The last time there was a U.S. Senate race on the Utah ballot, the state Democratic Party chose to get behind an independent candidate rather than back one of its own. That’s not happening this year.

Three Democrats filed with the state Elections Office by the Monday deadline for the seat now held by retiring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah: Caroline Gleich, Archie A. Williams III and Laird Fetzer Hamblin.

Utah Democratic Party Chair Diane Lewis said the party talked with several other potential U.S. Senate candidates she declined to name, including some better-known elected officials, but they ultimately decided not to run.

“There was a couple others that we had been speaking to and they were considering,” Lewis said, “but it’s back to that same, ‘You know, we have to make our personal decisions’ and they chose not to at this time.”

She said the party’s focus then turned to a southern Utah man who’d expressed interest in last year’s special 2nd Congressional District race but was encouraged instead to run for Senate.

He ended up not filing, but as late as Sunday, the party still wasn’t sure of his plans because he’d been unreachable. At that point, party spokesman Ben Anderson described Gleich, a professional athlete and activist, as “a great candidate. We’re excited to have her.”

Anderson said Gleich “wasn’t recruited directly by the party” but by “people somewhat involved in the political sphere.”

Lewis said the recruiting efforts were not affected by the party backing an independent candidate, Evan McMullin, rather than a Democrat in 2022 in the hopes of unseating Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. Lee won, although by a closer margin than past races.

Related

The Democrats’ unusual move that year caused “some struggles, absolutely,” Lewis said, but McMullin’s strength in some Salt Lake and Davis county areas represented by Republicans in the Legislature suggested there may be future opportunities for the party.

She said the Democrats who declined to run this time round weren’t discouraged by the odds of winning in a state that hasn’t seen a Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate since Sen. Frank Moss won a third term in 1970. Six years later, Moss was defeated by Orrin Hatch.

“Sometimes that’s hard, though,” Lewis acknowledged, noting the party’s role with candidates can include trying to “calm their nerves.”

When recruiting candidates, she said she doesn’t “like to say, ‘I want you to be a sacrificial lamb.’ We like to say things like, ‘This gives people a choice. If they see a Democrat on the ballot, it will make a difference.’”

That’s because victory at the ballot box isn’t her only measure of success for the party.

“As we continue to build our party, we start seeing that there’s just another way to look at a win. Just because we don’t win the seat, we move the needle in certain areas,” Lewis said, citing last year’s recruitment of more than 100 Democrats to run in nonpartisan local races.

“We were so excited we had that many candidates on the ballot across the state,” she said. “Those are wins. Whether or not they won that seat or not, they moved the needle. They saw people in their neighborhoods that got to know there are Democrats in the state.”

The message that Utah is not only a Republican state will be the same from Democrats this election year, the party leader said, although the goal is to also take at lease some local and state legislative seats.

Statewide and federal races may be a different story, although Lewis said there’s a lot of excitement about a former House minority leader, Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake, running for governor. She described King as an “over the top” candidate.

Ben Haynes, a senior partner at Salt Lake City-based political consulting firm Elevate Strategies that’s been representing Democratic candidates since 2020, counts both King and Gleich as clients.

Related

“Candidate recruitment is the most important thing that you can do,” Haynes said, because with “quality candidates, you’re going to win more races.” He said the state’s Democratic Party “is doing absolutely the best they can with what they have.”

When the party went with an independent candidate for Senate in 2022, Haynes wasn’t thrilled.

“I am a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and I’d like to see a Democrat. But I think, for them, people wanted to try something new and I think we tried it,” the political consultant said, adding he understood their reasoning.

Still, he said, “states do not change overnight and I don’t think there is a quick fix to get all of sudden for Utah to be a purple state or a blue state. I think we have to do the blocking and tackling of running in places where we may not win, but in two cycles, we can.”

Flipping Utah “hopefully” may take 10 to 15 years, Haynes said, depending on whether Democrats can attract enough help to build “the infrastructure needed for these candidates who are brave enough to run for office.”

That’s where someone like Gleich comes in, he said. Park City-based, she has a long line of ski mountaineering accomplishments and calls herself a “committed activist for social and environmental justice.”

“I think Caroline is going to get people involved in politics who have never had a reason to get involved,” Haynes said. “Someone who has climbed Mount Everest and done all these incredibly difficult physical challenges, they have the endurance to take on big things.”