Fed up with GOP and Dems, more independents are running in Utah, and they now see a path to victory

Legislative hopeful Alisa Van Langeveld has been interested in politics and building her community since she was a teenager.

At 17, she attended her neighborhood caucus and was elected as a Republican delegate.

Van Langeveld got involved in city government in North Salt Lake, joining the parks board, which she later led, and then gained a spot on the planning commission.

By 2017, when she first ran for the nonpartisan City Council — coming up 88 votes short — she had become disillusioned with the Republican Party and broke with it completely when Donald Trump became the party’s presidential nominee, converting to a self-described “never-Trumper.”

“Over time, I just really got feeling like the party was less and less representative to me,” Van Langeveld said in a recent interview, “and who I wanted to be and the world I wanted for my children.”

She dabbled with the Democrats but said she also “didn’t feel at home there” and was decidedly independent by 2021, when she ran again for City Council and this time won.

Because she didn’t fit in either party, Van Langeveld said she hadn’t really considered running for a state office. She then was approached by a political consultant who gave her some intriguing data: Two years ago, Evan McMullin, running as an independent against U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, captured 57% of the vote in Senate District 8 — where Van Langeveld is now challenging Sen. Todd Weiler — his strongest performance in any GOP-held district in the state.

It was eye-opening and showed her that perhaps there was a way for her to run a successful campaign without sacrificing her independent streak.

“Most voters in this district and across the state are in the political middle,” she said. “I think those on the political extremes are the ones who are running the show, so when they’re operating in their legislative roles and campaign roles and political roles, they’re trying to pull people farther and farther from each other … and I don’t feel like that reflects the average voter.”

So Van Langeveld filed to challenge Weiler, gathered the 1,000 signatures she needed to get on the fall ballot and is busy making her case to as many voters as she can.

“When I talk about this strategy,” Van Langeveld said, “I see people get excited for the first time in years that we might have a path to do something different, so we’re not just being handed the candidates without much choice on our general election ballot.”

And Van Langeveld is hardly alone this election cycle — indeed, far from it.

In most years, an average of about two Utah candidates (excluding presidential hopefuls) run as independents.

In the past 20 years, a total of 18 independents have run for state and federal offices — from school board up to U.S. senator and governor. Two years ago, McMullin was the only independent on the ballot. In 2020, there was an independent candidate for state school board and, in 2018, one running for the state House.

This year, however, 13 independents have filed to run, including contenders vying for governor and attorney general and on down to school board.

Most said they are running out of a deep sense of frustration and disillusionment with the two-party system that they maintain produces policies that fail to represent their constituents.

Several said their ultimate goal is — if a few like-minded independents can prevail at the ballot box — to break the stranglehold the GOP supermajority has in the Legislature and infuse a sense of moderate problem-solving that would better reflect mainstream Utahns.

“I’ve never seen such a huge change in politics since 2016,” said Jessica Wignall, who is challenging Republican Rep. Ken Ivory and Democrat Kate Staples in House District 39.

“It was just like this very 180-degree change in the dynamic of politics where there was no gray area. You’re a Democrat or a Republican, but there’s no gray area,” Wignall said. “Maybe at the time that was what people wanted and that fit, but I think there’s been so much divisiveness in the last eight years, people are fed up. Something needs to change. This isn’t working.”

Shaking up the system

The lineup of independents this year includes candidates like Austin Hepworth, a conservative who left the Republican Party after the 2012 election and this year is running as an independent for attorney general.

“I felt that the parties stopped talking about principles as much, and they just started talking about what was popular at the time,” he said. “From my perspective, if our legislative representatives and governor and president just conduct the country based on what’s popular, it will lead to a really bad place.”

Hepworth believes laws should be rooted in morality, not political expediency, and that the attorney general, in particular, needs to be an independent watchdog on government — a neutral referee calling a fair game. Belonging to one political party or the other, he argues, creates a conflict and impedes that objectivity.

The tally of 2024 independents also includes candidates like Pamela Bloom, who is challenging Republican state Sen. Lincoln Fillmore and spent a recent Saturday morning meeting voters at a coffee shop in South Jordan’s Daybreak.

Bloom, like Van Langeveld, has a background in nonpartisan city government, serving on the West Jordan City Council since 2022. She also worked as policy director on McMullin’s campaign and was inspired by the experience.

“To see the passion of people who came out for Evan, they really wanted him to win because they were so frustrated with what’s going on nationally, and that has trickled down,” Bloom said. “People are feeling there’s an option again, and I feel like that’s going to trickle down to people like me.”

Bloom said she has seen that same excitement in voters when she was knocking on doors gathering her signatures to get on the ballot.

“That gave me hope and gave me excitement, because people were of all different backgrounds. They were Republicans. They were Democrats. They were all in between,” she said. “And to see how excited they were to get me on the ballot, I didn’t expect that at all. And I think it shows me that people, they’re exhausted. They’re exhausted of the BS, and they want someone who doesn’t care about the party and wants to go up there and work.”

Lori Spruance, a professor of public health at Brigham Young University, had worked with Republican legislators for years on issues surrounding childhood nutrition.

“After having meeting after meeting after meeting, I thought, ‘Why am I not up here writing some of these bills instead of helping them draft the language?’” Spruance said. “I thought about running for office for a couple of years and was just trying to figure out what felt like the right strategy in terms of a winning campaign and my value system.”

For a number cruncher, seeing the data persuaded her to dive in. McMullin managed to get 45% of the vote in the Provo-Orem state Senate district that is normally considered solidly Republican.

“There is,” Spruance said, “a viable path to victory.”

Spruance said she has “floated around” politically, spending time in both parties, but grew frustrated about not feeling well-represented in either — and is hearing the same from voters unhappy that her GOP opponent, Rep. Keven Stratton, supported school vouchers and a bill making it easier to split the Alpine School District. Utah Forward Party candidate David Hinckley is in the race as well.

If a small group of independents can win office, Spruance said, it can force the Republicans in charge to at least engage in discussions with those who have differing views.

“The major goal is to help break the Republican supermajority,” Spruance said. “We are not getting good legislation when things get rubber-stamped, and there’s no dialogue. We’re not getting the best policy for Utahns.”

Enticing the indies

In several instances, the independent insurgents are not in the race by chance.

Matt Lyon, a former aide to then-Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, a Democratic political operative and consultant to McMullin’s 2022 campaign, pinpointed the districts that McMullin carried, identifying them as fertile ground for the McMullin model.

“My goal, in essence, is to get a Legislature that is both more representative of the places that we live … and more accountable,” Lyon said. “In a world where the caucus system controls who is elected and you have a one-party supermajority in the state, where most decisions are made by legislative leadership behind closed doors, it results in a representative democracy that is not very representative and not very democratic.”

In House District 3, for example, which covers parts of Logan and Cache County, the GOP incumbent, Rep. Dan Johnson, is not seeking reelection. Lyon recruited Patrick Belmont, a professor at Utah State University, to run as an independent in a district that McMullin secured with 53% of the vote. Republicans have nominated Jason Thompson.

There is no Democrat in the race — and that is important to fully replicate the McMullin model. It didn’t happen in Van Langeveld’s case.

In Senate District 8, which covers a good portion of Davis County and hasn’t elected a Democrat in more than four decades, Democrat Aaron Wiley also jumped into the race with Weiler, which Van Langeveld said makes her job harder. Constitution Party candidate Laren Livingston is also running.

“In this election, if I’m not successful, it’s probably because there’s a Democrat in the race,” she said. “There are not enough Democrats to carry a Democrat candidate, but I believe there are enough moderates to carry [an independent].”

Several of the independent candidates have been endorsed by the Way Back PAC, a political action committee based in Sheridan, Wyoming, that is targeting independents and moderate Democrats in swing races, mostly in rural states — Indiana, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and Montana.

One of those Way Back has endorsed is Monnica Manuel, who is taking on Republican Sen. Wayne Harper in a West Jordan and Taylorsville district that McMullin earned with 51% of the vote. With no Democrat involved, Manuel believes there is daylight for her.

Manuel quit college to raise her kids, got a sales job and worked her way up to a senior management spot at a health care company, started her own business and went back and earned her degrees.

“I’ve been a Republican my whole life, but I’ve just been really unsatisfied with the two-party system. It seems people are doing things that are not representative of the obvious will of most of the people,” Manuel said. “I really think Utahns are hungry for change, and I think nationally people are tired of partisan politics. Extremism has worn people down, and they’re ready for something different.”

There is a precedent for this independent-focused model. In Alaska, a few independents ran and won seats in the state Legislature and have caucused with the Democrats in the body, swinging control from the Republicans who dominated for decades.

Utah Republican Party Chair Rob Axson said he understands that some candidates are “fed up with the political divide that exists.” But he also is concerned that some of these independents might not be as independent as they seem, and he hopes voters scrutinize them before they cast ballots.

“What I’ve found, more often than not, are the candidates that are claiming that’s their motivation, they tend to still be partisans, themselves,” Axson said, “and it’s more like a strategic calculation for winning. … Is this a Democrat who could never win so they’re running as an independent? Or a Republican who couldn’t win so they’re running as a Democrat?”

Making change

Van Langeveld said she understands Axson’s argument and has heard similar criticism, which she added reflects how the system is broken.

“All those people are concerned about is: Are you on my team or not on my team?” she said, rather than “do you reflect and represent what matters to me when it comes to policy? … Do you have the experience that you can make these decisions and work with everyone? If all you want is someone who is on your team, I’m already not that person, no matter what you do.”

But policymaking at Utah’s Capitol can often be a team sport, with the supermajority Republicans calling most of the shots. So even if these independents get elected, what then?

With Republicans meeting in closed caucuses, most of the candidates realize they will need to approach things differently.

Bloom said her City Council experience has taught her to work with people with different views to solve problems and believes she can take that to the Legislature. Van Langeveld envisions creating bipartisan working groups in which members can brainstorm and meet in the middle on reasonable policy.

Manuel said that if she’s elected, she will draw on her business background, where politics can be set aside to get projects done. The Legislature needs that, she said, because right now the system is broken.

“The imbalance is so extreme that they don’t have to come to the table and negotiate, so the policies don’t get sharpened,” Manuel said. “To be real Pollyanna about it, the end goal is a more representative government. I hear it everywhere I go. … The cacophony is so loud they’re tired of feeling like their politicians don’t listen to them, and they’re not represented.”

Correction • Aug. 15, 9:55 a.m. • The story has been updated to reflect that independent candidate Patrick Belmont is running for a seat being vacated by Rep. Dan Johnson.