Jason Perry: On this final episode of season 10 of "The Hinckley Report."

State delegates officially named their party nominees, and candidates prepare for consequential primaries.

New polling reveals Utahns's concerns about major issues.

And our expert panel reviews a tumultuous year of Utah politics.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund and by donations to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Hello, 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; Rob Axson, Chairman of the Utah Republican Party; and Eric Biggart, member of the Executive Committee of the Utah Democratic Party.

Thank you so much for being with us.

It's interesting.

We just had our conventions.

You all are going to bring such a very unique and interesting perspective to what's happening, not just this past week in Utah politics, but we're going to see into the primaries, into the general election.

I want to break that down just a little bit today, if we can.

Let's talk about the conventions, just happened this past Saturday.

Democrats, Republicans, all meeting, and I want to get through that just a little bit.

Eric, let's start with you for just a moment.

I kind of want you to talk about these conventions, the importance of them, because we want participation.

We're paying attention, but why?

Talk about that for a moment.

Eric Biggart: I mean, conventions are where the rubber meets the road.

It's where people actually get out.

They go to caucus night.

They kind of meet their neighbors.

They figure out what's going on, and then they show up to the convention, and it is a full-out production.

You spend weeks getting phone calls, getting texts from candidates, people trying to recruit you for your vote.

You show up.

There's balloons.

We had pompoms and flags and all kinds of patriotic garb going around, and the candidates make that last pitch.

There's an opportunity to meet with other groups.

We have issue and identity caucuses in the Utah Democratic Party.

They do endorsements.

There's jockeying for votes.

But for most people, it's their first time participating in anything like this.

This was a lot of people's first convention, and it went as smoothly as I can remember in my like 12 years of doing this now.

Jason Perry: Yeah, Rob, break it down, the sort of the preparations for you, too.

That's a lot of people and not a really long period of time to get a lot of serious work done.

Rob Axson: Yeah, it's a wonderful experience.

As Eric talked about, it starts on that caucus night in the lead up to caucus when you're inviting neighbors, inviting citizens across the state to come out and to participate.

You start that process of delegate election.

So the neighborhoods, they get together.

They elect their delegates.

In the Utah Republican Party, we have 4,000 delegates from across the state of Utah.

So, last Saturday, we were there at Utah Valley University in the UCCU Arena.

We had 4,000 delegates, about another 1,000 people there.

So it was a lively crowd.

We've got 5,000 individuals.

Spent a good number of hours starting first with breakout elections, where you're electing legislative races from across the state.

Then you come together for business, and then some of those congressional races, so a lot of fun.

Maura Carabello: I want to tug a little bit on the string that is symbols that are created with these big-time events.

First, I'll say, I mean, both of them were professional this year.

They were well run, but I just want to talk about the differences a little, not the excellence there.

The Democrats, when you look at the symbols, the Democratic Party led with a little bit more approachable.

One of the first jobs I had was working for an advance guy for Ronald Reagan, so event symbols are really important.

They had a podium.

The Democratic Party had a podium.

They invited the candidates to bring their folks on stage.

Conversely, the Republicans were very produced, have been for a couple of years, bunting on the front, a group of people sitting on stage in a much more--more pomp and circumstance, I would say, more approachability, were the two symbols, both of which are terrific, but the two symbols that I thought the parties represented.

And I think it's the first cue to what the tone of the party is for the election season.

Jason Perry: Yeah, Rob, talk about that because I'm curious about that, and kind of put the tone together with sort of kind of how the makeup goes, because the argument for some of these conventions, and I want to hear the Democratic side as well, is this is a place where you have your well-known candidates.

You have the less well-known candidates.

It's a place where you get to hear from both of them.

Rob Axson: Yeah, 100%, and here's the nice thing, and this is what I firmly believe about that process of delegates and conventions, is that even if somebody is a brand new candidate, not well known, they have something to offer.

We are in a country and in a state that believes in representative government.

Ultimately, it's the citizens who are engaging and deciding people to represent them.

And so even a not--or somebody who's less well known, they come in.

They engage on issue one, two, or three, and then suddenly that issue becomes the thing that all of the prominent candidates are talking about.

It's a very meaningful process.

This year, too, and before we had all of the folks kind of lined up, I don't know if you saw the earlier piece, we actually had--we had a musical number, followed by a dance number, followed by another musical number.

We really wanted to establish this spirit of where we came from, and so we had a lot of visuals that referenced back to the country's founding.

And this idea that we're 250 years into this experiment, and if we do things right, we'll build that foundation even firmer for another 250 years.

And we believe that we have a responsibility in political parties to add to that.

Jason Perry: Eric, talk about how you set the stage, to Maura's great point, because sometimes you get the whole flavor for the party and the direction of the party from how they stage these ceremonial pieces of these conventions.

Eric Biggart: I mean, we had--90% of the races this year, we fielded a Democratic candidate, and it's more than we've ever been able to field before.

So we had a lot of people there for the first time.

We had a lot of candidates no one had seen before who were new to this as well.

There was a handful of us with some institutional knowledge putting stuff together, and it made it so that the environment in the room was so enthusiastic because of so many people's first time opportunity to see the party structure in action.

And I'll tell you, this stuff happens with volunteers.

This is not a paid organization by any means.

I set the flags up on the stage myself along with our executive director's husband who is from Puerto Rico, and I gave him a whole history lesson on the US flag code, and where the US flag goes, and where the state flag goes, and all that.

We didn't have nearly as many flags as the Republican Party had.

But it was an opportunity for us to kind of create our own atmosphere.

We modeled it a bit after the style like you see at the DNC when you watch that in election years on the news or something like that, where each county had their little--their county name on a banner.

And it made it so the people like were around people from where they're from, around people who are ideologically like them for the first time, and it creates a real sense of unity that we don't get to do the rest of the year.

Maura Carabello: And it's an interesting note that both parties had great attendance.

Almost all of the Republican and Democratic delegates showed up.

The attendance of delegates was very high this year, but it also is juxtaposed with that they are insular events.

You don't intend them to be, but they're insular events.

They are a few thousand people representing a larger body, which is the pro/con on the consolidation of that much power.

But there was terrific attendance this year.

Eric Biggart: We had a conversation about this, because you're representing your neighbors.

You don't go representing yourself as a delegate.

You represent the people who live next door to you.

And it's a different responsibility to walk into the building and not say, "Okay, this is who I like."

You kind of have a responsibility to talk to your neighbors, to talk to the people in your precinct, and figure out who they want to see represented on that ballot.

And it has some weight to it.

Jason Perry: Two more quick things on this.

Maura, maybe give us some thoughts about how you advise candidates, because it's running the gauntlet sometimes, a little bit.

It's not uncommon for a candidate to be booed at a convention that might be popular or not popular statewide.

Kind of how do you advise someone, because I know you have, as you approach convention, knowing it could go a couple of different directions, and it's--?

Maura Carabello: It's tricky, right?

You balance authenticity with your audience, and your audience is a more dogmatic audience than the general public is, than the general party affiliate is.

So how do you rally the troops, particularly on a high-energy convention, and yet stay true to who you are, particularly if you're a moderate?

Conventions don't love moderates because these are the passionate folks who are showing up.

So how do you do that?

One of the safest zones that I will say I think candidates live in is when they understand that conventions are emotional activities.

They are not ten-point policy plans.

They are an emotional exercise.

Jason Perry: I want to get to some of the candidates that came out.

And as we set the stage for that, Rob, talk for a minute about what it means to win a convention.

Or do you lose a convention, or how does this work when you have a candidate that emerges with a certain percentage of the vote?

Are they the party nominee?

What does this mean?

Rob Axson: So, with the Utah Republican Party, you have a 60% voter threshold that is required to be considered the convention winner.

So, what happens is if you hit or exceed that 60% threshold, you will advance if there isn't a primary election, due to signature path candidates.

Then you will go directly to the general election ballot.

If you don't hit 60%, then there are two individuals that will advance, so it's the top two vote recipients.

Each one receiving over 40% will advance to a primary that will be open to any Republican voter within that respective district.

So it definitely is something that you want to at least hit that 40% to be seen as a convention-supported candidate.

This can build a lot of momentum.

All of these delegates, these 4,000 individuals, they become the front lines of going and helping you recruit your grassroots support.

They can go into their precincts.

They can go into their neighborhoods.

They can help rally for their preferred candidates going into that primary election.

It can be a very powerful boost to a candidate that then has to go and make the case to the primary voters.

Jason Perry: Does it impact the ability of the party to give money until the primary?

So if you're a convention-nominated candidate, how does that work in the in between, between then and--?

Rob Axson: Yeah, between convention and the primary, the only folks that will be eligible for any of the resources of the party, whether it's voter lists, whether it's walking apps, volunteers, any of those types of efforts, will be those who have received the support of the delegates at the convention, so at least hitting 40%.

If you fall short of that, even if you're on the primary ballot, you would not be eligible to have access to those resources from the party.

We're not going to attack you.

I mean, you're still a Republican.

We want you to do well.

We want you to talk about the principles and the platform that we believe in, but you don't have the support of the party resources until you secure the nomination.

Jason Perry: Perfect, how about the Democratic side?

Eric Biggart: Pretty much a similar process.

We have a slightly lower threshold, 55%, to move on.

We don't necessarily call it an endorsement from the party or anything like that going into a primary.

But since we've had the signature path, the convention is kind of less relevant, in the sense of we have more candidates who just gather signatures to get on the ballot because, like Maura said, delegates aren't really representative of the population of the party or of Utah in general.

So it's been great to have the opportunity for candidates who are either more moderate or more progressive to be able to go and find ways to get on the ballot that aren't just appealing to the delegates.

The interesting thing in our party is that we need as much help as we can get, right?

Let's not hide the fact that Democrats are the smallest team on the field here.

So we make it open to any candidate to get a part, to be a part of the coordinated effort to win seats in Utah from the time they file up until the time they win their elections.

Rob Axson: So I will push back a little bit from the perspective of the Republican Party on this idea that delegates are out of step with the broader base of Republicans.

I don't find that to be the case in every situation.

And I also find when it is the case, it's relatively small where that divergence is.

And in fact, if you look through the last, well, two years ago, the last election cycle, out of 28 races that went to a primary, the convention-supported candidates still prevailed in the primary in 22 out of those 28 times.

And so there are instances where there's a difference, but that's part of the process.

We're okay with that.

It's why we advance two people if somebody doesn't hit that 60% threshold, is this belief, well, let's give it to the broader audience of Republican voters.

I think more political engagement throughout the election season is good, and so having the convention season is good, followed by the primary season, followed by that engagement through the summer and the beginning of the fall, and then we see what happens at election.

Maura Carabello: But it would be documented that opinion research does show that the ranking of issues and how issues are spoken about with party and party delegates does diverge from the general conversation.

It doesn't mean that the party is not representative, but the issues are different.

Rob Axson: I think the divergence is, if you're a delegate, you've done this work.

You've done this effort of really understanding this is the party platform, and I'm trying to find candidates who fit that.

Maura Carabello: Or you have a passion or you have an ideology.

You may not have done more research.

You may just be more passionate about a single issue.

Rob Axson: Those passionate ideological voters exist in the primary, too.

Maura Carabello: And they're terrific, but it's not necessarily true that they come more prepared.

Jason Perry: Let's see how it plays out with some of these candidates.

Can we talk about the congressional districts for a minute?

Maura, break this first one for us, the first congressional district, which is Salt Lake County, essentially.

Here, break out sort of the dynamics at play right here.

It's very interesting.

Maura Carabello: Yeah, so I'm going to focus first on the Democratic candidates because that's the dynamic one.

Great turnout, high level of enthusiasm.

People really came to play.

Eric will correct me, I think seven rounds or six rounds of balloting, and five rounds of balloting in which less than 2 percentage points separated the top two vote-getters, which is a newcomer, 27-year-old Mr.

Mohamed, and then someone we know, Mr.

Ben McAdams.

And I think what happened in that race is a dark horse won, and they're coming out with a ton of momentum.

As you transition to a primary, the ability to speak to people and the ability to get your name out, which translates directly to funding, starts to become a predominant feature, I think, in the primary elections.

And in that instance, Ben McAdams has an enormous advantage in communicating with folks.

Jason Perry: Eric, tell us what's happened there.

You have four candidates that will be in the primary here for the Democratic Party.

Liban Mohamed came by a little bit, even was first here with the Democratic convention.

Talk about what's going to happen there.

And maybe to Maura's point there, about the money, the name ID, all that's going to start coming next.

Eric Biggart: Yeah, I mean, the convention was a little anticlimactic because all four of them got signatures and were going to be on the ballot regardless.

And they had to pay money to get signatures, and now they have to pay more money to go win a primary, so money is kind of key here.

And then you just kind of see where different candidates align on the issues.

And I think the way that things are starting to split is that there's probably three candidates who are fairly progressive.

Ben McAdams, who's seen as more of like the moderate one on the campaign trail, but I mean, for Utah, is pretty progressive, and we'll see how those votes split.

Congressional District 1 is a D plus 14 district, according to the "Cook Political Report," so it's probably a safe Democratic district for this cycle.

We'll see what happens next time around.

So really, the primary is the thing going forward that will show us what's going to happen in November.

Jason Perry: And just a couple of seconds on this.

You did do ranked choice voting in this particular district here.

Maybe just a little bit on that, because sometimes that gives you an interesting flavor of who comes out on top, and number one, number two.

Eric Biggart: Yeah, I mean, if you look at the breakdown of each round of those voting sessions, the first round, I think McAdams had like 289 votes, and he finished with just a little over 300.

His constituency was baked in from the first round.

The other four candidates, the other five candidates actually, they split, and their votes kept getting reallocated.

Some went to Nate Blouin.

Some went to Liban.

They were kind of all over the place, but when they finally all settled, that's where you kind of got this 50/50 split.

Jason Perry: I guess Ben was in the first place until the final calculation under ranked choice, so we'll watch this one closely.

Rob, the candidate here for the Democrat, for the Republican Party, Riley Owens, 71%.

Talk about that and what the opportunity is for the Republicans in this district, which leans Democratic as we go into this election.

Rob Axson: If by lean you mean falling over, I agree with that.

Maura Carabello: It's the least partisan district of the four.

Rob Axson: Oh, absolutely.

It's, as was mentioned, it's a D plus 14 in the "Cook Report."

It's a D plus 22 if you look based off of Kamala Harris votes.

This is a heavily favored Democrat district.

What's nice is we have this younger generation.

I mean, Riley is--he's younger than I am.

I don't know his exact age, but he's a younger guy, but he has a lot of professional experience.

He's accomplished quite a bit.

I think he has an aspirational approach to things, and he's going to give them a run for their money.

He's gonna be a great candidate going out to Salt Lake County to make the case as to why the voters of this county are still more aligned with the principles and platform of the Utah Republican Party.

And it's gonna be a heavy lift.

It's gonna be hard work.

We're gonna have his back, and we're gonna make that case to the Utah voters.

Jason Perry: Okay, Maura, let's break down the second congressional district.

You're doing such a good job breaking these out.

The top part of the state of Utah, yeah, very interesting race, and we'll get to all the candidates.

Maura Carabello: We have an incumbent there, Blake Moore, and and a heavy challenger in Karianne Lisonbee, who's coming from the House of Representatives, coming into this with some steam.

This was a pretty traditional--well, a non-traditional in that both had heavy-hitting endorsements.

And I will say that Blake Moore hasn't finished first at convention ever, so I don't know that he's going to be down about that.

He's going to see his strength as the primary election.

And again, the primary election will tend to favor an incumbent, someone who for the first time in generations in Utah is in the Republican legislative leadership at the national level.

And he has outfundraised his opponent, Karianne Lisonbee.

Karianne Lisonbee, most of her support is coming from traditional legislative and caucus convention voters who are seen as slightly more right of center.

This is a plus, clearly a safe district for the Republicans, but it's the least Republican district of the three districts that are leaning Republican.

Jason Perry: Rob, talk about that dynamic there a little bit, because, of course, Congressman Moore has not been first at convention for the last couple of, last, well ever.

Rob Axson: But he had always qualified through the convention in addition to his signature path.

This is the first time where he will be on the primary ballot by function solely of his signatures.

But again, we don't attack fellow Republicans, but the convention support did go to Karianne Lisonbee.

She earned that.

She engaged with the delegates.

That's going to be a boost for her.

Any time that you're challenging an incumbent, that's an uphill battle in this country.

You look at the power of incumbency, name ID, and money.

Those are the three factors in any state, in any election, that are most powerful.

That's gonna be a heavy lift, but I do think that that dialogue, that debate, that discussion that the voters of CD2 are gonna have on this primary is going to be meaningful.

And something that I'm excited about is, you know, it's that idea of steel sharpens steel.

Whoever comes out of that in CD2 is going to be a better prepared candidate to represent the voters of northern Utah.

Jason Perry: Eric, let's talk about the Democratic nominee, Peter Crosby, 76.6% in the first round.

You had, to your point about lots of candidates, you had three others that were in this particular race.

How do you approach these other congressional districts, given that you do have more participation in candidates we've seen for a very long time?

Eric Biggart: Yeah, I'm very excited for Peter.

I chatted with Peter a while ago.

He's one of my LDS Dems, one of my LDS Democratic friends from northern Utah.

And I think he's going to do really well, because if you look at these national trends of special elections over the last year, there's Democrats winning in Trump plus 13, plus 15, plus 17 districts all over the country.

So I think a lot of people feel like, look, if things keep trending the way that they're trending, the ball game could be all over.

Like we could have competitive races in places we never expected.

The wild card, I will say, is Blake Moore has congressional leadership money.

And it's hard in a district as spread out as that to deal with the fact that money is votes, and he's going to have a lot of it.

And if he needs more, he can just call on more.

So Peter has an uphill climb, but he's, you know, as good of a candidate as I could possibly pencil into that position.

I'm really excited for him.

Jason Perry: Let's talk about that money situation just a little bit, too, and name ID, talking about the third congressional district, Maura, or I can come back to you to set the stage here.

Maura Carabello: I think this is the heavy hitter when it comes to a competitive race between--I'm looking at the Republican side, between the incumbent, Celeste Maloy, and a well-known challenger, Phil Lyman, who has run a few times, most namely for governor.

And I think that the money looks a little more competitive.

Neither of them are in the millions yet.

Celeste Maloy is very much outraising.

Interestingly enough, some of the Karianne Lisonbee supporters are also Celeste Maloy's supporters, so when you're looking at where money's coming from in Utah, it gets a little bit mixed.

I will note on this race, this one, I think might, as well as the second CD, get a little rough.

And I hope the voters look at negative campaigning about whether--now, I don't think it's negative to criticize someone's record.

But when people start criticizing character, and which I think we have an opportunity, the Lisonbee campaign before has been pretty aggressive, as now we move to CD3, Phil Lyman is pretty known for his roughhousing.

So I think this will be the most competitive race and the loudest race.

One still has to give favorites to the incumbents.

The power of the incumbency, most incumbents nationally are winning at an 80% plus record.

You're looking at Celeste Maloy being a moderate person, although this is the most Republican race we're going to see.

I do wanna note, as we talk about the minor candidate or the minority candidate in this, there's a long body of evidence that shows that well-run campaigns, even when you lose, are meaningful to the discussion, and that the art, the proving ground, and the art of a candidate doing well, communicating with the public, does lift our civic dialogue.

So I do think that if you're inclined to vote for the minority and you think that they're going to lose, there's still merit in our civic process of a well-run campaign.

Jason Perry: Anything you want to say about that particular race, Rob?

Rob Axson: Yes, just wholeheartedly agree.

The power of engaging on the issues matters, and this is one of the reasons we're--and we're talking about money, right?

The power of money in the primary election.

This is one of the many reasons that I substantially and meaningfully care about the delegate and convention process.

It takes money out of the process to a higher degree than what you would receive in the primary, and it adds substantively to the dialogue.

And I believe that even coming out of convention, the topics, the issues that were discussed at convention, the issues that are priorities of these delegates start to work their way into those primary elections.

And in this case, in CD3, we're coming out of convention.

It was about a 50/50 vote.

It was 50.9% to--or 49.04% of the vote.

So that's where we were, or 0.09%.

So you look at that, it really is a 50/50.

I think that the substance is what's going to rise to the challenge to see who prevails in CD3.

Jason Perry: We'll watch that one closely.

The Democratic candidate, Kent Udell, won in the first round, 56% of the vote there as well.

And so I just want to wrap up with that one, and also the CD4 because it's so interesting.

And Eric, the last words on this because this race, on the Republican side, there were no primaries, no signature gathering there.

And the Democratic nominee, Jonny Larsen, and of course Mike Kennedy with 79% of the votes.

A comment about that race before I get something about parties.

Eric Biggart: I was just gonna say, Jonny is a great, great candidate.

He's a veteran.

He's going to run a really competent campaign.

The other thing we didn't talk about is like running good campaigns in these districts where we've never really run qualified candidates or never really run a real coordinated campaign, it's great for the long term because it allows us to contact voters sometimes for the first time to get their information, to be able to figure out how to talk to them about what issues they care about.

So when we can run these statewide races with really qualified, great candidates, it helps us for '28.

It will help us for '30.

It will help us for '32.

And I'm really looking forward to seeing what all these candidates statewide are going to bring back to the party.

Maura Carabello: If I could just jump on Eric's comments about what I think is the highest and best use for parties, that I would like to challenge our parties to do better, is that when they vet candidates for us, when they recruit citizens to be candidates, and then when they do coordinated campaigns, and when they support individual Utahns in communicating with their individual constituents, I think that's when the parties are at the best.

I think parties at their worst have a baked agenda and become tribal and they're about the party.

And I keep hearing messaging that says, "Support our label.

Support our brand."

I think that's slightly off of highest and best use.

I think highest and best use is supporting individual Utahns who want to carry your big tent and bring your big tent to constituents.

And I think the parties are at their best when they support individual candidates.

I think they're not at their best when they're tribal and they just insist that we join the tribe.

Eric Biggart: Any time somebody comes to me and says, "How can I get more involved?"

I never say, "Go volunteer with the Democratic Party."

I say, "Find a candidate you like.

Find a candidate that means something to you.

Find somebody who represents where you live, and get involved with them."

And that's my advice, regardless of party.

Find candidates that you like.

Don't worry about the party.

We'll take care of it.

Jason Perry: All right, we'll be watching these things so closely.

Thank you for your insights, great, great commentary.

And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you in the fall.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund and by donations to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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