Other than for ninth grade student body president, Melissa Garff Ballard had never run a campaign before.

Still, when the North Salt Lake Republican launched her bid for a Utah House seat last year, she figured she’d receive enough help from her party to make up for any gaps in knowledge.

“As a new legislator," she said, “what I was expecting was that when I won the primary vote, that during the summer and for the fall, the party would have had our precinct chairs help get new volunteers or to host events or whatever it was, as well as some financial support.”

Ballard didn’t receive a dime from either her county or state party, she said — nor did she receive much help strategizing or mobilizing volunteers.

“I basically did everything on my own,” she said.

Other first-year lawmakers from both sides of the aisle shared similar stories. And while they expressed varying degrees of frustration, most said their party’s missing-in-action status during the campaign is a symptom of a larger dysfunction within the Republican and Democratic organizations, both of which have been cash-strapped and consumed with infighting in recent years.

Those considerations may have obstructed what experts say is a party’s central mission: to help candidates get elected and build coalitions to create policy. And as recent changes have shifted the role of parties locally, insiders worry that a growing bloc of unaffiliated voters, possibly repulsed by the internal drama, could sound the death knell of their relevancy.

“Part of the distraction of all these internal fights, I think, [is] that a large portion of the public that I’ve talked to has felt disenchanted with party politics,” said Rep. Steve Waldrip, R-Eden, who was shunned last year by the Weber County Republican Party for gathering signatures to get on the ballot. “In my district, there are a greater number of unaffiliated voters ... . So people, I think, are tired of that level of gamesmanship.”

Nadia Mahallati, a graduate teaching assistant of political science at the University of Utah and a candidate for vice chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, says the role of parties is “in flux” after the passage of SB54, a 2014 law allowing candidates for partisan office to qualify for a primary by either gathering voter signatures or by earning the support of party delegates at convention.

“People are saying, ‘Why do we need parties if we can just get signatures and skip all of that insider politics?’” she said. “And I think that’s an ongoing thing that parties in Utah are trying to figure out. And, obviously, the Republicans have been more opposed to the signature path than the Democrats have been, but everyone is still just trying to figure out what the role of parties is.”

But as both parties prepare to elect new leaders in coming weeks, there is renewed hope that fresh voices may be able to help set that direction — and to heal the divides that have threatened to tear the parties apart.

‘We did a horrible job’

The major functions of political parties are to unite people around a set of shared beliefs for the purpose of achieving electoral goals, like winning seats, with the ultimate goal of influencing policy. They’re also useful for voters, according to James Curry, a political science professor at the University of Utah who’s researched parties on the national level.

“They offer labels essentially that provide information to voters,” he said. “So if you see a Democratic label next to a party’s name, you know what that means, generally speaking, as a voter. And if you see ‘Republican’ next to a candidate’s name, you know what that means, generally speaking, as a voter. So they help simplify the choice.”

Utah’s political parties have been grappling with the loss of some of their influence in choosing the candidates who appear on the ballot after the passage of SB54 — an issue that has particularly consumed the Republican Party, which has been controlled by conservatives who prefer the state’s old election system that relied only on the caucus-convention process to determine party nominees.

If candidates won enough delegate votes at a convention, they could skip a primary, which the party said gave those with less money a decent chance of winning. Critics, however, said the old system gave too much power to delegates, who tend to be much more conservative than most voters. They argue SB54 gives all party members more of a voice and helps elect more mainstream candidates.

The Republican Party sued the state over SB54, which was ultimately upheld by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Still, the fight went all the way to the Supreme Court, where justices refused to hear the party’s challenge.

The legal fees resulting from the fight threatened to bankrupt the organization before Dave Bateman, the CEO of Entrata software, assumed its $410,000 in legal debts.

Rob Anderson, the outgoing chairman of the Republican Party, said he believes the vigor of this fight has been a distraction — evidenced perhaps by a bruising 2018 election that saw the party’s hold on the state Legislature slip a bit, a near wipeout in Salt Lake County offices, and the loss of a congressional seat to Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams.

“The three tiers, I think, of parties are to get out and recruit good candidates, help them get elected and support them while they’re in office, with respect to our elected officials,” Anderson said. “And I just think we did a horrible job of that.”

In the most recent example of infighting, a number of GOP interns and employees said the party’s elected secretary, Lisa Shepherd, created a hostile and counterproductive workplace and described her as “unfit” for her leadership post in a letter sent Thursday to state Republican delegates.

The Democratic Party has faced its own issues, including financial ones. In fact, the state executive committee decided earlier this month to stop paying Chairwoman Daisy Thomas for the rest of her term, in part because of a decline in fundraising.

The party has also been involved in a protracted internal fight over multiple sexual misconduct allegations that seven female activists brought forward against Rob Miller, then a candidate for state party chair, in 2017.

Ongoing frustrations over the party’s judgment that it did not have jurisdiction to discipline Miller after he left the party bubbled up again earlier this month, when Miller tried and failed to run again for party chair — a plan thwarted when the party said it hadn’t received his candidate paperwork on time.

Richard Davis, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, says the conflict in both parties is likely characteristic of what is essentially a one-party system in deep red Utah.

“In this case, the Republicans feel like they can engage in significant infighting and not come together because they’re going to win no matter what they do,” he said. “I think Democrats have the same view, except they’re going to lose whatever they do. So it doesn’t really matter that we care what the voters are concerned about.”

‘When I see infighting, I run the opposite direction’

Davis, a former Democrat and Republican, is now chairman of the United Utah Party, which has attracted unaffiliated voters and former members of the major state parties who felt alienated by the extreme views of their leaders.

He argues the main parties have become “wedded to a litmus test” that means the most ideologically extreme members are leading them, determining how money is spent and, sometimes, punishing those who are not “pure” in their beliefs.

That’s a view shared by Anderson — who was recently censured by the GOP State Central Committee after ignoring a bylaw to strip some candidates of their party membership if they gather signatures.

“The fringe in my opinion has dictated ... party politics,” he said. “And those people don’t reflect the majority of voters in Utah.”

Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, said he is an ardent supporter of the caucus-convention system, which he believes is the best way to engage with those he represents. Still, he said, he’d like to see the party move on from its SB54 fight.

“Whether you felt good about the decision or whether you didn’t, every avenue for addressing that grievance has been explored and filed, and ultimately the decision has been made within the courts,” the first-year lawmaker said. “And so we need, I believe, to settle that discussion and move forward.”

Though active Republicans outnumber their Democratic counterparts by more than 3 to 1 in the state, there’s a growing number of unaffiliated voters, too. There are 507,648 active unaffiliated registered voters, compared to 679,077 active Republicans, according to data from the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office. There are 184,944 active registered Democrats.

Some speculate that dysfunction, both on the state and national level, may be pushing people further away from the major parties.

“In the past, [unaffiliated voters] used to just be people who were uninformed, who didn’t really know the difference between the parties or they were apathetic and they just didn’t really care about politics, so they didn’t identify with one of the parties,” Mahallati said. “More recently, we’ve seen kind of an evolution of these unaffiliated voters where they are informed and they do care about politics, but they just feel really disillusioned by either of the two major parties."

Sen. Derek Kitchen, D-Salt Lake City and a first-year legislator, said he’s noticed a similar phenomenon in his district, which is largely considered one of the most progressive in the state but still has a vast number of unaffiliated voters.

“When I see infighting, I run the opposite direction as fast as possible," Kitchen said. “So I think that many people probably share that same approach. Infighting helps nobody.”

While it may be true that there has been a general distaste for party politics in recent years — particularly with the raw partisanship nationally — Curry, the U. political scientist, noted that the system makes it difficult for third-party candidates to do well.

That means the two major parties will likely always retain some semblance of relevancy, even as the political landscape shifts.

“Having that nomination from the party," he said, “is still crucial to actually winning consistently in our system.”

‘You have to work’

Rep. Marsha Judkins, R-Provo, said she felt “adrift in a lot of ways” as she scrambled to piece together a campaign without the help of her party.

That’s a reality she hopes no future candidates have to face.

“We need to look at bridging the gaps that have been created, the chasms that have been created in the party and making people feel enfranchised and wanted," she said, noting that she wants to see the party strengthen the caucus-convention route. “I think that that has been a problem for a while.”

As former candidates say they hope the parties will do more to educate and assist future candidates on campaigns, both Anderson and Mahallati said they think their parties need to be more upfront with candidates to help them understand what they can offer and what they are not able to do.

But first, Anderson said, they need to market their values and beliefs in a policy-based way to raise more interest, engagement and grassroots support.

“You’ve got to market the reason for a party and validity behind joining a party,” the GOP leader said. “And then you have to work.”

The Republican Party has four candidates for party chair, all of whom say it’s time to set aside entrenched hostilities but have differences in tone and approach. The Democrats also have four candidates, including current Chairwoman Thomas, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Curry said he expects the Utah Republicans and Democrats will adapt to the legal and cultural shifts that are currently causing rifts, as parties have historically done to other changes in electoral systems.

“But the fact that it’s so drawn out shows you how hard that actually is,” he said. “And how destructive it can be.”