Utah Democrats just got their dream map. Now comes the circus primary.
For the first time in decades, deep-red Utah will have a safe blue congressional district after a judge installed a new map last week. That bodes well for state Democrats, who haven’t sent one of their own to Washington since 2021.
But it is less than ideal for former Rep. Ben McAdams, the last Democrat to represent Utah in Congress, who has built a career off of his ability to appeal to moderate voters. With the new map, McAdams now faces challengers to his left, and political moderation will not be as necessary to win the deep-blue seat.
“On Tuesday morning, about a thousand people woke up, went to the mirror, looked at themselves and thought, ‘This looks like a congressional candidate,’” said Brian King, the Utah Democratic Party chair. “It really did cause a lot of people, I think, to reevaluate their chances for that race.”
The new Utah 1st Congressional District, encapsulating the bluest precincts of Salt Lake County, represents the most friendly district for Utah Democrats in decades. It’s a district Kamala Harris won by over 23 points in 2024, even as she lost the state by more than 20 points.
It is familiar terrain for McAdams, who represented much of the new district as a state senator and Salt Lake County mayor. He has already received backing from several of the state’s top Democratic donors and the Welcome PAC, a national committee focused on electing moderates. His campaign announced Friday it raised over $500,000 in its first 24 hours, as well as endorsements from the Salt Lake City mayor and the city council.
In an interview, he downplayed the challengers to his left.
“I think competition is good for democracy,” McAdams said. “I’ve never run unopposed for the nomination, so I look forward to reminding Democrats why they’ve trusted me in the past and earning their support in this race.”
But Jeff Merchant, the former Utah Democratic Party chair, predicted McAdams won’t have a seamless path.
“It’s just going to be really tough for a moderate to placate some of these folks that are on the progressive side of things, because they haven’t had a shot [at electing a progressive before],” Merchant said.
The increasingly crowded primary field is still growing. State Sen. Kathleen Riebe announced her candidacy last week. Former Senate candidate and environmentalist Caroline Gleich said she’s “seriously considering” a bid, as is former Senate candidate and State Department official Kael Weston, who said he’s “closer and closer every day” to entering. State Sen. Nate Blouin, who said he would only run in a deep-blue district, now says he’s “seriously giving it a look.”
“There was this understanding that Ben would come back in and he’d be the likely frontrunner,” said Frank Pignanelli, a Utah-based lobbyist and political commentator. “With this new map, others couldn’t jump in fast enough.”
Utah’s redistricting saga has yet to reach its conclusion. In August, a district judge ruled the 2021 map — which split Salt Lake County into all four districts — ignored the voters’ will when they passed a 2018 ballot initiative calling for an independent commission to draw the map. The judge ordered the map redrawn, and the GOP-controlled state Legislature settled on one that favored Republicans while offering two more-competitive seats.
Last Monday, Judge Dianna Gibson rejected that map and instead approved one of the plaintiff’s submissions — a map that carves out most of Salt Lake County as an independent, deep-blue district.
Leaders of the Republican-controlled Utah Legislature say they will retaliate. They are attempting to push back the candidate filing deadline, set for early January, as a delay tactic while they appeal the judge’s ruling. They are also considering impeaching Judge Gibson.
Should the map stand, it poses the most likely pickup opportunity for Utah Democrats in recent memory, and a rare primary drawing national attention. The progressive group EMILYs List is considering getting involved in the race, the first time they’d enter a Utah primary since the 1990s.
Still, the race promises peculiar Beehive State flavor.
Gleich prides herself as the first woman to ski all of Utah’s infamous steep chutes. McAdams nods to his experience as a young Latter-day Saint missionary in Brazil. And Weston boasts that his great-great-great-grandmother was a plural wife of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, the first two presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Utah is different,” said Scott Howell, a former Democratic state senator and Utah minority leader. “They can be progressive. They don’t have to be LDS. But they have to respect our culture.”
Even so, McAdams’ list of progressive challengers are banking on a common message: In the new blue district, voters no longer need to placate to the middle to win a majority-Republican district.
“The Democratic nominee is going to win this seat and win it without any real problem,” said Ian Russell, a strategist advising Riebe’s campaign. “So we don’t have to compromise. We can actually have a Democrat who believes in and has championed our values.”
The challengers’ efforts to make the race a litmus of party loyalty could hurt McAdams, who led a controversial effort in 2022 to not endorse a Democratic Senate candidate and instead back independent Evan McMullin, who was challenging Republican Sen. Mike Lee. The effort fell short — McMullin lost in the general by double-digits, even as he garnered 92 percent of the Democratic vote — and left some of the state’s Democrats feeling bearish on the party’s statewide chances.
“There hasn’t been a reckoning. There’s still a huge amount of wreckage,” said Weston, who ran for the Senate as a Democrat that cycle. “When you have Democrats saying, ‘We can’t win,’ it’s devastating.”
Peter Corroon, the former Salt Lake County mayor and state Democratic chair, said he expects most Democrats have moved on. “It was a test. The test failed,” he said. “I think we learned our lessons from that.”
That pragmatism could play to McAdams’ benefit, said Ian Koski, a Democratic strategist who has run races in Utah. “You will not be able to win this primary solely by running on progressive ideals,” Koski said, noting many Democratic voters lean more moderate than those in other urban hubs across the West. “You will need to come to it with more pragmatism about how to turn those ideals into policy.”
Despite Harris’ big win in the district, King — the 2024 Democratic nominee for governor — won it by only 11 points. “I think that these candidates are fundamentally misunderstanding this district,” said Andrew Roberts, a Democratic operative who worked for McAdams’ previous campaigns. “The show-up-to-every-event class of Democrats is different than the one that goes home to a family every night, and doesn’t show up to every event but will vote in a primary.”
An increasingly crowded field could play to McAdams’ benefit, should the progressives split the vote among themselves. In Utah, candidates can make the primary ballot by winning the delegate vote at the party convention or by gathering signatures — a costly, work-intensive route that requires a strong campaign infrastructure. The state has a deep roster of Democratic donors who live in the Park City area, outside the boundaries of the new district.
“What I can tell you is that people really want to win a seat,” said Mark Gilbert, a former U.S. ambassador and Democratic donor who lives just outside of the new Salt Lake County district. “They want to have representation that matches their beliefs in Washington.”
Natalie Fertig contributed reporting.
