Republican delegates backed Trump-like candidates — but Utah primary voters defeated them in the polls

Tuesday’s Republican primary was truly an unconventional election.

Unconventional because of all of the top-tier candidates who won at the party’s state convention — some of them by sizable margins — only one actually was chosen as the party’s nominee by Republican voters. And while the delegates strongly favored the candidates most aligned with former President Donald Trump, the Republican voters kept nearly all of them out of this fall’s general election.

Take Gov. Spencer Cox, who was booed relentlessly by delegates at the convention, shot back that they hate him “because I don’t hate enough,” and then received 33% of the delegate support. He was the first incumbent governor since Olene Walker in 2004 to get less than 40% — which, before candidates could gather signatures to qualify for the ballot, ended Walker’s political career.

In the primary, however, Cox beat state Rep. Phil Lyman by a comfortable margin which, as of midday Thursday, stood at nearly 12 percentage points.

“It tells us that the process is not representative,” Cox said in an interview Tuesday night. “The process is an incredible process. I’m a huge believer in the caucus-convention system when it’s representative. Sadly, for the last few years, it’s become less and less representative. … It’s supposed to represent the Republican Party and the Republican Party is the Republicans who make up the party. … so there’s a disconnect there for sure.”

Cox wasn’t alone in flipping the convention script. And while there have been prominent examples of candidates who didn’t win at convention going on to win the primary — like Gov. Gary Herbert and U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney finishing second in 2016 and 2018, respectively — the disconnect between the results of the convention and the primary have never been as apparent as this year.

Votes are still being counted, but as of Thursday:

• U.S. Rep. John Curtis garnered just 30% of the vote at the convention to Trent Staggs’ 70%, but Curtis dominated the primary, beating Staggs 50% to 31% in the four-way race.

• First-time candidate Paul Miller finished 10 points ahead of U.S. Rep. Blake Moore, 55-45 at the convention, but Moore crushed Miller in the primary, receiving over 72% of the vote.

• Challenger Colby Jenkins, buoyed by an endorsement from Sen. Mike Lee, ran nearly 14 points ahead of incumbent U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy in the convention. While the race is still too close to call, a day after polls closed Maloy has a lead of about 2,000 votes.

• In the attorney general’s primary race, Frank Mylar finished with just under 60% of the vote to Rachel Terry’s 40%. But GOP voters picked Derek Brown as the party’s nominee. Brown got 45% of the vote to Terry’s 33%. Mylar was a distant third.

• In the state auditor’s race, Weber County Clerk-Auditor Ricky Hatch beat Tina Cannon at the convention, but Cannon won the primary, 57%-43%.

Of all the top-tier contests, just one — the 3rd Congressional District race won by state Rep. Michael Kennedy — saw the candidate who won at the Republican nominating convention also finish as the favorite among voters.

“I think a lot of people are looking at this … and they’re saying this, ‘This is the clearest proof that there’s a disconnect between where most of the Republicans in Utah are and the kind of people that are being sent out by the delegates,” said Jason Perry, director of The University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics. “I think the Legislature is looking at this issue now ... and I think some of these elected officials, you start hearing them talking more publicly about their concern. And I think that may lead to something.”

Brown, who is a former Utah GOP chair, said for the convention system to run well, a lot more Republicans need to attend caucuses to elect the convention delegates. This year, only 9% of 900,000 registered Republicans took part in the caucuses.

“As long as lots of people show up and lots of people participate, then it’s representative. The problem is that last time around 9% of Republicans showed up. And when 9% are participating, by definition it’s not representative,” Brown said.

“I think you’re just talking ultimately about two completely separate groups of people” when comparing convention delegates to primary voters, Brown said, and “I think we may see less and less overlap [between the two groups] as the years pass.”

But Rob Axson, the current party chairman, said the disparities were not as stark as may be portrayed.

While Moore — who also gathered signatures — and Maloy finished behind their Republican challengers, each secured enough delegates to move on to the primary. And further down the ticket, Axson said, there were about 20 candidates who ran unopposed and were able to move through the process without the expense of signature gathering.

There are also two more predictive factors in the outcome of primaries, he said — incumbency and campaign spending. Of the 24 Republican candidates who got to the primary through signature gathering, only six won their primary. Four of them were incumbents and the other two were Curtis and Brown, who were well-known and outspent their nearest opponents by large margins.

Axson said he is willing to look at ways to improve the process, but he remains a believer in the convention system.

“The end goal can’t be protecting the convention system. The end goal has to be the best process for enhancing participation and serving the goals of the Republican Party and the State of Utah,” he said. “The pros that the convention process provides far outweigh the shortcomings. But if we were able to find a better process … if it’s good for the State of Utah and all of the party, I’m all about it, because the goal has to be what’s best for Utah’s future.”

State Sen. Dan McCay, who sponsored the legislation creating the dual-track convention and signature paths to the primary ballot — a compromise with a group pushing a ballot initiative that would have made primary elections mandatory for all candidates — said the system seems to be working.

The convention, he said, is the “everyman candidate’s path to the ballot,” since it can be done for less than the $200,000 to $300,000 it typically costs to hire professional signature gatherers statewide. And even though the candidates who have lost at convention have gone on to win the primaries, they typically have surpassed the 40% threshold to make it onto the ballot, with or without signatures — Curtis being eliminated in a special election in his first bid for Congress being one notable exception.

McCay pointed out that Cox is the first statewide candidate to fall short of the delegate threshold and that was a landmark in and of itself.

“I just think Gov. Cox looked at the money that was required to be really competitive at convention and decided they would just prefer to spend that money on the primary,” McCay said.

“I think the polling shows the process is still really popular, having both options,” McCay said. “Getting rid of signatures, I don’t think is going to be successful. Conversely, I don’t think getting rid of the convention system will be successful.”

Zoe Nemerever, a political science professor at Utah Valley University, said it seems that the delegates at the convention opted for candidates with less experience in policymaking but more loyalty to Trump. But the signature path provided rank-and-file Republican voters with the ability to put a check on that impulse — as, she said, it was designed to do.”

“Now we might be seeing an even more convincing reason for why we have that institutional feature in Utah, when we see people who got on the signature path actually winning over the convention candidate,” she said. “That shows me we’re very lucky to have that feature in our Utah democracy, because it is being used in a way that the will of the voters can counteract the very unrepresentative showing at the convention.”

Cox said he knows there are discussions happening about how to reform the system and expects those to continue. “Obviously it would be great if we had 70% turnout on caucus night, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen,” he said.

Brown said his goal is a Republican Party that is well-funded, well-run and can turn a large segment of the party out for caucus night.

“That’s really what it comes down to,” he said, “and if you can’t get that, then we probably need to rethink where things go from here.”