(soft music) - [Announcer] Funding for The Hinckley Report is made possible in part by The Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

(upbeat music) - Good evening, and welcome to The Hinckley Report.

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

Covering the week we have Sage Miller, political reporter with KUER.

Derek Brown, former chair of the Utah Republican Party, and Scott Howell, former Utah Senate Minority Leader.

So glad to have all of you together tonight talking about politics.

I wanna get into the results of this midterm election.

I wanna talk about our Senate race a little bit, Mike Lee, Evan McMullen.

But some of the themes and lessons learned from that particular race, 'cause they just might carry forward a little bit.

Derek, let's start with you a little bit from the Republican side of this race.

Key things you saw in this race.

- Well, first of all, it was definitely closer than six years ago for Senator Lee.

Six years ago he won by 40 points.

This time it was more of a close double digit race.

But I think that we saw a lot of different trends.

I think it was an interesting choice for the Democrats to make to simply not field a candidate and hope that they could then sort of make up for that in other respects.

But I think that... And in the end, they fielded a candidate, so to speak, who wasn't very strong.

And one of the things that was interesting about McMullen was that he's someone that...

I mean, I've been pretty involved in the political world for a number of years.

And with one exception at a TV studio a couple years ago, I've never seen him live in person here in the State of Utah.

And so it does make me wonder if the Democrats had put their weight behind somebody who had more of a Utah connection, could it have really been a competitive race?

And that remains to be seen.

But I think it was an interesting choice and it certainly made it a much closer race than one that we've seen in many, many years.

- Mm-hmm as time of filming it's about 10 points, which is the closest race Senator Lee has had.

Scott, talk about it from that Democratic perspective, particularly through the lens of what Derek just said.

- Sure.

Well, we're tired of losing and so we went to the extreme measures to find a candidate that we thought could win.

And Evan, I've known him for a while, and I think Derek brings up an interesting point.

I wish he would've been out more in front of audiences.

I wish he would've been out shaking hands and doing more of that.

But as Democrats, it was a strategy that we had.

And quite frankly, I'd seen early polling on this.

And there was a pathway for him to win.

And I think him coming in within 10 points sent a large message out there about people who are in the Republican Party, what I would call the normal Republicans like Derek Brown, the good ones said, "You know what, this is not right."

And the thing that really disturbed me about the campaign though, was the negative ads that got tiresome.

My best Democratic friends, my best Republican friends said, "Scott, this is too much."

And they really did go hard negative both sides, equal treatment.

- When you look at the results so far, I mean, is this a strategy that Democrats might wanna try again?

What do you think the lesson is?

- Well, I'll go back and say we're just tired of losing.

We need to have a strategy that works.

I think if we can find a solid Democratic individual candidate that we could make in roads.

But in Utah, it's really interesting because, you say Democrat and they go, "Oh, I think that's Satan."

And there's been a generation of people that have been raised in that.

And so it's just hard.

The strategy really was to get that independent vote and get those moderate Republicans to say, "I can't vote for a Democrat, but I could vote for a Republican."

And that's a strategy that I think we're just gonna have to continue to evaluate, because quite frankly, we'd like to win.

We'd like to have a representation.

One senator from Utah to be a Democrat.

- Uh-huh, Sage, how was this messaging received?

I mean, you talked to so many voters.

You've reported on so many of these interactions.

How was sort of this experiment, this strategy received?

- Yeah, so the voters that I talked to, a lot of them are actually independent, right?

And something that Utah is known for is being conservative, but they also usually choose the more moderate conservative candidate.

And so when you had Evan McMullen versus Mike Lee, and Mike Lee is considered more conservative, more right, leaning in extreme versus McMullen with his messaging.

I think a lot of people on the fence did veer towards McMullen because they thought of him as a more independent voice, as more kind of not wanting to side with another political party.

'Cause if there's something that I've learned about voters during this past election is they really don't care about political parties.

They're not a huge fan of them.

They do subscribe to them and whatnot.

But a lot of people that I also talked to said, they just wanted new faces in representing Utah.

They wanted new faces in the state legislature, in the federal delegation.

And so they were really trying to put their weight behind that.

But a lot of people that I did like speak to, they did have their top issues.

And I think the place that McMullen maybe fell behind when it came to reaching independent voters was this policy problem of not really having strong policy that could match Lee.

And Lee did have a good messaging system of being, I'm voting no because it's not in the best interest of Utah.

So my voting record matches what my constituents, what the State of Utah wants.

Whereas I don't think that came across very well with the McMullen campaign.

- Derek and Scott maybe pick up on that, because did you see that message in there that party is less important than the person or the policies?

I mean, how relevant is it if someone identifies a Republican and Democrat or independent?

- Well, I think there's less cache now than there used to be.

And I think that you'll see that along Millennials and Gen Z that sort of that party affiliation isn't as important and the messaging is really what matters.

And frankly that's where McMullen fell down.

As he had no messaging.

I mean, for anyone who watched the debate you came away thinking if there happens to be a second debate, McMullen's talking points are gone.

Like he's used all of his talking points, he had about two.

One is, "I don't like President Trump."

And the second one is, "I don't like Mike Lee, and I could be better than Mike."

And beyond that he didn't really have a lot.

And he was just walking this tight rope.

And it was a really interesting effort to sort of capture Republicans without offending Democrats, but also capture Democrats without saying anything that would offend Republicans.

And in the end, there was some statistical probability that maybe he could get enough votes, but in the end it simply didn't work because he can't do that.

That's a tight rope that I think he tried to walk, but really struggled in the end to get the votes he needed.

- You also have to energize voters that are likely to vote, but maybe not vote or on the fence.

They're still wondering if they're gonna vote.

And for a lot of them, they don't really know who the representative is.

They don't necessarily care about Mike Lee.

They may care more about Trump because of his national name and figure.

But when it came to like these local races, you had to give them a reason to vote, not a reason to vote against somebody.

And that's where I think maybe, I mean, McMullen fared better than any senate candidate in the past, like what, 50 years.

So it did seem like it worked out in some ways, but not enough to unseat the incumbent in the end.

- Mm-hmm let's talk about the impact of the results, Scott, a little bit because it seems like the most important voting block, at least going into the final days were moderates.

Both sides of the aisle moderates.

Is this a new phenomenon or how powerful is that group and what do elected officials need to do to get them?

- Well, I think it's not a new one.

I think that's really what Utah is.

I think if you go out in polling and be interested if Sage did any of this, I think the majority of voters in Utah really are moderate.

It's the extreme left and extreme right that get all the notoriety 'cause they create news and they're very emotional.

But I think 10 points you gotta...

It would sent a big message to Mike to come, for Evan to be within that number that's a important thing.

I just think though that there was a lot of people on the abortion issue also.

I thought LDS women would probably come out more as the concern about doing away with abortion.

When I talk to active LDS women, they go, "You know what, I'm anti-abortion but I'm not anti doing away with it forever."

And I really thought that, that would be a bigger play.

When you look nationally at the people who have won on the Democratic side, they focused on the economy.

And they didn't do what Evan did, what Derek articulated so well.

Talk about President Trump.

Hey, you know what, get off that.

And that's not the issue.

Tell us what you're going to do and how you're going to make a difference.

And so I think between Sage doing some polling about moderates and I think Derek is spot on, I think that race really could have changed.

And I hope Evan gets back into it because when you talk to him and you're there face to face, it's a different story.

You see a different person who has really great policy ideas, but he never bring them up.

- So Sage, talk about what did bring people out.

We talked a little about abortion, we talked about the economy.

I'm kinda curious what you're hearing about, 'cause we need to talk about it for a minute.

The Trump factor in all of this.

Going into the election, there was some thought that the House and Senate in DC would swap, didn't necessarily at least probably in the House, but maybe not in the Senate.

- Yeah, if you're looking at it federally, I think people didn't wanna go backwards.

I don't think they really wanted to relive the four years of the Trump presidency.

And so you saw these very close races in Arizona, in Nevada where the deciding votes were in the more heavily populated, more Democratic leaning areas that took a lot longer to count.

But in the end, I don't think that Trump's candidates really came out victorious in a lot of these votes, the Trump backed candidates.

And so yeah, I think Trump was a motivating factor, but you also look at inflation, the personality, the ambiance of who these candidates are, can they relate to them, right?

Something that I heard from older voters was, for example, how likable and how personable and how just human Fetterman was in Pennsylvania.

And that was somebody that they could kind of connect to.

And I thought that was very fascinating to me.

But I do think that the messaging is different based off the age population that you are looking at.

The economy is incredibly important.

But when I was talking to Millennial and Gen Z voters, the economy wasn't mentioned at all.

But that was something that older voters really cared about.

So I think it kind of was all over the map.

I think exactly what Scott said, abortion did bring people out in different areas of the state and people who wanted to protect that right to choose or protect the right to an elective abortion is what brought people out in other states where that was a big deciding factor in those races.

But in Utah specifically, I don't really know.

We don't really know what brought voters out this year.

I wish I had a clear answer for you.

- Can I add?

I mean, the abortion issue is really interesting because it was on the ballot in I think five different states.

And the pro-life side of things lost in all those states.

I mean, Vermont and California, that's not newsworthy.

We expected that.

Michigan, more of a swing state at loss.

But what's interesting is a state like Montana or let's say Kansas and Kentucky.

I mean, so you had several states where it was really clear what happened.

And I think really Scott mentioned that the moderate component is really...

I mean, that's where a lot of the power is.

I had a really interesting conversation, a full year before the 2020 election with the chairman and vice chair of the national RNC.

And I was saying, where are the swing states gonna be?

And a full year before 2020, they said Arizona.

I said, "You've gotta be kidding me.

Wait Arizona if Republicans are fighting for their life in Arizona?"

And I said, "Why is that?"

And they said, "The polling by both parties shows that."

And interestingly they said suburban, middle-aged, conservative LDS women loathe Trump and were going to lose them.

And the Democrats knew that and the Republicans knew that.

And so I think that factor, 'cause you asked now about Trump and where that moves forward.

We've seen that dynamic now for the last several years.

So the question is, are Republicans going to continue to go down that same track with Trump?

And there's a lot of baggage, there's a lot of toxicity.

And it's not a unifying factor.

Are they gonna keep doing it?

And I mean really I think if there's one group of people that won in this election nationally, it's those who were able to establish their identity outside of Trump.

- Uh- huh, well, Trump's back.

- [Derek] Yes he is.

- So let's talk about that first minute to see how that will influence it.

So Scott, former President Trump announced this week that he is going to run for president in 2024.

I'm curious because I wanna hear the response nationwide in Utah.

But what's interesting is we had over 86 elected officials in the State of Utah.

Republicans, conservative Republicans that wrote a letter saying they want someone else.

- Well, I think Senator Todd Weiler is the new hero up on Capitol Hill.

And I don't think he's gonna have any opportunity to work in a cabinet position if Trump did win.

But I think that shows the moral conviction of some of these great leaders that we have.

All Republicans who signed that document.

And I agree with them.

I think it's a losing strategy for the Republicans if they nominate him.

I really do.

Now, to be fair in this, I'm not so sure the Biden should be the nominee from the Democratic side too.

Actually I think it's really... And this goes back to Sage and Derek's comments about a new group of voters out there that want change.

You said Sage, they're tired of the same old faces.

And Derek said you can't go down on this same projectory of what we won before.

And so I think this upcoming election is gonna be really interesting.

I was shocked quite frankly that Trump did do that.

I thought that maybe he would see the light, especially on this red wave.

It was a small East Mill Creek stream that kinda went through.

- Let's get to this comment from Senator Weiler that you just mentioned 'cause I want to read it.

He's a conservative member of our Utah legislature.

And this is what he said, this is his comment.

He said, "One of Trump's messages was that there would be so much winning that people will get tired of winning.

Quite frankly, I'm tired of losing."

Put that in context of what you just said a moment ago, Derek.

- Well, the reality is political parties, if there's one thing that's the job of a political party and particularly the chair, it's to keep the party together.

And in fact, I had one person on the radio when I was getting interviewed once that said to me, "I sometimes feel like there's about five political parties in Utah and you're the chair of four of them."

And so what you want more than anything as a political party is to keep people unified.

And if there's one thing that Trump does not do for the Republican Party at this point, particularly moving forward, it's unify the members of the party.

If anything, it's gonna do just the opposite.

So I think what's interesting is you see not only folks like Senator Weiler, but there's a lot of names on that list of very conservative Trump supporting Republicans who are in a sense saying, "You know what?

We're done losing and we know that Trump didn't win in 2020 and the likelihood of him winning now, particularly with what he did post-election, is almost just inconceivable at this point.

So let's find a winning strategy and move forward.

And he is not it."

- Sage, what's interesting is these officials also identified someone that they may prefer other than former President Trump.

And it was Ron DeSantis governor of Florida.

- Sure was.

Yeah, and Ron DeSantis is a historically conservative governor that maybe a little less conservative or just knows how to play the politics game better than Trump.

And maybe that's somebody they want to work with more.

But something that I found interesting about the letter that was sent out by the Utah Senate was that the chair of Utah's GOP Carson Jorgensen was not on that letter.

Which means I think that there may be this disconnect and that Carson Jorgensen's job may be a lot harder moving forward.

- Derek you have to say something, you're the former chair, how weird is that.

- Well, his job was already, let's be clear, it is the most difficult job in the state for which he's paid absolutely nothing.

But the reality is, as a state party chair, your job is to support the candidates at the time that the party chooses.

So I mean, it doesn't surprise me that he didn't sign it, but I do know that it as Sage said, it does make his job much more difficult because all it does is take this existing rift in the party and just widen it, making it more difficult for him to keep those four political parties all unified and moving in the same direction.

- Yeah, so Scott what's the Democratic strategy?

Talk about this rift that Derek was just describing within the party.

You've got Ron DeSantis who seems to be rising quickly.

Trump's in the race whatever impact that's going to have.

The Democrats strategy nationwide going into this election which is only two years away.

- Yeah, well, I can't disclose everything or I'll be annihilated when I walk out, but I will tell you that there is definitely a strategy.

If you saw Michelle Obama's interview that she had earlier this week on one of the channels, it was interesting when she's asked the question, "Will you support President Biden in a reelection?"

It was the pregnant pause moment where she took her time and said, "Well, I'm gonna have to think about that."

And so I think for us, look, Joe Biden is a friend of mine, personal friend, I've known him for 50 years.

And I can see every day that this is taxing on him.

But who wouldn't?

When you get on a plane and fly 15,000 miles.

I don't care if you have Air Force One it's still hard on you.

And I think that his statement earlier this week where he said, "We're gonna think hard over the holidays of what our next move is."

But Democrats have to be smart in this.

And if they were smart, they'd nominate somebody like Joe Manchin.

A very centrist, works well with Republicans, has a lot of the same value system.

But then Gen X and the other ones, are we gonna lose them?

Are they gonna say, "Oh, it's just another old white guy that you wanna put in there."

So I think the field might be open.

And on the Republican side, I think we talk about Ron DeSantis, but there's Youngkin who did a unbelievable job in Virginia.

I knew Terry McAuliffe, I've known him forever.

And McAuliffe had the same message, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

Instead of saying education, we gotta fix this and this.

And so if the Republicans pick something like that, I think it's gonna be hard for a Democrat to win who's not a moderate.

- Okay, I wanna get to turn out in a second, but I feel like I just have one comment on this because do you think we're gonna see Republicans across the country do what these elected officials in Utah did?

Are we an anomalies here?

- No and not at all.

And I think if you look as I mentioned, those Republicans that have the biggest victories are the ones that establish their own identity aside from President Trump.

So DeSantis was one, Kemp is another one.

And so you see some of those big victories were people who they did the best they could to distance themself from the president because they realize that I mean, it's just a numbers game now for them.

They know he's not going to help them in the reelection.

And so I think you're gonna see bit by bit enough of the Republicans.

I think you're gonna see a space opening up because there's a lot of Republicans in the last few years who felt like if they didn't say anything nice about President Trump they couldn't get elected or they couldn't get the party nominee.

And I think the reality is that's what DeSantis is showing them is yes you can.

And if you want to win, that's what you have to do.

So I don't think Utah is an anomaly in that sense at all.

I think we're gonna see a lot more of these folks as we move forward.

- And to put a little frosting on that cake, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens on these congressional elections and where we really end up.

Will the Republicans take over?

Kevin McCarthy was in there measuring drapes, and then he's got quite a few people saying, "Hey, not quite so fast."

And personally, I think where the house goes in that midterm could be a big indicator of where voters will wanna go in the future.

- [Jason] Interesting.

- Yeah, good point.

- I wanna talk about where those voters are going and talk about turnout in Utah for a moment, Sage.

The Lieutenant Governor's Office puts out what they call the voting percentage based on active voters in the state and as of time of filming, or about 62% in Utah.

To put that in perspective, we saw in 2018, which sort of our high, was it 76%, we can talk about those reasons there why people showed up and there were significant ones, but this is kinda right just below that, talk about this turnout and motivation.

- Yeah, So I've talked to a handful of election officials about how this turnout was going.

And Sherry Swinson now the former county Clerk of Salt Lake County says, "Everybody waits until the last minute to turn in their ballot."

So up until election day, it's kind of hard to get a clear picture of voter turnout.

It looked super low I think it was in the 30s, mid like lower 40s, there we go.

I was like what's the word?

Lower 40s and the state deputy elections director, Shelly Jackson expected it to climb a little bit more.

She didn't expect it to match exactly where we were at, at 2018.

But motivation for sure I think was the top of the ticket ballot, but also some lower ballot races that really mattered to people.

There was a lot of strong messaging around the importance of county clerks this election.

And there was a ton of county clerks on the ballot.

And especially in Salt Lake County specifically there was a DA's race, there was a county clerk's race and there was a sheriff's race along with a ballot amendment at the end, the constitutional amendment.

And in Salt Lake County too there was also a parks bond.

And so there was reasons to turn out aside from political affiliation and candidate like ability.

There was other reasons that gave voters autonomy to be like, my vote matters here.

I don't have to prescribe to a political party to vote if the legislature should be able to spend more money during a special session.

- At the Hinckley Institute were always talking about getting people motivated, particularly students.

And a student did submit a question this week for you about participation particularly in a certain age group of voters.

So let's listen to this question.

- Hello, my name is Abukar Hassan.

I'm currently a junior here at the University of Utah, double majoring in finance and entrepreneurship with a minoring in information system.

Historically, Gen Zs and young Millennials have always had the lowest turnout when it comes to voting.

How has this year differed if so, and how can we get more young voters to go and vote?

Thank you.

- Scott what's the answer?

- Well, first of all, thank you for the question.

I think it's a really relevant one.

Now but the answer is what is the issue and what candidate can motivate these young men and women to participate?

And the answer is get out and go meet them.

They should have days up here at the University of Utah where they come and have a meet and greet and bring 100 pizzas.

And they need to go into the schools and be more active.

But sometimes candidates get in this narrow, their chief, I mean, their campaign managers saying, "No, no, you just wanna go here.

Why do you wanna waste your time there?"

I don't think it's wasting your time.

BYU registered more students this past year than they ever have in the history of the school.

So I think you've gotta have issues that are relevant to them.

I thought the student debt relief program would really get people out, but it didn't materialize.

It didn't happen.

- I wanna hit one more issue because it's going to come up in the United States Senate today.

The senate plans to vote on the Respect for Marriage Act, which we've heard a little bit about before.

What's interesting this codifies the right to a same-sex marriage with protection for religious freedom, Derek.

What's interesting is not just that this coming up, Senator Romney has worked on it.

Our congressional delegation worked on the House bill, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came out this week supporting this as well.

- Yeah, and in some respects there's no surprise there because they actually try not withstanding a certain policy doctrines they try to strike a pretty moderate tone.

And in fact, I was the first Republican ever to sponsor a bill dealing with non-discrimination based on sexual orientation.

And I was surprised at how receptive the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was at the time to trying to... 'Cause their real approach is to figure out how do you balance these competing objectives.

And I think their support is based on the idea that we can do both.

It isn't a zero sum game.

You can balance them, you can move forward and you can have that harmony.

And so I think they're hoping that with the current version of the bill, and I don't know that this will be the final version, but with the current version, they've been able to strike that balance.

- Uh-huh Scott, the last 30 seconds on this particular issue because all these groups are trying to find that balance.

- Yeah they are.

And as an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I think the message that the LDS church sent was a big one.

And hopefully they'll continue to be in that space of saying, you know what?

Let us have our religious freedom, let us make our decision.

But they respect the LGBTQ.

I mean, there's almost all those moral issues that they need to come out and be very proactive so you don't feel like your church is telling you how to vote or what to vote about.

And I think that's important.

- It's gonna have to be the last comment on this.

Thank you so much 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 podcast.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

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