SALT LAKE CITY — One of President Donald Trump’s top campaign advisors, his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, said his reelection bid will only be strengthened by Thursday’s divided House vote setting the stage for the impeachment inquiry against the president to go forward.
But how will Trump be impacted in Utah? After all, the Republican-dominated state gave the president the lowest percentage of the vote of any state he won in 2016 — just 45.5%. Utah has not backed a Democrat for president in more than five decades.
“Americans overwhelmingly do not like what they see happening to this president. This stunt will backfire on the Democrats,” Lara Trump told reporters on a conference call shortly after every Republican, including Utah Reps. Rob Bishop, Chris Stewart and John Curtis, voted against a resolution laying out rules for the impeachment inquiry.
Utah’s only Democrat in Congress, Rep. Ben McAdams, voted in favor of the resolution. He and other Democrats around the country in congressional districts that went for Trump in 2016 are being targeted by the Trump Victory reelection campaign.
“Partisan politics at its worst is exactly what we are seeing play out here,” Lara Trump said, calling the impeachment inquiry everything from a sham to a hoax to a coup attempt. “From the campaign perspective, we feel very strong, we don’t feel like this is going to affect anything whatsoever. In fact, it’s only going to increase numbers for the president because people want to fight back against this.”
That includes in Utah, Trump Victory spokesman Rick Gorka said.
“President Donald Trump will win in Utah in 2020,” Gorka told the Deseret News. Asked whether the campaign had polling or other data to back up that prediction, he replied, “I know the president will win because the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning.”
He also took a shot at McAdams.
“What’s shocking is Rep. Ben McAdams would vote with (New York Democratic Rep.) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the socialist squad to continue the partisan impeachment witch hunt. He should remember he represents Utah, not New York,” Gorka said.
GOP congressional campaign organizations also went after McAdams for supporting the resolution, seen as making the impeachment inquiry already underway in closed-door hearings more public while also allowing the president due process.
“Ben McAdams’ vote today proves he is more obsessed with removing President Trump from office than passing legislation that will benefit Utahns,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Torunn Sinclair said in a statement.
The Congressional Leadership Fund launched new digital advertising in the districts of 29 Democrats around the country where Trump won in 2016, including Utah’s 4th Congressional District that is represented by McAdams, viewed as one of the nation’s most vulnerable Democrats in next year’s election.
McAdams, who won his seat in 2018 by beating a two-term Republican congresswoman, Mia Love, by less than 700 votes, has already been the subject of a rally in early October outside of his West Jordan office that was organized by the Trump Victory campaign to protest impeachment.
But the president’s supporters ended up being outnumbered at the event by a vocal crowd that showed up to defend McAdams as well as the impeachment proceedings centered around Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate his Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential race, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Utahn Don Peay, who helped lead Trump’s campaign in the state in 2016 and is close to Trump’s son, Don Jr., said the turnout at the rally only means that “Trump people have jobs and don’t do silly protests.” Peay said the president’s standing among Utah voters will get a boost from Thursday’s vote.
“It will strengthen Trump’s reelection in Utah,” he said, labeling the inquiry “a BIG loser for the Dems.”
Others suggest the vote on the impeachment inquiry process opens the door for new facts to emerge that could hurt the president with Utah voters. While a recent poll showed Utahns are split on impeaching Trump, an August poll found a majority of voters in the state already believed he shouldn’t get a second term as president.
“It does begin a process through which the evidence will now take center stage,” said Chris Karpowitz, co-director of BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, noting that Trump “is not particularly popular here in Utah relative to other Republicans, so I think it bears watching how the public responds to the specifics.”
Karpowitz, a political science professor, said the move toward a more public impeachment inquiry “means Republicans who have primarily had complaints about the process will now have to grapple with the substance of the concerns that have been raised about President Trump. I think that process is just beginning.”
He said Utah voters “may be more open to the notion that something serious has gone wrong. ... They may be more open to the notion that President Trump has done something inappropriate. Some of that depends on the signals they get from other Republican leaders.”
Already, some Utah GOP officials have spoken up, including Sen. Mitt Romney, who has received national attention for criticizing Trump’s actions and calling it “critical” for the facts to come out. Gov. Gary Herbert said even though both parties have contributed to making the impeachment a “circus,” the process needs to go forward.
Romney is not up for reelection until 2024, and Herbert is not seeking another term after more than a decade in office.
Jason Perry, director of the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics, said at least for now, Utah leaders may be better off treading lightly when it comes to impeachment.
“There is no clear winning position on impeachment in the state of Utah for our elected officials. The reason is Utahns are divided on President Trump to begin with and they are further divided on impeachment,” Perry said, blaming the partisanship they’re seeing on the issue in Congress.
That could change, he said, depending on what comes out of the public process.
“There very well may be substantial facts that may become public that will sway voters to the side of the Democrats,” Perry said, adding that “if there’s no substance to it after this process, then the Republicans will go on the attack, saying, ‘We were right about the process and we’re right about the facts.’”
The impeachment issue “will bleed into the next election cycle, no question,” he said.
When it comes to Trump, Utahns already have concerns about his style and personality, Perry said. “It’s possible that facts may emerge in this inquiry that will add to the negative side of the scale to where Utahns are no longer willing to overlook what’s happened. It’s not clear that is the case now.”
Utah Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Merchant said the new inquiry rules are “a great reconciliation in the sense that Donald Trump has really been able to be protected for a long time by Republicans. But this is now finally going to open the process in a way that it’s going to be very, very difficult for him to hide behind process and procedure.”
That doesn’t mean Democrats should be gloating, however.
“I am sure there are some that are applauding this, that are excited about this. But the reality is that this is a sad time for America. I think that anybody who takes what has been happening seriously recognizes that this is a situation that no one wants to be a part of. I think in Utah we feel that way,” Merchant said.
Comparing the impeachment inquiry to a root canal, a “hard, difficult, painful process,” he said he believes Utahns “are at least going to be open to the inquiry process and I think we’re going to see somewhat of a shift in Utah” in terms of the president’s popularity.
“I’m not going to lie. I’m not a huge fan of Donald Trump. But I’m also not looking for reasons to impeach him,” Merchant said. “Nobody wants to have a root canal. But this is a process that unfortunately I think probably has to happen. The evidence that’s come out in my mind is getting worse and worse. It’s not getting better.”