Utah Rep. John Curtis is a productive congressman; apart from winning five elections over the course of seven years and the Republican nomination for Senate, his office has managed to pass almost two dozen bills in the midst of a divided Congress. He also successfully carved his own lane by becoming the conservative face of climate change, an issue his party has shied away from.
At the heart of Curtis’ accomplishments as a politician is his mindset on failure. Talking to a room full of students at the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics as part of the Sutherland Institute’s 2024 Congressional Series on Thursday, Curtis spoke on his chosen topic, “Reinventing the Wheel (But This Time, Let’s Try a Square).”
He recalled his mother’s advice when he was learning how to ski at a young age.
“She would say, ‘If you didn’t fall, you’re not learning,’” Curtis said. “Well, in politics, if I make one tiny mistake, it’s going to be on social media all over. As a result, as politicians, we kind of clam up and we’re not willing to make a mistake.” And that’s a problem.
He said politicians keep suggesting the same old solutions that don’t work. “But if you’re not willing to make a mistake, how are you ever going to find a different way to do things?” the GOP congressman asked.
Curtis talks about his trip to the Middle East
Curtis traveled to the Middle East last week. “There’s a lot of controversy, there’s a lot of angst, there’s a lot of pain,” he said of his trip.
The congressman had one-on-one conservations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as well as with high level officials from Qatar.
Speaking to these leaders, Curtis said he was reminded that other countries in that region are also working “very hard to have a profitable relationship with the U.S.”
“It helps us reframe the whole conversation about the region, that it’s not just Israel. Jordan, Qatar and Egypt are also our friends and our allies,” he added. Curtis said not once did foreign leaders accuse Israel of “overreacting,” and instead, they were much more focused on “defining the path to a cease-fire.” These countries also claimed Hamas has intentions of stirring chaos in the region. “There are forces in the Middle East who want this to totally unravel,” the GOP representative said.
Curtis said he also met with some of the families of the hostages still being held by Hamas, as the Deseret News previously reported. “It was what I would describe as an intense trip, because everything was so emotional, and there are a lot of lessons,” he said.
Curtis said he stands firmly with Israel, and for him, it comes down to one question: “How do we maintain Israel’s right to defend itself and bring this to an end?”
How John Curtis reinvented the wheel for conservative climate advocacy
Curtis recalled daring to utter the word climate at a similar Sutherland Institute event years ago.
“It was edgy and made me nervous, and my staff nervous,” he said. The word, a taboo among Republicans, is now much more commonplace. In fact, Curtis’ Conservative Climate Caucus, founded in 2021, is one of the largest Republican caucuses in Washington, D.C.
“As conservatives, we care deeply about this earth and how we leave it,” the GOP congressman said. “In my opinion, we were doing a lousy job of branding that and changing that narrative. Yes, we have different ideas about how to reduce emissions. ... But we too want to reduce emissions. We too think less pollution is better than more pollution.”
Curtis compared the feelings of Republicans to customers forced into buying timeshares. “I don’t know this generation does timeshares like my generation,” he said, before describing how he sees it: Timeshare companies offer freebies in exchange for attending a presentation, “and it’s a trap.” The high-pressure salesman will try to convince you to buy a share of a resort and spend a lot of money, even if you don’t want to, he said. If the customer says they’re not interested, salespeople bring in their boss to up the pressure.
“In a lot of ways, that’s how Republicans were feeling when they were asked about climate,” Curtis explained. “Most of them hadn’t really thought through the science,” and if they agreed that climate change is real, “they would get pressured into doing something they didn’t think was good.”
He added he thinks the climate movement is “too judgmental and too quick to shame” people. “We take people where they are, and the more people get comfortable talking about this, the less they fear it, and the more they become involved in offering solutions.”
What would a John Curtis term in Senate look like?
Curtis told students they shouldn’t expect him to be like Sen. Mike Lee or Sen. Mitt Romney or they’ll be disappointed if he wins election to the Senate in November. “It’s a mistake to try to be somebody else,” he said.
Curtis is the Republican nominee in the race to replace Romney, who is leaving the Senate after a single term.
“The good news is, I’ve been in Congress seven years, and it’s pretty easy to see who I am,” Curtis said, adding he has a track record of working with both Lee and Romney, and said he would be like to be known for is his “ability to work with both of those personalities.”
For now, he is laser focused on permitting reform. “It’s a hot, bipartisan topic right now in Washington, D.C. ... If you like wind farms, you can’t get it permitted, and if you like oil, you can’t get it permitted, and everybody agrees that this is a problem,” he said.
Curtis gave an example of a hypothetical company that wants to set up an artificial intelligence processing unit in a Utah County facility. “The power required for that is one and a half times what it takes for a power plant, and that’s one facility we cannot keep up,” he explained. “If we can’t get vast amounts more energy, the market ... (it) is going to solve a lot of this.”