Two new candidates have announced their campaigns for Utah’s congressional seats, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections this November.
Since the state’s congressional map is still up in the air, incumbents and new candidates alike are unsure who they’ll be running against.
Riley Owen launches bid for Utah’s 1st District
Riley Owen, 27, announced his campaign for Utah’s 1st District on Friday. A resident of Salt Lake City, Owen will be running on the Republican ticket.
His priorities are to “defend our kids, support our families and curb career politicians.” His campaign promises include zoning reforms, removing phones from classrooms, banning congressional stock trading and enacting term limits for members of Congress.
“I believe in the American dream, but I do think it’s dwindling right now,” Owen told the Deseret News. “And there are a lot of Americans trying to buy a home, trying to raise families, and they’re losing trust in institutions and hope in politics, because there’s all this anger and rage bait going on.”
Partway through his undergraduate studies at Princeton, Owen took two years to serve a mission in Denmark for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then he took another year to serve as a White House policy analyst.
During his time at the White House, Owen focused on trade and manufacturing but “ended up covering anything and everything from drones and critical minerals to shipbuilding and semiconductors,” he said.
“Every day, I got to go to work to defend American workers and strengthen our industrial base. It was one of the greatest privileges of my life,” he added.
After Princeton, Owen completed a master’s degree in public policy at the University of Oxford. Currently, he works as CEO of Doers Network and serves as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve.
In his conversation with the Deseret News, Owen stressed his love for the state of Utah. He learned how to ski at Brighton; he’s a descendant of six generations in the state.
But having lived in California, Washington, D.C., England and elsewhere, “there’s still in Utah a sense of hope, an expectation of results and a social contract between people and their leaders,” Owen said.
He continued, “I think a lot of Americans are struggling to see that, and I think Utah is still holding on to that and a belief that there should be good people leading our institutions and leading our communities.”
Kent Udell announces campaign for Utah’s 3rd District
Kent Udell, a former professor of engineering at UC Berkeley and the University of Utah, is running for Utah’s 3rd District on the Democratic ticket.
Now a resident of Moab, Udell grew up in Lehi. He earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Utah State University and earned a master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Utah.
“Now I’m retired, and I’m looking at what’s happening in this country — just the lack of truth, the lack of direction based on information and data — and we’re just ignoring all of that and putting us on the wrong path,” Udell told the Deseret News.
Udell said his career in the petroleum industry would help him serve as a bridge between the federal government and Utah’s 3rd District, which covers the eastern side of the state.
“I know the petroleum industry, I understand what’s happening up in Uintah County, I understand what’s happening in coal country, I understand the tourism industry,” he said.
Udell said that seeing corruption at the federal level prompted him to launch his bid. “The corruption of big money in politics, the corruption of the political system itself, the corruption of some people being above the law ... it’s hurting us, and it’s hurting the country,” he said.