The 2025 municipal election cycle put a spotlight on two of the struggles impacting Utah families the most: affordability and growth.
On Tuesday, around 25%-35% of registered voters are expected to have the final say in hundreds of local elections across the state.
The questions at stake include how communities plan to manage spiking populations and respond to state officials who want more housing options.
At the center of these statewide trends is a race to represent the area surrounding Utah’s Capitol, a fitting microcosm of the forces leading young families to flee a state best known for strong family formation.
The Greater Avenues neighborhood, which forms the majority of Salt Lake City District 3, was nearly the victim of two school closures last year, Ensign and Wasatch elementary schools, which continue to operate below capacity.
In 2024, the Salt Lake City Board of Education voted to close four schools, with more expected to come in future years because of declining enrollment.
Between 2010 and 2020, Salt Lake City’s under-18 population fell by 12% — a rate that may have sped up as median housing prices have gone up from under $350,000 to nearly $600,000, nearly five times the area median income.
One stake organization for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 3rd District has decided to consolidate all the youth classes into one ward building because there are not enough primary-aged children.
“We know that families are leaving the city,” 3rd District candidate Blake McClary told the Deseret News. “This is sort of a vicious cycle. It’s housing affordability, it’s lack of clean and safe green spaces, and even a lack of families, there’s not this sort of gravitational pull.”
Making Salt Lake City family friendly
The 3rd District competition has pitted two-term incumbent Chris Wharton, the founder of a LGBT-focused law firm, up against McClary, a tech executive, and Liddy Huntsman-Hernandez, the daughter of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.
County judicial assistant Jake Seastrand and community activist David Berg have also entered the race but have each raised less than $1,000, while Wharton has raised $103,000, Huntsman-Hernandez has raised $43,000 and McClary has raised $34,000.
Combined fundraising makes this the most expensive race in the city. Wharton believes it is essential for him to secure a third term to serve as a steady hand in a council that has seen complete turnover since 2019 as the city faces major questions about downtown revitalization.
“I want to make sure that we have some continuity and some consistency as we go through these next four years,” Wharton said. “I also want to balance economic prosperity with affordability, and finding that right balance is something that only can be done through experience.”
But Huntsman-Hernandez is convinced 3rd District voters want a sharp break from the kind of Salt Lake City governance that she said has resulted in budget deficits, a lack of mental health resources and an entertainment district deal that will increase taxes for residents.
Coming from a famously wealthy family, Huntsman-Hernandez said Utah cities have grown too comfortable with offering incentives to billionaires. She hopes people recognize her desire to give back to her community without making assumptions based on her family.
“My last name is a double-edged sword,” Huntsman-Hernandez said. “My biggest hurdle in this race is that people are judging a book by its cover, not understanding who I am as a person. And once people get to know me, that reputation that they originally had in their head changes very fast.”
McClary’s pitch is this: With three young children, he is the most sensitive to the pressures being placed on the 3rd District, and with a background in software innovation, he has the problem-solving background to propose specific solutions to the housing crisis.
The key proposals of McClary’s candidacy are to repurpose 20 acres where the LDS Hospital now stands for townhomes under $500,000, and to identify budget cuts as a check on Mayor Erin Mendenhall while improving the maintenance of Salt Lake City parks, which he said have fallen into “disrepair.”
“That’s not really an environment conducive to families and to people with children,” McClary said. “We need to make sure that our public spaces are safe, clean and accessible.”
How to manage growth
Along the Wasatch Front, and around the rest of the state, voters are grappling with similar tradeoffs: how to increase the attainability of homeownership while managing the associated increases in traffic and stress on local resources.
Depending on Tuesday’s results — in what has been deemed “the mayoral year” by election observers — places like Riverton, Orem, Provo, Lehi and Vineyard could make drastic changes in terms of how they embrace or resist growth.
“It’s probably one of the largest issues is, How will they deal with growth? Where will they put it? Who is it for?” Utah County GOP chair Cristy Henshaw said. “Orem’s already been in the thick of that fight, in their pushback for high density.”
Two competing PACs are fighting over whether to replace multiple Orem City Council members and Orem Mayor David Young — who has tried to slow high density developments during his tenure — with a slate of candidates more open to pro-growth policies.
This pattern is playing out in reverse in Provo and Vineyard, where incumbents are being challenged by candidates who think their communities are being negatively impacted by rapid growth, and in Lehi and Eagle Mountain, where growth has created some of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the state.
A new generation
Another trend playing out in Salt Lake and Weber counties is that a younger generation of candidates, often with a more politically progressive point of view, are challenging incumbents with a surprising amount of momentum.
Longtime council members Bart Blair and Marcia White are receiving challenges from what Utah Votes executive director Eric Biggart calls a “more diverse” set of candidates: Kevin Lundell and Alicia Washington.
“I would categorize them as younger, mostly just millennials, being tired of playing second fiddle to generations of boomers and Gen Xs that have been leading our city councils and mayorships across the state,” Biggart said.
Similar upsets are possible in West Jordan and Cottonwood Heights, where the Utah Democratic Party and Democratic-leaning groups have invested endorsements and dollars with surprising success in primary elections to help challengers unseat more conservative incumbents.
In Cottonwood Heights, as with Provo, a former legislator is vying to replace a sitting mayor. Rep. Gay Lynn Bennion, D-Cottonwood Heights, is running on a platform of lowering housing costs against Cottonwood Heights Mayor Mike Weichers, who has touted the city’s effort to keep taxes low.
Meanwhile, Provo Mayor Michelle Kaufusi, who has served since 2017 on a pro-growth platform, is warding off an opponent from the opposite direction, as former Utah Rep. Marsha Judkins challenges her on high-density zoning and warehouse development.
Getting ugly
Some municipalities have seen these same dynamics turn local races into messy brawls over track records and party affiliation.
In what has been deemed by some as “maybe the ugliest race of the year,” two Riverton City Council members, Tish Buroker and Tawnee McCay, are duking it out for the mayor’s seat amid a battle of endorsements, allegations and social media insults.
Buroker turned heads when she won her primary by nearly 30 percentage points in August. Since then, the Utah Republican Party has doubled down on its endorsement of McCay, who is married to Utah Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, and criticized Buroker for not being conservative enough.
Partisan identities have also come to the forefront in Sandy, where the Utah GOP has spent thousands to oust Mayor Monica Zoltanski, who is facing off against the Republican-endorsed Cyndi Sharkey, four years after Zoltanski narrowly won a contested ranked choice voting election.
But whether it be in Sandy, Riverton or Cottonwood Heights, throwing mud based on party affiliation can be a bad tactic for elections that are meant to focus on practical city issues, according to Rachelle Morris, a former Salt Lake County council candidate and a public safety policy adviser.
“Entering partisan dynamics in nonpartisan races, I think, is actually a negative,” Morris said. “There’s still a large voter block in your community that is turned off by that.”