- Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker will speak at the Utah Democratic Party's convention on May 31.
- A new poll found that only 35% of Democrats are optimistic about the future of their party.
- Utah Democrats disagree about how to broaden their appeal among Beehive State voters.
Utah Democrats hope to launch a new era of the state party on May 31 with a speech from the fighting face of the anti-Trump resistance, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, the Deseret News confirmed on Wednesday.
The organizing convention is scheduled to feature remarks from Pritzker as state delegates meet to elect their next chair — expected to be former state House minority leader Brian King — amid a statewide push to rebuild the party’s thin bench of political leadership.
Pritzker’s visit to the Beehive State follows a series of national headlines highlighting his outspoken comments lampooning President Donald Trump, railing against fellow Democrats’ “culture of timidity” and calling for mass movements to prevent Republicans from “a moment of peace.”
But the high-profile headliner is descending on Utah during a time of party turmoil across the country.
“We’re in a crisis. We are absolutely in a crisis,” said Scott Howell, the former Utah Senate minority leader.
Amid historically low national approval ratings and stagnant success in Utah, state Democrats are caught in a debate about whether the state’s signature collaborative approach is the key to reviving the party’s brand or the cause of the party’s struggle for relevance.
Democratic difficulties
Utah Democrats face headwinds locally and nationally.
A new Associated Press poll released Wednesday found that only 35% of Democrats are optimistic about the future of their party — underperforming Republicans by 20 percentage points.
The same share of Americans, just over three in ten, have a favorable view of the Democratic Party — five points lower than the Republican Party, according to the poll.
Plummeting public opinion has spurred disagreement over what the party should do to respond to Kamala Harris’ 2024 loss and to rebuff Trump’s explosive first four months in office.
“The Democratic Party absolutely needs to have an autopsy,” former Utah congressman Ben McAdams said. “The 2024 presidential election is an election that Democrats lost as much as Republicans won and we need to be looking inward and asking ourselves, ‘Why is the Democratic message not resonating with American voters?’”
On the national stage, some have called for a more centrist approach on issues like economics and immigration while others have backed the proposal of 25-year-old Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg to spend millions to oust aging incumbents in Democratic primaries.
In Utah, party insiders and officials can’t seem to agree on whether they should distance themselves from the national party by focusing on Utah’s unique values, or mobilize in opposition to Republican policies under the second Trump administration.
The Utah Democratic Party hasn’t nominated a winning statewide candidate since 1996. And over the last few decades, Democratic representation in the Legislature and on voter rolls has flatlined or ticked downwards despite unprecedented coordinated campaign efforts.
But there are signs of hope, activists say.
“Just because we haven’t necessarily seen statewide elections of Democrats in the last couple election cycles, I don’t think that means that Utah isn’t moving in the direction of more Democrats,” said Gabi Finlayson, co-founder of Utah-based Democratic consulting firm Elevate Strategies.
The 2024 presidential race saw Harris receive a greater share of the vote than any Democratic candidate in Utah since Lyndon B. Johnson’s victory 60 years prior.
This, and the fact that a majority of Utah counties bucked national trends by reducing Trump’s winning margin relative to 2020, has caused some Democrats to predict a purple future — that is, if they can unite on how to get there.
Obstacles and opportunities
One thing Democrats can agree on is that what they see as gerrymandered legislative districts have created a hurdle to getting candidates in position to build experience, resume and name ID.
But Democrats can’t wait around for a judge to toss out redistricted maps from 2020, or for the census to add a congressional seat in 2030, to make advances, according to Finlayson.
Something Utah Democrats can control, Finlayson said, is relying less on messaging from Washington, D.C., which can hold candidates back, enforce ideological rigidity in the party and ignore local issues.
Howell, who remembers winning his first legislative race in a heavily gerrymandered seat 35 years ago, said he has been speaking to Democratic groups about what he learned about connecting with Utahns through “conversations and not slogans.”
“We’ve got to frame Democratic policies in a way that aligns with the values of Utah,” Howell said. “Family, faith, hard work and service. We have to avoid, at all cost, cultural wars.”
There are practical issues that unite Utahns across the political spectrum that fall naturally within the Democratic Party, Howell said.
Howell, who previously ran for U.S. Senate in 2000 and 2012, and who advocated for former President Joe Biden and Harris during the previous two election cycles, pointed to stewardship of the Great Salt Lake and support for public educators as two places where Democratic initiatives have won in the court of public opinion.
Earlier this month, the Utah Democratic Party announced a candidate recruitment initiative with Contest Every Race to fill ballots for over 700 local offices.
Talin Hansen, the party’s municipal director, said the most important factor will be finding candidates who represent and relate to their community, instead of simply reflecting national party talking points.
“We are not going to capture the attention of Utah voters until we are able to focus and resonate with the issues that they themselves see every day,” Hansen said.
However, Democratic messaging can only go so far if the majority of Utah voters are unwilling to listen, according to King.
In his bid for governor last year, King framed his platform — which was pro-choice, anti-school voucher and favored larger welfare programs — as more in line with Utah values than that of his opponent, Gov. Spencer Cox.
King told conservative audiences he was a Democrat because of his faith as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and urged Republicans to avoid voting along party lines.
“Another thing that we’ve been struggling with ... is the tribalism,” King said. “There have been so many people who will not step outside of their traditional thinking about what it means to be a Republican.”
King ultimately received 28% of the general vote, similar to Democratic candidates in the previous three election cycles.
But he predicted Trump’s norm-breaking leadership will push moderates and independents out of the GOP, where Democrats will be waiting with open arms.
Collaboration vs. confrontation
It is precisely Trump’s hold on the Republican Party that has convinced one of Utah’s most progressive lawmakers that reaching across the aisle is not the way to build support or bring about needed changes.
While he agrees that Democrats can get bogged down by reacting to everything coming out the White House, state Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Salt Lake City, said boldly criticizing Republicans is the only way to show constituents that Democrats are standing up for them.
For too long, Blouin said, Democrats in the state have focused on “How do we make Republicans happy so that we can move our own little pet projects forward?” According to Blouin, this approach is insufficient.
“Less appeasing of Republicans and more actually fighting for people, for constituents — for all these causes that I think matter — I think that’s going to set us apart in the long run," Blouin said.
But one of the state’s most powerful Democrats says that years of direct confrontation with the GOP supermajority at the Legislature has not served residents of Utah’s Democratic capital city well.
In fact, prioritizing public fights may have made it easier for Republicans to single out Salt Lake City as an outlier in the state instead of working together with the city toward solutions, Mayor Erin Mendenhall said.
“The greatest challenge we face as a nation is the belief that we have less in common with half of our country than we have in common,” Mendenhall said. “My work as a Democrat in Salt Lake City is about collaboration.”
That doesn’t mean Democrats shouldn’t push back against the Legislature when it targets the city, according to Mendenhall.
Last week, Mendenhall unveiled three new city flag designs, including an official Salt Lake City “Progress Pride flag” and transgender flag, to circumvent a new state law prohibiting local governments from flying nonofficial flags.
But culture-war rebuttals should be the exception, not the norm, if Utah Democrats want to grow their appeal, Mendenhall said.
Utah Democrats, if they can embody Utah’s unique predisposition “to understand each other better,” will be well-equipped to expand beyond the blue bubbles surrounding Salt Lake City and Summit County, according to Mendenhall.
The mayor said she is “optimistic” about the likely election of King as leader of the party because he demonstrates a desire to strengthen relationships with Utahns to persuade them of the Democratic message.
“What we need is more dialogue with each other to understand what we have in common and how, in the spaces that we disagree, we can at least understand each other’s perspective, and as our good governor says, ‘Disagree Better.’”