Derek Brown will become Utah’s top prosecutor.
The Republican candidate for attorney general had 58% of the vote as of 12:10 a.m. Wednesday, outpacing Democratic nominee Rudy Bautista’s 29%, according to unofficial returns.
No Democrat has won the race since 1996. Bautista put up little pre-Election Day resistance. Bautista, who was the Libertarian nominee four years ago, raised no campaign contributions because he said he didn’t want to be beholden to donors. He gave his campaign a total of $160, compared to $1.2 million Brown spent.
Brown’s more serious challenger was Michelle Quist, the nominee of the United Utah Party, who had previously challenged current Attorney General Sean Reyes, unsuccessfully, in a special election after Attorney General John Swallow resigned abruptly amid scandal in 2013. Quist had 7% of the vote in early returns.
“I started as a candidate for attorney general. I later became the nominee for the Republican Party, and tonight, hopefully, when these numbers come out — unless there are any surprises — I will be the attorney general,” Brown said Tuesday night before results were released. “Thank you, thank you for that.”
“This may sound a little weird, but I want to thank my opponents,” Brown added. “I have a lot of opponents in this race, and I appreciate positivity. I appreciate the hard work. They forced us to work even harder, and sometimes that’s a good thing.”
As a third-party candidate, Quist called herself “an anomaly” during an election night party. “Well I guess I’m the first non-winner,” she joked with the progressive-leaning crowd.
“While the final outcome may not be what we hoped for, our campaign has achieved something remarkable that will last,” she said.
The candidates are competing for an open seat after Reyes opted not to seek another term amid controversy over his decade-long friendship with Tim Ballard, who has been accused by multiple women of rape and sexual assault. A legislative audit of Reyes’ office is nearing completion.
That set the stage for multiple contenders to vie for the office. Brown, a former legislator and legal counsel for Sen. Mike Lee, finished third at the Republican nominating convention but won the primary comfortably over Utah Division of Risk Management Director Rachel Terry.
Libertarian nominee Andrew McCullough and unaffiliated candidate Austin Hepworth also competed for the seat.
Brown said Tuesday one of his goals as attorney general will be “to stop the federal government from putting its fingers into every aspect of the state of Utah.
