Heading into the 2024 legislative session, Gov. Spencer Cox said addressing housing affordability was his top priority.
He asked for but didn’t receive $150 million to build starter homes — but still has a goal of seeing 35,000 units for first-time owners within five years.
“We have to build,” he said during the gubernatorial debate earlier this year. “It’s the only answer.”
Real estate interests, developers and construction firms seem to like what they hear from the governor, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into his campaign, easily making the industries the largest donors to Cox’s reelection campaign, according to The Salt Lake Tribune analysis of campaign finance reports.
Commercial and residential real estate interests and construction companies and executives have poured more than $1.5 million into Cox’s campaign, making up a significant chunk of the $7 million dollars he has raised since 2021.
That tally, likely to cross the $7 million mark before Election Day, is the most any governor has raised in history, and is approaching double the $3.8 million Cox’s predecessor, Gov. Gary Herbert, raised for his final reelection campaign. Cox raised $5.1 million when he won the race to replace Herbert four years ago.
The incumbent Republican has raised more than nine times as much as his opponent, Democrat Brian King.
“This is a governor whose only real serious source of contention was getting through the Republican nominating and once he was through that — there’s still some challenges going on there — he doesn’t have any serious reason to go out and raise a ton of money,” said Matthew Burbank, a political science professor at The University of Utah. “He’s raising money because he can raise money, not because his campaign feels like it’s really going to get pressed.”
Cox’s campaign declined to comment on the fundraising figures.
“Simply the cost of doing business”
To compile the data, The Tribune analyzed more than 400 donations to Cox that were $2,000 or more and categorized them by industry — real estate and construction, tech, finance, healthcare, energy and mining and others.
The $2,000 threshold was used to narrow the field of more than 2,400 donations the campaign has received since 2021, when Cox was last sworn in. The $2,000 or more threshold still captured $6.7 million of the $6.9 million he has raised in that span — or 96% of his total contributions.
The real estate industry is already among the most influential interests in Utah’s Capitol. Not only is it consistently among the leading donors to political campaigns, a review of conflict of interest reports by The Tribune earlier this year found that 38.5% of legislators make money from building or selling real estate or owning rental properties.
“Not only do lots of real estate people end up in the state Legislature, but real estate tends to provide a lot of money for people running … and much of that is just simply the cost of doing business,” Burbank said. “It’s more to make sure when they raise issues or something comes up that is going to affect their interests, ‘Hey, remember that contribution I gave you? Let’s have a meeting and talk about this particular issue.’”
Earlier this summer, The Utah Foundation, a nonpartisan policy center, reported that housing affordability became Utahns’ top concern in 2024, according to their annual Utah Priorities Project survey. Since 2020, housing prices have increased by 50% and the cost of housing has doubled since 2016.
After real estate and construction, Cox’s biggest donors were in banking and finance ($916,194), health care ($834,607), tech ($732,378), and energy and mining ($694,967).
King’s campaign, meanwhile, drew the largest segment of its contributions from the legal community ($42,472) — King, like Cox, is a lawyer — followed by the healthcare field ($37,185).
The Tribune analyzed King’s donations down to $1,500, because he had comparatively few donations over $2,000. Even with the extra donors included the amounts cover just more than a quarter of his total fundraising.
Since King entered the race in 2023, he’s raised $729,800 in 6,331 donations — the average contribution totaling $115. Cox’s $6.9 million came from 2,419 donations, meaning his average donor gave $2,841.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, and candidate for governor, waves to the crowd in the Pride Parade on Sunday, June 2, 2024.
King’s campaign said that shows they are running a grassroots effort.
“Unlike Spencer Cox, our campaign is funded by everyday Utahns, not special interests,” said Gabi Finlayson, King’s campaign manager. “That’s why we can be confident that, as governor, Brian King will work for us and prioritize our interests.”
Write-in candidate Phil Lyman, who lost the Republican primary to Cox, raised $2 million, with nearly half of it — $950,000 — coming from Government Leadership Solutions, which was incorporated by Chris Webb a few days before it made its first donation to Lyman’s campaign.
Another $420,000 was loaned to Lyman’s campaign by Johnny Slavens, who played football at Brigham Young University in the late 1990s and was hired in 2022 to be the football coach at San Juan High School.
The largest donors
Cox’s single largest donor was Reagan Outdoor Advertising, a billboard company that has been a prolific donor to legislative candidates for years and frequently has issues at the Capitol regarding where billboards can be placed and whether they can be removed, donated $189,500 to the governor.
Second was Scott Anderson, the former president and CEO of Zions Bancorp, who donated $186,280 to the governor.
Third was the Larry H. Miller Group, which has a broad portfolio but is especially focused on developing the Jordan River Fairpark District area in hopes of luring a baseball team to the area — which would also bring in about $1 billion of taxpayer support. The LHM Group donated $160,500. LHM co-founder Gail Miller donated another $30,000 herself.
Real estate mogul Kem Gardner and his wife Carolyn gave Cox $155,000. The Gardners also gave $10,000 to King’s campaign, making them King’s second-largest donor.
Cox also received $95,000 from Gary Barnett, a New York real estate magnate whose company, Extell Development Company, is building the Mayflower Resort — rebranded earlier this year as Deer Valley East Village — with the help of the state’s Military Industrial Development Authority.
