Ben McAdams said he believes President Donald Trump’s second term in office is filled with more impeachment-worthy actions than his first presidency — but if elected to Congress again, impeaching the Republican won’t be his top priority.
McAdams served as a representative for Utah in Congress from 2018 to 2020, when he lost against current Rep. Burgess Owens in Utah’s 2nd District. He says he believes his vote to impeach Trump in 2019 cost him his seat in the House.
If Democrats gain the majority in the House after the midterm elections, McAdams told the Deseret News and KSL Editorial Board on Monday, it’d be a mistake for the party if they made impeaching Trump their top priority.
“I think that the level of corruption from this administration makes 2019 look quaint,” he said. But, “The Democratic Party needs to be the party of solutions.”
And voters, he said, care more about housing costs, health care and affordability than endless investigations.
Though he came in second at the Utah Democratic Convention in the newly created 1st Congressional District, McAdams remains confident in his campaign. He joked that it also helps when your opponent posts a poll on X with you leading by double-digits a few weeks before the election.
McAdams qualified for the ballot at the convention, and also gathered enough signatures to appear on the June Democratic primary ballot alongside convention winner Liban Mohamed, state Sen. Nate Blouin, and attorney Michael Farrell. The candidate who wins the June primary will go up against Republican Riley Owen in the November general election.
Coming to the table
While generally seen as more moderate compared to his Democratic opponents, McAdams said it is a “mistake” to reduce voters — or the race itself — to a binary choice between progressive and moderate politics.
“At the end of the day, the people who are counting on us, they don’t care what you say, what you put out on social media, they care (about) what actually changes.”
As a former congressman, Salt Lake County mayor, and state senator, he believes his accomplishments in public office show he is a pragmatic coalition builder rather than a Republican-resistant candidate or a progressive insurgent.
He said what is lacking in Washington, D.C., that he possesses is “political courage.”
There are two types, according to McAdams: “the courage to stand up and stand alone,” citing his decisions to impeach Trump in a GOP-dominated Utah, and “the courage to sit down at a table with people who you may not like, with people who you disagree with,” mentioning his effort to pass LGBTQ non-discrimination protections in Utah.
“I’ve never been more worried about the direction of our country than I am right now, and it’s in these times that we need people who can do both, who can stand up and stand strong, and be a voice for what we believe is right, but can also sit down with people who you disagree with, to forge a coalition to get something done,” he said.
McAdams’ top priorities
McAdams said his No. 1 priority if elected is to find solutions for the struggling Great Salt Lake.
He stressed there is no single silver-bullet solution and said that saving the lake will require multiple strategies simultaneously, including conservation, habitat restoration/invasive species removal, agricultural partnerships and bipartisan cooperation — rather than any single policy proposal.
On domestic policy, much of McAdams’ focus in the last five years has been on affordable housing. After recently publishing a piece on how the federal government could support scalable market-driven solutions to housing, he said Delaware Democratic Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester reached out, expressing interest in turning the idea into a bill, but said it needed bipartisan support to pass.
So he reached out to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Utah Sen. John Curtis, and helped create the Build Housing, Unlock Benefits and Services (HUBS) Act, sponsored by Sen. Rochester and Sen. John Curtis.
“My first piece of legislation to address housing affordability could pass even before the election happens,” he said, referring to the bill.
On immigration, he was critical of Trump’s immigration policy and the tactics used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, but stopped short of saying ICE should be abolished.
Instead, he said the federal immigration system needs comprehensive reform, and that ICE should focus on cartel members, traffickers and violent criminals while protecting the constitutional due process of immigrants. He also supports a pathway for Dreamers to become citizens and said many law-abiding undocumented immigrants should have an opportunity to obtain legal status.
“Right now we have the system that we’ve inherited from the brokenness of decades, and we’re going to have to figure out some approaches to treat people humanely, to keep families together,” McAdams said.
McAdams on the war in Iran
McAdams said he opposes Trump’s decision to launch attacks on Iran, labeling the continued hostilities “unconstitutional,” and adding that now Americans are facing the financial consequences. But he did say that “Iran should never have a nuclear weapon.”
And though his criticisms of the Trump administration are numerous, he did mention one thing Trump 2.0 has done right: education reform.
He praised efforts to expand Pell Grants and training opportunities for students pursuing skilled trades, saying that a traditional four-year degree is no longer seen as the right path for everyone. He also expressed support for competency-based education.
“I’m not going to sit and tell you today that I am going to be the champion who fixes everything that’s wrong in this country, but fixing this country is a choice, and it’s going to require all of us choosing someone who is going to prioritize hope over anger and division, somebody who’s going to go back there with the commitment to get things working again and to solve our problems,” he said, “rather than having a cudgel to clobber the other side.”
Correction: Ben McAdams did qualify for the Democratic primary at the Utah Democratic Convention.