announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is provided in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Foundation Fund, Merit Medical, and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Jason Perry: Tonight on "The Hinckley Report."

Our panel discusses surprising results from county conventions and how they will impact the June primary.

As candidates submit final signatures, new criminal charges could fuel skepticism in the process.

And new numbers show this could be the most expensive primary in Utah's history.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ 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 Maura Carabello, president of the Exoro Group; Ben Winslow, reporter with Fox 13 News; and Becki Wright, founder and CEO of Proximity.

Thank you so much for being with us this evening.

This has been a big week.

Tonight we're gonna talk about money, influence, power, politics, and that's just not the new Taylor Swift album.

All sorts of things happened, including conventions this week.

I want to start with that one.

Let's talk about the county convention results.

One race that many people in Utah were following, Maura, we'll start with you.

Amanda Bollinger beat Natalie Cline, talk about that one, because many people--you don't usually talk about this, but--a race like this, but this year we did.

Maura Carabello: Right, it really brought attention to what we would call a down ballot race, a school race that we're not paying much attention.

Infamously now, Natalie Cline posted about a single individual student, some negativity.

It went as far as the legislature looking at impeachment.

They ultimately settled for censure, which was also a historic action.

And the delegates said no to her, absolutely.

And she was in line with delegate ideology.

She's right of center, I think one of the things we're seeing trend again is the delegates are ultra-partisan, whether that's ultra-left or ultra-conservative, they're ultra-partisan, but they booted Natalie Cline.

An interesting factor in this is they put through another school board candidate that had similar ideological beliefs, so the question is, why?

Was it the attention?

Was it the undue--was it the the scrutiny that was due to her public comments?

Maybe, because they did not seem to break with their ideological trend with the other candidates they voted for.

Jason Perry: Ben, talk about it.

You watched it closely, you were there, you had the feeling from the delegates themselves.

The final vote, there was 63% for Amanda Bollinger, 37% for Natalie Cline.

Ben Winslow: And to Maura's point, you just have to wonder if delegates were just tired of the drama surrounding all of this and the publicity and the attention that it brings to a normally oft ignored type of race.

You know, certainly everybody was--it was near-universal condemnation on Capitol Hill for this social media post, which was one in a long line of social media posts that generated a lot of controversy and a lot of heartburn, particularly for Republicans who may also support a lot of the goals and the, you know, policy initiatives that this particular candidate maybe sought to advance at a school board level.

But the attention--there is maybe such thing as bad publicity.

Jason Perry: Talk about the leanings here, Becki, for a moment.

I know you advised campaigns so well too, you start talking about these conventions.

Historically, we've talked about them being a little more, you know, to the extreme of both sides, a little more conservative, a little more liberal.

Is that still the case?

And when you were advising people and you're talking about campaigns, what kind of approach do you have to have to that group still, and has it changed?

Becki Wright: Well, gratefully, we have two paths to the primary.

We have the convention, caucus convention, and the signature gathering route.

And as you've seen with caucus convention, that does bring out--those candidates are really benefited by if they're more extreme.

I'm gonna give a little bit of credit to some of those delegates, though, in this convention, because, yes, it is about publicity, but I also feel like when someone like Natalie Cline, who's on the school board, attacks a student, that's where delegates will say that's enough.

Whether they support her policies or they are, you know, more or left--more, you know, conservative or left of where she is, they actually say, "Don't go after our students."

And I think that's the sentiment that we had, not just the poli-- the public nature of it, but the sentiment of saying, "Don't go after our students if you're on the school board."

Maura Carabello: But, Jason, I love your question, because I wanna stay with who the delegates are for a second.

And I'm speaking in universal, so you leave out the people-- there are lots of great people running.

But as I advise candidates, these are mainstream candidates, they're incumbents who are successful, who are successful in their legislation, who through any political marker represent and reflect their district.

To a candidate that I speak to, they ask the question, "How am I gonna run the gauntlet that is the delegate?"

I mean, they're aware, even those who are in alignment ideologically with the districts that they represent, they ask the question, "How am I going to parse what is it--what is perceived as a pretty ideological purity test when it comes to talking to the delegates?"

Jason Perry: Ben these candidates often--this is such a great point, because as I talk to them, they say, "I have two campaigns.

I've got the campaign for the conventions, and then I will take whatever policy positions I've kind of talked about there, and I will loosen them up a little bit.

I'll bring them more to the middle."

Is that still as strong as it was in the past?

And kind of add this signature gathering component to it.

Ben Winslow: Well, and that's the thing.

You have--you do essentially have two different campaigns.

If you're an incumbent, you want to learn the lesson from John Curtis, which is you gather signatures because at your own risk at convention.

A lot of people do like to roll the dice and believe that they can get through convention.

We're gonna see how that plays out coming up in the next week, week and a half, you know, with the delegates and the state GOP convention and the state Democratic Party conventions.

But, really, there is this ideal of a certain type of candidate gets through the conventions and then a more moderate candidate that appeals to more of a broader type of voter, whatever their political party ideology is, that gets the signatures.

And, you know, it ultimately-- we see what we see when we get to the primaries.

But there almost does seem to be this two-campaign path that we see.

And, you know, if you are an incumbent, it seems like it is the smarter move to gather signatures as your insurance policy just in case you don't do well at convention.

Becki Wright: Well, and I'm actually an alternate state delegate.

So, in our little precinct in our caucus meeting, it's so fascinating when they are elected, and the whole process of, you know, getting delegates elected, all of the people that were nominated for delegate positions started with, "I'm here because I love the Constitution," and I couldn't help it when it was my turn.

I said, "You know, I think it's safe to say we're all here because we love the Constitution.

There's no litmus test on how much who loves the Constitution more."

But there is this sense in that caucus convention system where people have to feel like they have to go so extreme either right or left in their party to somehow, you know, this litmus test that determines if they're capable of being a delegate.

Maura Carabello: Signature gathering is opening up our process.

I'll say I have a dog in the fight in that my firm ran the signature gathering Count My Vote campaign ten years ago.

I more just wanted to give perspective.

Ten years ago we introduced this system, and at the first couple of cycles you could not gather signatures and pass a purity test, right?

It was like if you gather signatures--now we have Senator Mike Lee in his last cycle gathering signatures, right?

And he is a darling of the delegates.

So, now you're seeing a maturity level, you've seen conversations at the state level about whether the thresholds are right.

But the numbers start to matter.

Most of the house races, the delegate selection will be between maybe 30 and 70 or 80 people total making that choice.

State senate races, you're at about 1,000, and then you get to a couple of thousands.

But remember, the Republicans only have around 4,000 delegates, the Democrats only have around 3,000.

You move into primaries, now you're paying to gather thousands of signatures.

That's money, and then clearly primaries are a more expensive endeavor.

Jason Perry: As you think back about your efforts on this Count My Vote initiative, how are those, like, say, the very conservative delegates, for example, how are they reconciling that?

"We don't like the fact you're doing this at all, but some of our favorite candidates are."

Maura Carabello: Right, I mean, you know, politics is a pragmatic thing at the end of the day.

And what happened is a couple of high-profile folks bet on convention, their bets didn't come out, and they realized that the insurance policy applied to them as well, because the delegates have sort of booted very mainstream candidates.

And when they realized they could lose, then suddenly the pathway of an ensured primary became more feasible for anyone, even someone who would be considered truest to their party.

Ben Winslow: And if you're a candidate, why wouldn't you do this?

Why wouldn't--the law allows you to do this.

And, you know, even if you personally have a distaste for this process, this is what the law says you can do, and if you want to be elected or re-elected, why not?

Maura Carabello: But they get pushback.

I mean, I just talked to a candidate yesterday who is a-- just a quintessential right of center Republican, and he said to me he's talked to two--he signature gathered, and he talked to two delegates who said, "I made a pledge that I would never vote for anyone who did signature gathering."

That's not any of the voting issues.

This is sort of an arbitrary pledge about campaign management.

So, I mean, you still have these delegates only on the Republican side who are saying somehow you've broken a value if you don't go through the caucus convention system.

Becki Wright: Well, and let me just say it's more than insurance.

Gathering signatures is actually strategic.

So, someone like Mike Lee, who clearly is going to make it out of convention with great success, he might gather signatures to tie up the signature-gathering firms.

He might also gather signatures so that people sign for him, and then if he turns his signatures in first, all of the other people who gathered signatures using those same--those signatures won't be valid for that candidate.

So, it's more than an insurance policy.

It is definitely strategy.

And let me tell you why they won't gather signatures--not just because it's ideology, it's because it costs a lot of money to gather signatures.

Some people are charging, I mean, they can go as low as $5 a signature, but up to $20 a signature.

And now there's been some changes on how they can pay signature gatherers, and we're hoping that that will actually address some of these issues, but it is a huge financial burden to get ballot access through that method.

Jason Perry: We do have a couple of candidates that people know well in the state.

I just want to talk about a couple of them, Ben, really quickly, because it was interesting.

Senator Wayne Harper was one of those candidates, the longest-serving member of the legislature.

Jeff Stenquist also, both of them did not take the majority of the votes and have to go to a primary.

Both of them did get signatures.

So, strategy or insurance, sounds like either way it just paid off.

Ben Winslow: Yeah, it certainly did.

And delegates, you know, they can be fickle.

They like you one day, they don't like you next day.

So, this is a way of ensuring that at least you have a place on the ballot.

Jason Perry: Yeah, well, talk about the--they may like you today, might not tomorrow, because, Ben, as you're watching, as Governor Cox is presenting, some of them are yelling RINO.

Ben Winslow: Right, and this is something we have seen happen in previous state conventions before.

He's obviously experiencing this at the county level again.

When you are encountering delegates who may be a little more, you know, leaning one direction, a little more partisan than, say, he is as a candidate.

We've seen this--we've seen this before.

We have seen this movie before, and the governor, I predict, will likely be primaried in the upcoming state Republican convention.

Against who, hard to say at this point.

But that's why you gather signatures, is because you have a place in the ballot, which he did.

Maura Carabello: So, it is interesting, the cycles.

This feels so much like the years in which we were looking at Bob Bennett and the Tea Party years, that it has that same feeling.

We've been through most of the conventions.

Next Saturday we have one more round of county, but we're headed into the state conventions on the 27th, and it has a very similar Tea Party feel to it.

It's really more passionate, it's more sort of high-level headline ideology stuff, and it has a throw-them-out.

I mean, that I think happens to Harper.

He's been in there since the late '90s.

It has a similar feeling, I believe, to the Tea Party years.

Jason Perry: Let's get into a couple of things that happened in this convention.

I wanna talk about one in particular, Ben.

I know you were watching this one too.

The delegates voted on this group called ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center.

This is with this group that makes sure that, you know, I'm not a resident of a couple of different states, I'm not voting in a couple of different states.

Ben Winslow gets one vote from the state of Utah.

Talk about that, because there's a little bit of a conspiracy there.

They got a response pretty quickly.

Talk about that.

Ben Winslow: Right, the lieutenant governor pushed back pretty forcefully.

She's the state's top election officer, and, she said, "No, this is an absolutely necessary thing," but we've had multiple county Republican parties basically say, "We don't want it, we want you to get rid of it, we want you to jettison it."

And you are hearing some pushback from some county clerks as well as the lieutenant governor saying, "You know, this is election conspiracy stuff, and this is an absolutely necessary thing."

It's just kind of interesting to see, and I believe that that may also come up at the state Republican convention as well in the form of a resolution.

Maura Carabello: I really, in this instance, really appreciated the lieutenant governor, the head of the elections office, coming out clearly, because I think in today's America it is incumbent on us to see the difference between a conspiracy theory and a different point of view, and the different points of view can be data-driven, they can come from lived experiences, and they're both valid even though we may be in conflict.

Conspiracy theories rely on non-reliable data, anecdotal, and have no relevance.

And I really appreciate that she drew a line in which these systems, yes, they are absolutely the need to be vigilant, and there are flaws in any multi-thousands of calculations, but I really appreciated her quick and assertive response.

Jason Perry: I think we should read it, because it came right away after this resolution, non-binding resolution from this group.

But, Becki, after I read this, give a response from you.

This is from Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson to this resolution.

"ERIC has become a favorite boogeyman of the radical election deniers.

But their claims are not based in fact, and their demands are counterproductive to their rhetoric.

ERIC is the only tool member states have to ensure certain things.

It rings hollow for anyone to claim to care about the security and integrity of our elections while simultaneously demanding we withdraw from the best tool we have to keep our voter rolls clean."

Becki Wright: Well, absolutely.

I want to build on what Maura was saying there.

We need to have understanding of how these elections work, and we need to have trust and faith in our elections process.

There are always going to be election deniers, but we have tools and technology that has advanced in so many years.

Why are we going backwards?

Why are we wanting to not utilize those tools in a way that could help us do a better job?

So, absolutely supportive of what the lieutenant governor said there, and absolutely supportive of technology and, you know, different tools that we can use to ensure that that's the case.

You--again, going back to my precinct caucus experience, they asked us to vote on our presidential preference poll on a little piece of paper about this big.

And then we were supposed to hand it to each other and pass it down the row, and people think that's more secure than technology.

I mean, where are we living, right?

Like, that's obviously and clearly something that doesn't really help us.

Jason Perry: Let's get into a couple other interesting points.

We touched on a little bit on signature gathering.

I wanna talk about these elections generally, because we had a lot of changes, and it goes--does go to this election security issue just a bit and whether or not we can trust everything from not just my vote, but to the signatures that are gathered.

And Maura, you've done a lot of work on signature gathering, not just from the Count My Vote, but what's happened since then.

I want to talk about, first, these thresholds.

Okay, so there are thresholds for the statewide races, for the local, for the county.

Talk about how those are established.

Maura Carabello: So, I mean, they were rather arbitrarily established in law, and they can be moved.

I will say they pale in comparison to issue thresholds.

So, if you're a citizen who wants to run a ballot measure, your test is extraordinary.

So comparatively, the local thresholds are rather achievable, although they come with a cost.

They're in multiple thousands, anywhere from 28,000 if you want to run for statewide down to several hundred, but they come with this cost.

And for the first time, the candidates are feeling the consequences of what I see as sort of draconian approaches to access to the ballot.

And it's a balancing act.

It's a balancing act between getting credible, serious-minded people and making it too high that only a certain class of either wealth or access gets to the ballots.

We're starting to have enough, like I said, we've had five cycles now.

We're starting to say, are the thresholds correct?

Are they too high or are they too low?

And I think this is going to be a maturing conversation now that a great deal of incumbents are also sort of utilizing this for the first time.

Becki Wright: Well, and let me add that Utah is among a handful of states that has such high thresholds.

There are other states in the nation who do have this signature ballot access perspective, but they don't have nearly the high levels that we have here in Utah.

Jason Perry: A couple of those safeguards in the process itself.

You can, like, for example, can I pay someone, like, a dollar amount per signature?

Becki Wright: Well, and that's the other thing that's really difficult about it, that it's hard for candidates, is that this changes.

It's a moving target.

So, previously you would have to pay per valid signature.

You couldn't pay for just any signature, because then there could be fraud, but it's per valid signature.

Now, just recently, they introduced a new bill that has them only pay per hour, and they cannot pay per valid signature.

So, candidates, if they're running an incumbency, you know, they don't know from one year to the next what is the rule here and what is the cost going to be based on that.

Maura Carabello: Here's what I have learned from gathering signatures in Utah for a couple of decades.

Complexity means professionals like Becki and I are getting paid, and you shouldn't do that.

Our laws are so complicated, they change every year, they go down to what someone's wearing, where someone's standing, how much access you can have.

We've done something remarkable lately that I was so excited about in which we've authorized electronic signature gathering, but this is the first attempt I've seen to open the ballot, and that was a law 12 years in the making, actively 12 years.

What I love about the new signature-gathering law is that it was--the genesis of it also came from election office professionals, so the state was working hand in hand with app builders, and it's a really solid platform.

Not only did they launch it from a legislative perspective, they launched it from a technological, we'll do a round with it and get the bugs out.

But back to ballot access.

I mean, really, if you're ever looking at campaign finance laws or ballot measure laws, you can guarantee almost, I say as the recipient of some of this business, the more complicated, the more the average smart person has to hire someone, and that's never good in terms of public policy.

Becki Wright: Well, and it shouldn't cost $180,000 to get on the ballot.

If you're looking at a 7,000 signature race, and it's $20-- you know, previously, it was $20 a signature, that's--you have to gather more for verification, and then you're gathering 9,000 signatures, $180,000 should not be the bar that we're setting for people to get onto the ballot.

That's absolutely asinine.

Jason Perry: Well, as you think about that, Ben, it was interesting this week, the attorney general's office filed some criminal charges against signature gatherers that just occurred in the state of Utah.

Ben Winslow: Right, and this all stems, it seems, from complaints that have been brought to the lieutenant governor.

And, you know, they argue that, "Look, we do take these things seriously, and we are investigating," which is, you know, where you ultimately see the criminal charges leveled.

Obviously, the people involved in this very much dispute what the attorney general's office and what the state is alleging, but you can see there's a lot of checks and balances here.

Speaking to the, you know, the complicated nature of this.

You know, on that note as well, when we talk about the idea of these thresholds and everything, what I've always heard from lawmakers dealing with this particular issue is when it comes to citizen ballot initiatives, they don't want it to be like other states where if you have an original thought, you can run a citizen ballot initiative and get it on the ballot, and suddenly you have 50 things on there.

Becki Wright: Well, and let's go back to the signatures, because another recent change was the electronic signature gathering, and, Maura, you were referencing that.

This now gives signature gatherers the opportunity to look at--using the state's approved app--to look at a ID, a government-issued ID, verify the ID of the individual, and then they can sign right there electronically.

This is not a virtual signature per se, where you do this in your home, you know, alone, but you can still--at least that allows the verification for each candidate, that allows the verification to go much faster, it probably actually will allow the verification of the Lieutenant governor's office of those signatures also to go faster.

So, even just this sort of technology is going to simplify the process and allow candidates to have more clarity.

Jason Perry: Just one more question on this too, Maura, because I'm just--I look at sort of what's happened since these laws went into effect, and you brought up that it's a 28,000 signature for one of these statewide races.

I was kind of curious what you see happening here.

I look at there--we have three candidates right now, John Curtis, John--Jason Walton, and Brad Wilson, all qualified, all 28,000, that's 84,000 signatures.

I mean, at some point, people are out there buying signatures.

At some point, I don't--would you start running out of people?

Because you can only sign that thing once.

Maura Carabello: You can only sign once, you have to be in the party of the person you're signing, you have to clarify, and you over-count, because I maybe paid no attention and I signed two ballots.

So, this just becomes a more expensive race.

This Senate race is an enormously expensive race to start out with.

But absolutely, the more qualification things, the more complexity, absolutely the more expensive it becomes, and firms are running all of those.

We don't see at that level of a threshold a volunteer effort is virtually impossible.

Jason Perry: Talk about how this plays, the expense, Becki, because let's talk about that race in particular.

This has the lookings of it might be the most expensive senate race that we've ever had in our state.

Becki Wright: Absolutely, it's already on track to be one of the most expensive primaries in our state.

And as Maura mentioned, you know, when you're looking at those numbers, trying to do a grassroots signature gathering is just nearly impossible.

We've seen in other--actually, our CD-3 race, there were some candidates that were gathering, and they didn't quite get that threshold, and because it's really difficult to do that.

But, yeah, we're looking at the finance, the numbers that are extremely high, and part of that is actually through loans the candidates are giving their own campaigns, and they need to do that in order to get that leg up to get their campaigns running and moving and gather those signatures quickly.

Jason Perry: Ben, it kind of cuts both ways there too.

I see people, these ar--these arguments out there, some of these campaigns, and they've raised a lot of money so far, a couple million dollars-plus in a couple of cases.

But we're starting to see some of these candidates who can starting to loan their own campaigns money.

Ben Winslow: Right, and they're gonna need to if they wanna get ahead.

You know, you are headed into a crowded field at convention.

Again, you can take your chances at conventions, see if the delegates like you enough to advance you.

But if you really want guaranteed, you're gonna have to pay for these things like signature gathering.

What we've started to see also is some of these candidates advertising on television, radio, you know, hitting digital, all before they even go to convention.

So, this is just to get their name out there, get recognized, and do this.

Maura Carabello: But one strategy with loaning your campaign money.

An early loan, really smart money.

A loan later to just stay in it, not good money.

Because what you want to is if you can't attract donors, you likely can't attract voters.

And to Ben's point, it's smart money in Utah to use traditional mass media, because we're a one-media market, we're the only place in the nation where you can do one buy and cover the state.

If you know you're going into a primary, you start talking, and at the risk of looking like a chump who is supporting a lot of money, the one thing I'll say about this senate race that's so expensive, some of it is we've got a lot of viable candidates.

I mean, we've seen others where there's just two and they are spending like crazy.

We've got four or five that are spending like crazy.

Jason Perry: Go ahead.

Becki Wright: Well, and national support of those candidates is starting to come in as well, so we've seen some loans happening from individual, you know, early money coming in.

But we've also seen these national groups, PACs and supporters coming in and supporting these candidates.

Jason Perry: Talk about how that's working, our last 20 seconds here, what might happen with these PACs.

Becki Wright: Well, honestly, those are--what we say is dark money, sometimes, is they say, "We're going to come in and we're going to support alongside," they're not going to go directly to the campaign, but they're going to be promoting the ideology or the issues that the candidate is caring about.

Jason Perry: We'll watch this closely, such an interesting conversation.

Thank you for your insights this evening, 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.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is provided in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Foundation Fund, Merit Medical, and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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