What did you think that even means?

Sonja Hutson: I don't know what, does woke mean?

It means you know whatever it wants to mean to the person that's saying it.

You know like Doug said, Spencer Cox and Mitt Romney are clearly not liberal.

They're definitely not woke, which is, you know, generally used to refer to people on the left.

So it's just an interesting characteristic of tryin' to further divide the Republican party by calling, you know, slightly more moderate Republicans, who are still like very conservative compared to the Democratic party, but slightly more moderate, trying to shove them even further to the left or say that they're further to the left then they are to and it's just causing more divisions in the Republican Party.

Jason Perry: I thought the phrase was interesting from Tucker Carlson.

Says it turns out a lot of Republicans in red states serially betray their voters and what's interesting, Chris, is he called--contacted someone else in the state of Utah, our GOP Chair Carson Jorgensen, who actually went on to talk on the show.

Chris Bleak: And I think that's disappointing that he did from the perspective of creating that division or seeming to suggest that there is more of a division.

Governor Cox is, to the point that has been made, not liberal.

He has signed very conservative piece of legislation.

He might be more moderate than some in the legislature, but the reality is he's a reflection of Utahns and what Utah Republicans and Utah voters want.

There are segments within the Republican Party, as there are anytime you have a party, that are going to be more conservative or more frustrated with where the governor is because he does have a different lens then than you do when you're serving as a legislator and so that that constantly causes conflict and tension.

You and I have seen that in our respective roles.

It causes tension between those two bodies or those two entities and you have to, you have to be mindful of those lenses that they're looking through.

Doug Wilks: Media, one thing to really pay attention to, media finds an issue and then they hammer home that issue.

So Tucker Carlson looks at what does his viewers want, he finds that issue, and then he goes after it.

And in this case he took on Utah in that space.

It's not surprising.

It's just disappointing because it's not doing anything to build the country.

The far left and the far right shouldn't be defining America and that's the problem that we have right now.

Can the voices in the middle that are trying to live their lives deal with inflation, deal with gas prices?

Can they have a loud enough voice to help direct the country or is it gonna be left to people on the far sides of each aisle.

Sonja Hutson: I thought it was interesting also, I mean, the state GOP Chair Carson Jorgensen went on and he didn't push back against anything that Tucker Carlson said.

Pretty much rubber stamp what he was saying by either agreeing with it or not pushing back on it.

So I think that just gives you a sense of, you know, where the head of the party is at.

Jason Perry: He said we're still looking at whether or not there's some buyer's remorse when it comes to some of our Republic elected officials.

Sonja Hutson: Yeah, I mean Governor Cox has a pretty high approval rating and so I think that that speaks for whether or not there's buyers remorse.

Generally the people of Utah are happy with Spencer Cox.

Obviously, there are some Republicans, particularly you know, more people that are really involved in the party who are maybe state delegates who are you know elected members of party leadership that are more unhappy with him.

That makes sense given that regardless of what party you're in, whether you're in the Democratic Party or Republican Party, the people that are gonna be most involved in those party politics, who are gonna be state delegates, tend to be either further to the right on the Republican side, or further to the left on the Democratic side.

Jason Perry: If I may, Chris, because you have such a unique perspective on this, having served as chief of staff with the speaker of the house at some point, we do have a majority of Republicans in Utah, particularly in our legislature with those numbers.

What kind of issues have you seen when you have a super majority?

People will say it's all Republican, but as everyone's talked about tonight, there are different versions of that even within the Republican Party.

Chris Bleak: Well, absolutely, and you know you see that even within a legislative body.

It's what makes running a legislative body, whether you're trying to do the communications, or you know, create a sort of an agenda so challenging.

You have in our case 75, and 29 on the House and Senate that each have their own individual opinions.

And it's not uniform.

You know, it's the challenge as opposed to the governor who gets to be one voice, one agenda.

And so there's always going to be dynamics, there where you're going to have folks that see issues differently, are different, you know, flavors of Republican or conservative and so it does create a real challenge there.

I think one of the things I want to point, though, is to Doug's point.

Regular Utahns who are concerned about inflation and gas prices and some of these types of things, the political dynamics with the far right and the frustration that people are feeling in the center, in the middle, are sort of colliding together to create a real potential wave that a lot of politicians are going to have to respond to and could create some real significant dynamics going into this election cycle.

Jason Perry: Let's talk about this wave for just a moment because it's a very interesting time, and we're finishing up our county conventions, on the 23rd is our state convention and to see what might happen here, Doug, give us a little historical perspective because it is not unprecedented in Utah for very popular Republican to go to a convention and actually get booed.

Doug Wilks: You had what year was it, 20 years ago, Mike Leavitt got booed.

Certainly Governor Herbert's been booed.

Governor Cox was recently booed.

The problem with the caucus system, even the convention system, it's the people who are really engaged very often in a single cause that will come and try and make those decisions.

And you see it in the election totals where someone finishes second or third.

It's why we have a signature drives because you tried to take back that ability for the total state to vote for these folks in the office or from these districts.

So it's difficult to take a look at what the caucuses are doing and what the conventions are doing and say, do we get the best candidate coming out of those?

Jason Perry: Let me ask you-- give you a couple of numbers to ask to this point, where you're talking about with the signature gathering process itself.

And Sonja I'm gonna give you some notable examples in our Utah history.

Governor Herbert went to convention.

He lost in 2016 to Jonathan Johnson.

Eventually won with 72% of the vote.

Mitt Romney took second to Mike Kennedy as you may recall in 2018.

Then he won with 71% of the vote.

And the last one I'll give you Congressman John Curtis in 2017 lost to Chris Herrod, but then he won.

It was a three way race for the primary, 43% of the vote.

Sonja Hutson: I mean, those numbers speak for themselves.

You know, I was just talking earlier about how you know Republican state delegates on the right and you know Democratic state delegates on the left tend to be more extreme, you know, further to the right or to the left than their actual base of voters and those numbers are a perfect example.

I mean, you know Governor Gary Herbert, you know, conservative, but you know more moderate than his challenger, lost a convention, but then won overwhelmingly.

Same thing with Mitt Romney.

So that to me is a perfect example of what we were talking about earlier of you know those conventions not necessarily being and usually are not representative of the full Republican electorate.

Jason Perry: So Chris, it was back to your main point a minute ago.

So this wave part.

How do they answer then?

How do they answer these conventions when they are kind of looking for that next election cycle too for the primary or for the general?

Chris Bleak: I think ultimately those that are in future elections, both Governor Cox and Senator Romney are running a different election.

I don't like using the current election lens to look forward.

I think those candidates that are up now, though, there are some that could have some challenges.

Congressman John Curtis did not get signatures this go around despite as you pointed out needing signatures to win back in 2017.

There are a couple of local officials that didn't get signatures and so the dynamic could be interesting, but one of the big changes going forward is they have moved the filing deadline for candidates.

So the filing deadline is now the beginning of the year to coincide with when you declare you're going to get signatures.

I think this is sort of the last gasp for conventions because of that.

I would be shocked if any candidate not going to get signatures going forward because they're going to know exactly who they're running against and what those dynamics are and I would argue it's political malpractice if they don't get those signatures.

Doug Wilks: I think, there's oh I'm sorry, there's something nationally too, people are beginning to ask the question, is the two party system really where we want to be?

The Democrats, the Republicans, even on that national level, the president runs and they have to play to a base or to an extreme and then they know to win the general election, they've got to slide back into the middle.

That's not new, but now it's really difficult, it's really difficult to be a moderate candidate, get the party nomination and then see if you can win the election.

And this could be a big wave with the way the economy, the economy's good in Utah, but with inflation the way it is who knows what happens in Congress?

Chris Bleak: On one of the things that I think important to think about is Donald Trump never came back to the middle.

He ran a base election and stayed with his base the entire time.

It ultimately cost him.

Does does that change in 2024?

I hope what you're suggesting there Doug is correct 'cause I think that it does create better candidates, but we have seen both parties sort of say maybe I can just get elected with my base, maybe there is enough of a split, you know, just sort of a binary left or right and get elected on that and govern from that angle.

Jason Perry: So interested.

Go ahead, Sonja.

Sonja Hutson: I think that the 2024 presidential election will be a total repeat of 2016.

I don't think that that's going to change.

I don't think the dynamics in our country have changed enough for that.

Jason Perry: Interesting, Sonja, while we're talking about these signature gathering efforts.

It's actually we have a couple of examples and I'm gonna go through some of these county conventions here in a moment because it's in many cases, it's the incumbent did not win there, oh, but they also got signatures.

But what's so interesting is the business of signatures in the state of Utah as well, and the calculation that goes into these candidates.

Will it offend the delegates, but also it's just an enormous cost.

I know that for Senator Mike Lee for his signatures he spent $423,000 to guarantee his spot.

Talk about that dynamic.

Sonja Hutson: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of complicated dynamics within the Republican party when it comes to signature gathering.

It remains incredibly unpopular among state delegates.

You go to any convention and you'll hear it mentioned in at least a couple speeches about how the caucus convention system is so much better, like I would never dare gather signatures, that's such an insult to this process.

There are a lot of people that really love the caucus convention system and really do not like the signature gathering path.

Criticism of the signature gathering path, which ties into the money, is just it's expensive to gather signatures, particularly because the signature thresholds for, especially the statewide races are really high.

And there is this sense that oh, you can buy your spot on the ballot if you pay a signature gathering company you know $400,000.

So that's a big criticism also and that's been something that's discussed.

Shall we lower the signature thresholds, but given how the state legislature feels about it I don't know that that's-- I don't think that they want to make it easier to use that path just because there are so many members of the legislature that really love the caucus convention system.

Jason Perry: Hey, Chris just want more note on the signatures.

It's interesting how even that process can be gained a little bit.

Talk about how that's workin' in Utah through the kind of, who you hire to do it because you know sometimes you can even pay a premium like Senator Lee did for a gathering-- signature gathering company to say, okay, I won't gather signatures for anyone else.

You can lock them up for a certain amount of money.

Chris Bleak: Yeah, absolutely and one of the challenges I've gotta believe these companies are facing the exact same challenge that everyone else is and that is finding employees, finding employees that'll be dependable, that will go get that, because if you've ever gone to collect signatures it's a miserable experience.

And you know and it takes a lot of work and they, you know, they're paid by the amount of signatures that they gather, that if you're more successful, you're gonna end up getting paid more.

And so some of those challenges here in that tight labor market are gonna be really difficult but we either need to see to Sonja's point, either a lowering of that signature threshold, or more people enter the market and I believe the law of economics will win, you know, more people will enter the market if those thresholds stay where they are because more people are gonna need it and spending you know 400, plus thousand is just gonna be untenable.

More people are gonna want to get into that that area.

Doug Wilks: Incumbents advantage because Senator Lee has $6 million, right?

He's raised 6 million.

So that's that's a good investment for him.

He's got plenty of money to go.

Sonja Hutson: That's pocket change for his candidacy.

Jason Perry: Sonja, let's go through those numbers because it is very important to know at this stage how they're doing on their money because it does factor into every political decision they make right now.

Up front, Senator Lee has raised 6.3 million.

Becky Edwards, 1.2 million.

Ally Isom, 642,000.

And the unaffiliated Evan McMullin over a million now.

And Kael Weston at 80,000.

Give us your lens on those numbers at this particular point.

Sonja Hutson: I mean, Mike Lee has every advantage going into this primary.

He has huge name recognition.

He has a huge war chest of campaign money and those are some of the biggest factors that go into someone's reelection, and you know, just having being the natural incumbency advantage, which is tied in with the name recognition.

So-- and particularly I think there's another piece of good news for him is that both Ally Isom and Becky Edwards will be on the ballot and they're gonna probably split that more moderate vote that doesn't like Lee.

So I think things are lookin' good for him.

Obviously, who knows what could happen, but I think things are lookin' good for him.

Jason Perry: Okay, good let's get to these county conventions for a second.

Chris, let's start with the GOP.

Some things you saw in those county conventions, so far 'cause it didn't work out so well at least the initial votes for a few incumbents.

Chris Bleak: Yeah, absolutely, although at the end of the day, the incumbents did well.

There are a couple still left at state convention, we'll see how that shifts, maybe that'll shift the narrative.

But Steve Handy I believe was the only incumbent to have lost a number.

Did quite well and ultimately he got to the point where they want to get to.

There are a couple of primaries, obviously, Keith Grover down in Utah County.

I like that the process is challenging, you know, both the convention and the primary.

It should be.

It's a battle of ideas.

It should be a battle of ideas.

It should be people telling the voters and delegates why they should be able to return to the state house and why they should be able to govern.

So it is a challenging process.

I feel for all of those candidates because it's also a miserable process.

It's a hard one but you know the incumbents seemed to be doing well.

The state convention, there are a number of key races.

Senator Vickers, Senator Millner, Representative Waldrip.

So there are still some interesting races there at the at the state convention coming up.

Jason Perry: We're watching those close.

Representative Stenquist was another one we should mention there too.

Some of the issues, Doug you're seeing that have kinda bubbled up in the county conventions that you see may go into the state convention and I think ultimately into the primary and general election.

Doug Wilks: Education is a big issue.

What a teacher is able to teach and who should have oversight for the teachers.

That's bubbled up.

But I'll tell you the biggest problem is getting the attention of the voter.

We can see it in the trends of people who read our stories at "The Deseret News."

Jay Evensen who is our senior opinion writer, he was moderating three different school board debates and the level of interest, the level of candidate, it was just like, you know, it doesn't register anything.

And I think two, people are concerned with their lives and the trends is if you have a controversy like Tucker Carlson, well one of the candidates who you know came off on a controversial issue, that gets the press and I mean are we guilty, yes, but readers want to know what's happening in this state and those issues when we talk about woke or cancel culture, those become buzzwords that dominate.

But something like here's what I wanna do for the school, here's where I think teachers are right, here's where I think teachers are wrong, that very thoughtful deliberate process, it takes a lot to get a voter engaged in reviewing that even on the county level.

Jason Perry: It's interesting to you one of your great points there Doug, to Sonja, we talked about education, certainly through COVID we saw a lot more parental involvement in that process or parental interest at the very least, and as Doug mentioned, we had at least three bills this session dealing with curriculum and transparency.

Sonja Hutson: Yeah, it's become really a lightning rod issue, especially among Republicans throughout the country and you know Utah's no exception.

There was several curriculum transparency bills.

None of them made it through I should note.

So that was kind of interesting I expected them to go through more but I think that maybe they just want to give it a little more time to, I don't know, I don't know why they didn't go through.

But I think that, you know, there's definitely been a lot more involvement of parents because of COVID and then that has bled over into some other issues, particularly when we have conversations about critical race theory.

I mean, none of those bills, specifically mentioned critical race theory, but it's very clear that's what they were about.

There's this really big concern about that theory being taught here.

You know, teachers will tell you, it's not part of any curriculum in the state.

But there's a lot of concern about that and it's become kind of a wedge issue for sure.

Chris Bleak: One of the things, and Doug alluded to this, the state school board races, a lot of people aren't paying attention.

You know, "The Deseret News" and Hinckley Institute, Utah Association of Public Charter Schools are running those debates, which I think is amazing and awesome, but one thing to pay attention to, those races or having a significant change over.

We've had a lot of flux on the state school board over the last 10 years or so.

We're going to see it again, number of candidates either didn't run or were defeated in convention, a couple more coming up here.

And there's going to be a significant change in that impact of whether you want to call it the parents' groups or whatever is going to have a change on that board and it's gonna be fascinating to watch what issues that they pick out and what they get focused on.

Sonja Hutson: And I think that's an example of a relatively small group of people who feel really passionately about one issue because people are not necessarily paying attention to the school board races they could have a really big impact in those races because they are putting all this time and energy and money into it and don't also paying attention.

Jason Perry: So and there was a period of time, pre-COVID and most people had no idea who their school board member was.

That's less true now.

I hope these debates are are helping people pay close attention as you just referenced.

That does have a connection to an interesting study this week, Doug, now we're at a certain stage in the COVID cycle, people are looking back to see across the United States, what worked well, what didn't work so well.

It was interesting because many of our elected officials and you are talking about this right now, it was a Wall Street Journal editorial about a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

They looked at economy, education, policy, and mortality and what was interesting here is that the data is sorta lookin' say the states that had the tightest lock down did not necessarily have any better outcomes when it comes to mortality and definitely not with education.

Doug Wilks: That's true, Utah was ranked number one for how it dealt with the pandemic and people rightly are championing that.

Utah still had 4700 people die, more than 900,000 cases, but they didn't keep the kids out of school permanently.

There wasn't a six month or a year long stretch as it were in some other states.

The debate over masks was fast and furious, but at the end of the day I think now we realize kids have to be in school, people have to be able to do their jobs, and Utah started with a very strong economy and I think that really helped us.

Strong economy, a young populace, I think all those things factored in.

Jason Perry: When you start seeing these great points that Doug just mentioned Sonja, does this play into the election at all or are delegates, are voters looking at these elected officials and doin' a calculation about how they approached these particular issues when it came to COVID?

Sonja Hutson: Yeah, I mean, I think particularly you saw this at the state GOP Convention last year, you know, people were upset with how Governor Cox handled COVID at the beginning.

They felt like, you know, some of the restrictions were were too strict, which is interesting because you know a lot of them got restricted-- got lifted after about six weeks, but there was, you know, mask mandates and stuff like that and so I think it will be less of an issue this year, just because we haven't had mask mandates large scale, any sort of lock downs for a while now.

So I think it'll be less of an issue, but definitely still on people's minds.

Chris Bleak: I think this is one of the places where we're seeing were nationalized elections are becoming a problem locally because here in Utah, let's be honest, you know, there were obviously people that suffered through COVID and there are impacts and real world impacts.

But by and large the state, I believe, managed the COVID response pretty well.

I think it's unfair to look back sometimes.

I mean, there was so much lack of information early on.

It's a different world that we live in now, both certainly with vaccines, but also an understanding of how things work.

But what we're seeing is a nationalization that's impacting local politics.

The impact, the lockdowns, were not significant here like they were in other places.

Utah is to be commended for that and we should but we should give our leaders credit for the way that they handle that, and I think they're taking some blame, or some hits undeserved because of the national politics around this issue.

Sonja Hutson: I just wanted to add also, you know, there was so much we didn't know about COVID in the beginning and states took different tactics.

Some locked down more, some not so much, but we didn't really know, like that was kind of a gamble, and so Utah, you know, their strategy ended up being correct, and that's, you know, that's great for the state, at least according to that study.

But I think it was also sort of a gamble in some ways, or maybe a calculated one.

I want to give some people some credit.

I don't want to say it was a total gamble, but I think that was a calculated gamble, and they ended up being right, according to that study.

Jason Perry: Let's talk about-- what these decisions in D.C. having impact at home as well.

Doug, I think this could be a big issue for the next long while, this issue of inflation, and we've polled with you in "The Deseret News" recently to talk about inflation in Utah.

Should know inflation right now is at 10.4% in Utah, 8.5% nationally.

Talk about where Utahns are in terms of their concern when it comes to inflation, and how this is gonna play out on the national stage.

Doug Wilks: Now we've looked at the concerns of people for almost a decade with the American Family Survey, which we do and now initially.

Money concerns are always number one, and we looked at or who do you blame, and they blame the Democrats, right?

That's what the poll says right now.

So it's going to play a big role in the elections, a very big role.

I think there's no question about that and I don't think the Democrats really know what to do about it.

Jason Perry: Chris, just the last couple of seconds to this point.

The numbers of Utahns when they said how concerned about inflation, 33% blame Democrat policies, 23% blame the economic impacts of COVID.

Just here in the last 20 or 30 seconds.

Chris Bleak: And one of the things that is so real on inflation is, you know, we're seeing those that reflect really in gas prices and so gas prices are just this interesting fast indicator of inflation because you're always, you're paying for it each week, you'll see the prices posted as you drive by, and as that price remains above $4, it's going to have an impact politically, maybe more significantly than even 1994, the last big Republican wave election.

We've had other Republican wave elections, but it could be a real wave coming this year and to Doug's point I'm not sure the Democrats are ready for it or quite know how to respond to it.

Jason Perry: So actually we talk so much about how people tend to vote with their pocket books in a very real way and it's very obvious now.

Thank you so much for your comments this evening, great insights.

And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

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

And now you can follow "The Hinckley Report" on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

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