♪♪♪ 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" Utah's leaders react to the conclusion of the Derek Chauvin trial as calls for social justice and police reform continue.

New political analysis indicates Utah's congressional districts are looking a little less red.

And federal leaders take controversial positions on tough issues that could have a big impact at home.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason: Good evening and welcome to the "Hinckley Report" I'm Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week we have Jasen Lee, reporter with the Deseret News and co-host of the "Voices of Reason" podcast; Michelle Quist, columnist with the Salt Lake Tribune; and Matt Canham, senior reporter with the Salt Lake Tribune.

Thank you so much all of you for being with us tonight.

Just so many interesting things happening this week in politics, national level, state level, but I want to talk about a topic first that has really been front of mind in front and center in the country: the Derek Chauvin trial.

People across the country all through the state of Utah have been watching this closely as we should.

I want to start with you, Jason, on this this trial which lasted three weeks.

The jury was in deliberations for 10 hours.

Many of us were glued to the TV sets, but you wrote such an impactful piece this week about the trial itself and the personal nature of this trial on people across this country.

Talk about that for just a moment, particularly considering that very important personal aspect.

Jasen Lee: For me as an African-American male, I could see myself in George Floyd and as I thought of this trial I said to myself, you know, this-- he could have been me under the right circumstances.

And so, I wanted to at least convey those ideas to people so that they could probably understand now a little better why this was so important to black people all across America.

Because if you can see yourself, there's empathy there that you might not otherwise have.

Not sympathy, it's empathy, you can actually put yourself in that circumstance.

But it also has a chance out of this tragedy, we can use this as momentum going forward to make some really important changes.

And this is actually an opportunity for the police community and law enforcement to make their lives easier by taking some steps to prevent these kinds of incidents, and to build a better sense of community, and trust of the law enforcement community with the people that they serve.

Jason: Well, I appreciate that.

Everyone should read your article and comments from your family members as well.

It put it really great context on this was Jasen just did, Michelle, as well about what this means going forward.

'Cause that's the important pivotal part about this.

Michelle Quist: Right.

The reforms, you know, are really important part of this.

The sad thing for me is that, you know, our black community, our neighbors, and friends feel that they--that this is the justice that they finally, you know, that they finally felt justice from this verdict.

This is not the justice that we need and that we want.

The justice has not been there in the first place.

The justice is not being treated disproportionately, or being racially identified, or you know, that's the justice that we need not a guilty verdict for doing something that you shouldn't have done in the first place.

That's where we need to be.

Jason: Well, this is leading to some reforms, Matt, in this state.

Let's talk about some of those because the governor did have that ceremonial bill signing this week.

He signed numerous pieces of legislation.

Talk about a couple of those and the impact and significance of all these bills coming together.

Matt Canham: Yeah, the timing was an accident that he had the ceremonial bill signing the day after the verdict came in but if you think back this came from a summer of protests, a lot of serious conversation and a series of bills and our session in January.

And some of these bills will increase training for mental health de-escalation.

It will make it so a law enforcement officer is not supposed to shoot someone if that person is suicidal and can only hurt himself or herself.

There is a bill that will require the state to track use of force, which I find to be disappointing that our state doesn't track that data already, but this will allow us to know more about when police pull a weapon, aim it at someone, fire or not, where you can see are there are things we can do to change these circumstances before there are instances with law enforcement and the public that we don't want to see.

Jason: Jasen, I'm curious how you think that particular bill and the one that Matt was just talking about is Angela Romeros House Bill 162, and the the training was this: on mental health, other crisis intervention responses, arrest, control, and de-escalation.

Those are the areas of training that are going to be areas of emphasis going forward.

Put that into perspective the impact you see that have having and what is needed next.

Jasen: I would say, let's start with a mental health part first.

Police are asked to do so much.

To be honest with ya I think there has to be too much for them to be effective at all of what they do and their job is so important to every community where they serve.

So if there's a chance to maybe use some of the money that police are-- get and maybe add to it some mental health advocates that they can call into situations when it's possible to help de-escalate those situations and there'll be someone who has better training in how to make those situations potentially come out a little less violent.

And this helps obviously the police, it helps our community, that's a great chance to really do something well.

De-escalation is so important.

I've been on this earth a long time.

I can't say that I've ever been in a situation where I felt threatened enough that I needed a gun and I've been a lot of places in this country and around the world.

If you're a police officer I know that it's very tough.

You don't know what's gonna happen in various situations.

However, I do think there are opportunities if you put yourself in this situation not as a police officer but as a human being.

How would you handle that then?

Chances are you wouldn't have a gun.

You would have some other way you'd use better mental approach, a more psychological, you know, strategy so that you could figure out a way to make sure that everything happens in a way that's non violent.

The more we work on not using force that puts people in the hospital, that potentially makes them lose their lives.

That's the way we need to go.

We need to figure out ways to solve things peacefully as at anytime possible rather than you like Matt mentioned, having to draw your gun.

Once you draw your gun things are out of control because now anything can happen.

If you can figure out a way not to have that happen, that's better for all of us.

Michelle: What I hope these reforms accomplish with the training is a different expectations on what is reasonable, on the amount of reasonable forced to use in certain situations.

I hope police-- I hope the expectations of that for police becomes different and, you know, because it's not reasonable to shoot somebody in the back as they're running away, or to use choke holds, or to put your, you know, your your knee on the neck.

So I hope the training, you know, results in different behavior, which results in different reasonableness standard for their conduct of what they become liable for.

Jason: So, Matt, I want to get to these key points here because it does get to law enforcement now when it comes to that training and those kinds of things.

I want to read a quote from our Department of Public Safety.

Lots of people who have statements after the the verdict came forward, but this is one I wanna get your comments on because it really requires a lot of effort from a lot of people, including law enforcement as we were just talking about.

From the Department of Public Safety, they said, "Over the last year, we have worked to build important relationships with stakeholders in the police reform movement spurred by Floyd's death.

Our outreach within the multicultural, social justice reform and religious communities in our state has led to numerous codified reforms, both in policy and law, to which law enforcement officers statewide are now held accountable."

Talk about that statement and if the message is being received that we've been hearing about from all of you today.

Matt: What that statement shows is that Floyd's murder was a turning point in our nation.

It happened in Minneapolis.

It's impacting things in Salt Lake City and in Utah.

And what law enforcement is doing there is acknowledging that they have a problem.

That they have communities they interact with that do not trust them.

That they need outreach.

That they need to listen.

That they need to think about are there are better ways to do the job that we are asking them to do.

And I think, you know, what we need to consider as a society that we are still in the starting point of this.

This verdict doesn't end anything.

These bills that were assigned do not end anything.

These are ongoing conversations as the Department of Public Safety rightfully points out.

We still have a ways to go.

Jason: We do.

Michelle: I hope there's-- it's an acknowledgement, you know, of a problem.

I'm still not convinced, you know, our congressional leaders heralded the verdict as justice served.

I think if the verdict had been not guilty they would've said justice was served, the system worked.

There still not this, you know, Representative Owens specifically, you know, he said justice was served but you know earlier this year he said, there's no black and white issue.

It's just a problem of how we treat each other.

There is a black and white issue and until we can acknowledge that I don't think that these reforms are gonna work.

Jasen: I want to jump into real quick what Michelle said that I think that's a good point, however, I want to say that there's a lot of this means-- this disconnect between police and the communities they serve because they've admitted Minneapolis, I hate to say this, Minneapolis got a lot of problems obviously.

They had a situation earlier when Somali American police officer shot and killed a white woman who actually called for help and police.

He came up to her car.

He shot across across his partner and killed her.

And she was obviously unarmed and she was in her pajamas.

And he ended up being convicted as well.

The police departments around this country need to not fear the people they deal with every day.

I mean, there are some people who are bad apples, certainly you gotta be careful but they should not come into it with a sense that it's life or death every time, because we all know that that's not true.

And the more they can work with understand-- figuring out how to understand situations that don't have to involve them pulling a taser even, certainly not a gun that can end someone's life right then and there.

That's-- we gotta work harder at that.

They have to work harder with that and if the police can figure out ways to do it in a better fashion, they will solve a lot of their problems.

They will gain more trust and they will-- the attitudes that they feel are happening won't necessarily be that way and there'll be more trust.

There'll be more-- a better attitude toward them in general.

And I want that to be the case, because I know police officers worked really hard.

And their lives are just getting harder and harder when these incidents happen.

But in some ways, they can they can help themselves if they work hard enough at it.

Jason: Critical conversation, I'm glad we're continuing it as well.

I want to get to a political question and some issues have come up this week because it's interesting when we talk about our elected officials, how they're responding to this to, so many other things.

There is an organization out there that The Cook Political Report puts out every year.

It talks about states and how they're trending, more red, more blue, more purple, maybe.

I want to talk about what happened in Utah, Matt, because this came out this week and it's interesting of course, Utah still on the red side, but maybe less so is the interesting question.

So I wanna talk about a couple of our districts here 'cause the Cook Report came out.

And the way it works is they take the last two presidential elections.

They find the average in the country for every congressional race and then they compare every district by how it compares to that average.

And Utah numbers went down just a little bit from 2017.

So let's talk about a couple of those like the CD1 with congress-- was Congressman Blakemore.

This is a plus 20, I just want to explain that really quick, it means 20% more Republican leaning than your average district around the country.

What do you make of that that particular district, considering he won that particular district by 39 points.

Matt: I think this is a stat that is skewed in Utah heavily by the the fact that the last two presidential elections involved Donald Trump.

And in Utah, if you think about Donald Trump's first race in 2016, we had the Evan McMullin independent factor, which depressed the Republican vote.

And in 2020, well Donald Trump did better in Utah, there are still a number of Republicans who were just not enthused about his candidacy.

Who felt that his personal behavior was a step beyond where they were willing to go.

And oddly enough these huge numbers as you said a plus 20 district is one where Republicans are not exactly sweating a November election.

That's low, that is artificially low in Utah.

Jason: Yeah, it's so interesting because let's talk about a couple of these factors, Michelle, because you're involved in this.

You've run for office yourself, which was so interesting when you see these numbers.

There are other things at play here.

I mean is it right say that the state is more blue or is it just-- we're just a little less red.

Michelle: We're a little less red I would think.

I don't think Utah is ever going to be blue, but like as Derek Brown the GOP, Utah GOP Chair said just this week the worries here aren't necessarily national issues.

The worry should be about Arizona, what, you know, what's happening in Arizona.

What's happening in your, you know, in your district?

Our voters are getting younger.

People are moving into the state from California.

Everybody complains every day I hear.

All these California people are moving here.

You know, they're not California Republicans necessarily moving here.

They're Californians moving here.

You know, so that's gonna trend things differently.

And you know the issues that are important to people are gonna also, you know, trend perhaps trend more people more politically liberal.

Jason: Yeah, its certainly happening because if you add that, Jasen, to what Matt was saying just a moment ago, there are other forces at play on the political spectrum also.

You mentioned the Donald Trump factor, there might have even been from the run that Mitt Romney had before that the impact of that 2017 race as well.

What do you make of that, Jasen, with the sort of the changing face of the Republican Party in the state of Utah and how that's impacting these plus numbers.

Jasen: You know I recall when I was first moving to Utah.

It was such a red state, right?

And it still is very red and make no mistake about it.

However, there used to be a better sense of, I mean, it wasn't it was less red because if you go down to the capital every other-- for many years going back probably to the early part of the 20th Century, every other governor was a Democrat leading up to Scott Matheson.

But after that it's been very exceptionally red.

So there was a time for very long time that the state could see things in a more liberal fashion.

And these are the many of the citizens and their families are still here.

So I think we just went we-- where we are in a situation where it's skewed a bit.

But as Michelle and Matt have said, you know, there's always a little kind of give and take.

I don't know that it's ever gonna go purple, but I do think it's, you know, maybe not rose red, but a little darker than that even.

Maybe we got a little rose goin.'

Well, no, I guess rose go into red, I'm sorry.

Michelle: County conventions have recently had their elections for leadership.

It's a leadership election this year.

The State Central Committee and Salt Lake County was just elected.

Only a handful of the ultra right State Central Committee members kept their seats.

Most of the members elected to State Central Committee are moderates.

So, you know, I think it's just trending towards that.

Jason: Does seem to be.

Let's talk about the one district that's the closest, Matt, that's the 4th Congressional District and this Cook Report it was plus 6, 6% higher Republican than your average across the country, but that's one where Burgess Owens won by one point.

That district is that high?

Would you say six points high is high for that district?

Matt: It's high for that district if representative, former Representative Ben McAdams is running.

I mean, I think the interesting part of that 4th District is Mia Love squeaked in but then she won pretty handily.

You know Ben McAdam squeaked in and then Burgess Owens squeaked in.

I do think it's about matchups and it's about race.

The race is about matchups in that area and that if it's depending on who runs against Burgess Owens going forward, it might not be as close, but also and I think this is where you're going to turn this too, that district is not the next district.

That's the old one.

We're going to draft new ones.

Jason: So it was-- I'm so curious, anyone say is that district gonna become safe-- after redistricting or?

Matt: I'd be stunned if it wasn't safe-- Jasen: Definitely gonna be safe-- they are tired of having these down to the wire elections.

They barely lost the last time.

They barely won a time before that.

Yeah, they got to figure out a way.

Sadly-- see to me, this is what's wrong with our system.

It's gained because whoever is in charge, whether Democrat or Republican, they make it so that these are districts they can't lose rather than making a true sense of whatever is happening in their state.

If they just random in a way that was just more about making me districts, even rather than these crazy looking snake like things they got goin' just to make sure that they have the right amount of Republicans in those districts in this case.

That's not fair to the voters I don't think.

Michelle: They're going to have to walk a-- sorry.

Jasen: A fine line there.

Michelle: They're gonna have to walk a fine line in how they're doing this because the public is watching and you know there's that we're gonna go 10 years ago, we had that doughnut hole argument.

You know and it ended up being all these weird, you know, representatives representing people in north Salt Lake and St. George at the same time.

The eyes are gonna be on them and but again, you know, they're going to do what's politically expedient.

Matt: Well, and I think the population growth is going to make it easier for them honestly.

We've had a huge increase in people on the southern edge of Salt Lake County, the northern part of Utah County, those are conservative parts of our state.

And so it's not hard to make a very reasoned argument that that 4th District, just needs to grow just a little bit and grow that's going to be Republican votes.

Jason: Well, this is why my friend Ted Wilson used to say that politics is the only sport, right, and it's just-- to watch this because I think you're right about those lines.

Can we switch to the federal level?

Because these things are at play there too the same dynamics.

I thought was interesting an article you wrote, Matt, this week, where Mike Lee was actually comparing Barack Obama to Ted Cruz based on the policies coming out of D.C. this week.

Matt: Right, so he was asked on one of his online town halls by someone to rate Joe Biden's first 100 days in office and he was sitting next to Chris Stewart and the two of them laughed for a minute and then decided to answer the question.

And that's the way that Senator Lee decided to answer the question is that Joe Biden is making Barack Obama look like Ted Cruz.

And this is something you hear a lot from Republicans on the federal level is that they are surprised that Biden is as aggressive as he is, as progressive as he, this is-- they thought they might be getting a care taker type president and was just gonna keep things going for four years and Joe Biden has not been that.

He has pushed big agenda items, you know, two trillion dollars on an infrastructure plan.

He has another one coming out next week.

There's gonna be another two trillion dollars proposal.

He did a 1.9 trillion on the stimulus bill.

He is being aggressive and that is surprising some Republicans.

Jason: It truly is and some of this this effort is manifesting itself in other ways.

A couple of big initiatives just this week I feel like we've gotta talk about because Utah is going to be hit by this.

So, Michelle, earmarks, can we talk about earmarks for just a second because this is what we're seeing on both sides of the aisle, and in the House, and the Senate, this little bit of the divide.

Earmarks right now are gone.

There was a day where this is how you know you grease the skids of the political process as some people said.

That's gone, but the House has voted to to remove that ban.

The Senate voted to keep it.

Michelle: Right, right, no, and Utah, you know, the Utah Representatives were for it, you know.

Let's bring the earmarks back and Utah Senators like no, you know, this is good.

Listen I understand that the earmark argument, but until-- Republicans haven't been, you know, conservative in their spending for decades.

And so until we can get back to conservative in spending as we're supposed to be or even I would love to see a balanced budget amendment, which would never happen.

I don't, you know, I don't think they get any credit for saying oh, you know earmarks aren't great.

Let's make sure that we don't use them.

Let's stop spending or bring spending down just in general, you know, higher conversation here.

Matt: Just so people get how this works, right, this--earmarks are essentially where a member of Congress gets to pick a pet project and put their name on it and say look what I did for the people back home.

The House Republicans voted to bring them back.

The Democrats in both the Senate and the House were bringing them back.

It's the Center Republicans led in part by Mike Lee, who said, we're not going to vote to bring them back but this is Washington, it's politics, it's not set in stone.

That was a non binding vote.

The Senate Republicans can still get earmarks and what you will see happen in Utah is yes, Mike Lee's name might not be on a project and Mitt Romney's name might be on-- might not be on a project, but none of Utah's members of the House have said they're not going to ask for them.

So you'll get these pet projects done by House members.

There'll be in a big vote that will come before the Senate, they'll approve it, and so Utah will still get its fair share.

Mike Lee just won't put his name on one.

Jason: Yes, and it's instructive that they're not even called earmarks now.

This is Congressionally Directed Spending.

Matt: That's right.

Jason: Which is the way, which is true.

So Jasen, our elected officials have come out with statements.

It's interesting, Mitt Romney himself talks about earmarks are rife with waste and abuse.

So he and Mike Lee both actually signed a letter saying that they would stand against it but what do you make of that kinda that position, where it puts the state of Utah, particularly given what Matt just said, which is it's not exactly binding on them.

They can still find ways.

Jasen: I think this is what was politically expedient for both of those gentlemen, because, I believe they can say that but they know they're going to lose.

They know that they're coming back, but there's a pretty high likelihood of that to happen.

Personally I think I can understand why they would say that it's as Romney described it, there's always been a lot of waste and these pet projects.

Some of them are useful but some of them are the kinds of projects they didn't necessarily need to happen at such a cost.

But since spending doesn't seem to be an issue anymore, I don't know how they can get past the fact that the Democrats is so heavily in favor of it since it right now they control both Houses to some degree even though it's a very close one particularly in the Senate.

Michelle: And this is what I'm sayin' Republicans are gonna keep losing credibility.

We can't say we're conservative if one of the main planks is fiscal responsibility and limiting spending until we start limiting our spending.

Jason: What kind of campaign issue is this, Matt, particularly given there seems to be a little bit of showdown House and the Senate even in our own state.

Matt: I think it will actually serve all of our members no matter what they do.

And this is like it's a win-win-win-win-win all the way around.

If you're Mike Lee you pull the fiscal conservative you stood your ground, but if you're Blake Moore and you're a new member of Congress and being a backbencher in the House when the Democrats are in control.

What are you going to tell people you did?

If you could say I brought this project to Davis County, or I brought this project to Ogden.

I did this.

My name's on it.

I'm the one that got this for you.

That is helpful for a politician.

There's a reason earmarks were around.

I think it will serve both of them.

Jason: Go ahead, Michelle.

Michelle: I was just going to say Jasen: Jim Henson used to get so many things, right?

Jason: Well, so it is.

If we look at the state of Utah with Senator Bob Bennett was here, we see building after building in the state infrastructure projects that were largely funded through.

Michelle: Yeah, and I'm just gonna say it again.

They, you know, if you want to be Republican, if you want to keep your principles, let's limit our spending and be responsible about it.

Jason: Okay so, one final point on this.

Do you see, Matt, are members of our house going back on that on their decision to go forward with these?

Matt: They're going to ask earmarks.

They're already collecting applications now.

They're definitely going to do it.

I mean, the one I didn't hear from is Representative Burgess Owens.

He might be someone who doesn't seek them.

I'd still be surprised if he didn't at that point, but John Curtis said he was against it but he's still going to do it now that they're there but at that time he didn't like the idea, but he's still going to ask for them too.

Jason: Such an interesting issue.

Michelle: Like when you say you're against term limits.

I'm against-- or you're for term limits.

Term limits are great, but I'm not gonna apply them to me until everybody.

Jason: Now that is an interesting point, it's true.

Thank you all for your really great insights tonight on some really important and critical issues.

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.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

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