- A nationwide super PAC is waging a $100,000 war against Utah Senate President Stuart Adams.
- The group has tried to oust legislative leaders in Idaho, Wyoming, West Virginia and New Hampshire.
- Those behind the “No Kings” protests led a postcard campaign against Adams that may violate state law.
One of the most powerful incumbent politicians in the state of Utah is under fire from both conservative and liberal groups in an election year where discontent with lawmakers has emerged among some Republican voters.
Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, has sailed through GOP primaries for two decades to secure reelection to the Utah House from 2002 to 2006 and the Senate since 2009. But this year, he faces a wall of opposition.
Voters in the state’s 7th Senate District have been bombarded with direct mail advertisements, phone calls, texts and even handwritten postcards by national super PACs or groups tied to out-of-state organizations.
Make Liberty Win, a conservative group with a reputation for toppling state legislative leaders across the U.S., has set its sights on Adams, with a negative ad campaign focused on perceived conflicts of interest with his position of power.
Make Liberty Win touts itself as “an ideological group” that promotes limited-government principles by threatening leaders who they believe have overstepped with combative messaging and embarrassing artificial intelligence illustrations.
Underlying the attacks is the assumption that, for the first time, Adams’ political future could be in jeopardy.
“He is vulnerable in a way that he has never been before,” Utah consultant Taylor Morgan said. “It’s because so much outside energy and money is focused on his race as a proxy for overall frustration with Republican legislative leadership.”
Anti-incumbent sentiment stems from the Legislature’s potential overreach on data centers, redistricting and education, according to Morgan. However, this general anxiety may obscure Adams’ real record at the Capitol.
The ‘hardcore’ GOP group against Adams
After becoming Senate president in 2019, Adams has presided over six straight years of income tax cuts, multiple No. 1 rankings on the economy, and historic legislation on gun rights, abortion restrictions and water management.
Despite his conservative stance on fiscal and social issues, a self-described “hardcore conservative” political action committee has devoted its “confrontational” style to make an example of Adams for not being conservative enough.
Make Liberty Win, a PAC funded by libertarian student organization Young Americans for Liberty, has dedicated $100,000 for a “triple tap” campaign, targeting voters with mailers, texts and calls to ensure “message penetration.”
The group has made it their agenda to oust state leaders across the country. In 2024, they launched aggressive efforts to remove the Idaho Senate president, Wyoming House speaker and New Hampshire Senate Democratic leader.
The idea is: “Cut off the head of the snake, watch the body wither,” PAC executive director Barrett Young said. And after Adams got just 55% of the vote at the April GOP nominating convention, Make Liberty Win saw an opening in Utah.
“We saw the best bang for our buck is going straight to the top and going after Adams,” Young told the Deseret News. “He doesn’t even have to necessarily lose; if the Senate president wins by a hair, that’s an absolute humiliation.”
Young expects Adams’ two opponents — Stephanie Hollist and Braden Hess — to split the vote. But Make Liberty Win successfully targeted the West Virginia Senate president in the 2024 GOP primary despite it being a three-way race.
What are on the ‘nasty’ ads?
The tactic in Utah has taken the form of at least five different mail pieces showing AI-generated images of Adams as a pickpocket, a magician and a clown, with vague allegations that his actions benefited corporations or himself.
Adams faced backlash last year after it was revealed a 2024 law lowering the penalty for 18-year-old high school students who engage in noncoercive sexual activity with 13-year-olds was inspired by the criminal case of his granddaughter.
The law was not retroactive and Adams did not reference his personal connection on the issue to lobby in favor of it.
Over the past two months, Adams has also become the face of an unpopular AI data center proposed in Box Elder County after he helped to approve a special zoning agreement as chair of Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, or MIDA.
In response to public outcry, Adams worked with developer Kevin O’Leary to reduce and clarify the scope of the project.
But Make Liberty Win’s ads focus less on policy specifics than trying to teach Utah senators a lesson by using AI-generated images to frame Adams in a negative light, like hovering over a child watching TV or holding a glass of what appears to be alcohol in the Middle East.
In 2022, Qatar paid for Adams to attend a World Cup match a few months after he visited the country on a trade mission.
“These are nasty, out-of-state dark money tactics — particularly offensive because Diet Coke is the closest thing to hard liquor that Stuart Adams drinks,” Adams campaign manager Greg Powers told the Deseret News in a statement.
History has shown “D.C.-style attack ads” against incumbent politicians tend not to work in Utah, according to Morgan. If anything, voters will resist the pressure of an out-of-state group trying to shape their perception of Adams, Morgan said.
Young is convinced of the opposite.
The No. 1 metric of whether a political ad is successful is whether people remember it, Young said. He thinks Make Liberty Win’s AI political cartoons will stand out even more in a state where many candidates try to avoid negative campaigning.
What about the postcard campaign?
Adam’s campaign is also defending against an ad campaign coming from the other side of the political spectrum.
The local chapter of the Democrat-funded Indivisible Project, which has organized “No Kings” and anti-immigration enforcement protests, launched an initiative in May to send around 6,000 postcards to 7th District voters.
Salt Lake Indivisible distributed 250 packets at a “Dump Data Centers” event with instructions for volunteers to handwrite a scripted message urging voters to oust Adams for his involvement in the project and to support Hollist.
“Adams is in trouble because he’s been self-dealing for years and his constituents are finally waking up to that,” Salt Lake Indivisible leader Sarah Buck told the Deseret News. “This time he bit off something that the public noticed.”
Volunteers were instructed to buy their own postage, then to return them to Indivisible organizers to mail out to voters. The postcards, which include an illustration saying to “vote him out,” do not have a “paid for” disclosure naming Indivisible.
This is because the initiative was largely paid for and carried out by volunteers, across multiple organizations, Buck said.
Adams’ campaign filed a complaint this week with the lieutenant governor’s office seeking an investigation into whether the postcards violate state law requiring ads to disclose who paid for them if they advocate for or against a candidate.
Another left-leaning group opposing Adams is Alliance for a Better Utah, founded by liberal megadonor Josh Kanter.
Better Utah spokesperson Elizabeth Hutchings said the organization is “actively engaged” in opposing Adams because 2026 presents a unique opportunity where “money on both sides” of the political spectrum is united against him.
“Stuart Adams created the urgency himself by choosing to run for reelection,” Hutchings told the Deseret News in a statement. “Clearly, both the left and the right have reached the same conclusion: it’s time for new leadership in the Senate.”
Who’s running against him?
The top contenders vying to replace one of the most experienced politicians in the state are political newcomers.
Hollist, who previously worked as legal counsel to Weber State University, has centered her campaign around rebuilding trust in state government by making sure Utah voters feel heard through transparent and accountable processes in the Legislature.
In a statement, Hollist said reactions to the data center reveal “a deeper frustration” about representation.
While she lost to Adams and Hess at convention, Hollist qualified for the primary by gathering signatures and has brought in a competitive fundraising haul of nearly $90,000, although more than $75,000 of that came from her father, Kayden Bell.
Coming in second place among county delegates with 45% was Hess, an attorney, who previously advised lawmakers at the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel. He has framed himself as more conservative than Adams on government spending.
He told the Deseret News voters “want to see turnover” in the Legislature, and even larger tax cuts to offset rising costs. He is relying on his hard-line positions on judicial nominations and reducing regulations to convert voters, with less than $2,000 raised.
Adams, meanwhile, has reiterated to voters his long list of legislative achievements, ranging from first-time-homebuyer subsidies, school choice scholarships, and prohibiting transgender individuals from playing in women’s sports and from entering women’s restrooms.
Counting on more than $110,000 — largely from industry associations — Adams has launched an ad campaign of his own, highlighting concessions O’Leary made on the data center at his request and framing the negative attacks as lies from “out-of-state dark money groups.”
As Republicans decide whether to give Adams another term, his campaign hopes voters focus on his record, not ads — from the left or the right.
“It seems a little weird that a supposedly conservative organization is going to come out so hard against (Adams),” Powers said. “He’s had challenges in the past, but nothing like this — nothing so coordinated and with so much outside dark money.”