‘We can’t cry:’ Utah Democrats hopeful for a Harris victory, fearful of a Trump win
Utah Democrats, gathered at a pair of election night parties in Salt Lake City Tuesday, tried to sound confident about a victory for Vice President Kamala Harris .
"I was the first one here," said ShaRon Williams, a retiree and former county party chair who drove in from Morgan to watch returns on a big screen TV hanging on an exposed brick wall at the Woodbine Food Hall in the up and coming Granary District of Salt Lake City. She said she had no doubt Harris would defeat former President Donald Trump .
Dressed in a red jacket with a red, white and blue "Vote" button, Williams said early in the evening that she just really felt Harris "is going to come through." She said "it's about time" a women held the nation's highest office.
Hours later, however, several winning Utah Democratic candidates addressed the increasing anxiety over the presidential race even as they celebrated their own victories.
"We're frightened about what the future holds. We don't know what's going to happen at the national level," Rep. Jen Dailey-Provost of Salt Lake City, told another crowd of Democrats gathered at Hotel Monaco for a separate election night party once state results were finally released after 10 p.m. "Let's just keep fighting for good in the world."
Another Democratic state lawmaker, Sen. Karen Kwan of West Valley City, told the Democrats everyone knew the presidential race would be close. "We need to keep our heads level and take care of one another because that's what Democrats do in Utah," she said. "We fight like hell and we take care of one another."
Utah Democratic Party leaders, who hosted the event at Woodbine, watched as other early arrivals there posed with a life-sized cutout of Harris in front of a table loaded with Harris-Walz merchandise for sale. A Harris win, they said, would boost their goal of seeing Utah, one of the most Republican states in the country, become competitive for Democrats in the coming years.
"We're working toward the long game in the Utah Democratic Party," Vice Chair Oscar Mata of Ogden said. He predicted it could take until 2034 or even 2044 for Utah to be considered a swing state in presidential elections, while the party chair, Diane Lewis, was more optimistic, suggesting that could be accomplished in as little as four years.
"It's just the excitement we've seen since (President Joe) Biden stepped down and she stepped up," said Lewis, who was wearing a long string of pearls with her Harris T-shirt to honor the presidential candidate's necklace of choice. She called the level of enthusiasm the party has seen for Harris as "over the top."
Utah hasn't gone blue in a presidential election since then-President Lyndon Johnson was on the ballot in 1964. That happened again Tuesday, when Utah was called for Trump shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m. despite long lines of voters delaying the release of results by state elections officials.
Trump had just over 58% of the Utah vote in 2020, compared to almost 38% for the winner of that year's election, President Joe Biden, a Democrat. But when Trump won Utah in 2016, he ended up with just 45.5% of the Beehive State vote, his lowest margin of victory in any state that year.
Trump was trailed in Utah in 2016 by the Democrat in the race, Hillary Clinton, with 27.5% of the vote, and independent candidate Evan McMullin, with 21.5%. McMullin, who targeted Utah in his presidential bid, went on to challenge GOP Sen. Mike Lee in 2022 as an independent with the backing of the Utah Democratic Party .
Some Democrats point to McMullin's campaigns as a sign that the state's Republican supermajority can be fractured, at least eventually. There hasn't been a Democrat elected to statewide office in Utah since the late Jan Graham served as the state's first and only female attorney general from 1992 to 2001. (The state's female lieutenant governors since were elected as part of ticket.)
There was some talk before Election Day that the ongoing friction between write-in gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman and the Republican who defeated him in the primary, Gov. Spencer Cox, created an opening for the Democratic candidate for governor, Rep. Brian King, but that didn't happen.
And Democrats deal with friction, too. On election night, the state party and the political consulting firm hired by many Democrats on the ballot held separate events in Salt Lake City rather than try to bring candidates and their supporters together on what Democrats nationwide hoped would be an historic evening.
Neither the party nor the consulting firm, Elevate Strategies, would discuss on the record whether the decision indicated division. Lewis pointed out in a statement that the event hosted by the state party at the food hall is "the official Utah for Harris-Walz watch party to celebrate the work all Democrats have done across our state and country."
Ben Hayes, senior partner at Elevate Strategies, said in a statement that the firm's party at the Hotel Monaco was an effort "to create a space where our candidates, their friends, and families could come together." The party, in an upstairs meeting area with a muted big screen TV and loud music, was jammed for several hours, but the crowd started to thin out before Utah results were in.
"As a progressive consulting firm, we're proud to work with a range of clients and organizations — including Democratic candidates, independent and third-party candidates, nonprofits, and advocacy groups — so having our own event gives us the chance to celebrate with everyone," Hayes said. "It's really just about enjoying the night and sharing it with our community."
University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank said in a pre-Election Day interview that the state's Democrats could see some benefits from a Harris victory. Having a Democrat in the White House, Burbank said, would help the party with fundraising and candidate recruiting , something that hasn't always been easy in Utah.
But the professor said any benefits would be short-lived, because he expects that a President Harris would be seen by Utah Republicans as a "wild-eyed liberal," providing GOP candidates with political ammunition to portray their Democratic challengers in the same light.
"The favorite thing of Utah Republicans is to run against the federal government and that just makes it so much easier," Burbank said, adding, "Harris will fit into that narrative perfectly for Utah Republicans. If she wins the presidency, every bad thing that happens will be because of her administration. Whether that's true or not, right, doesn't really matter."
Burbank said Democrats in Utah wouldn't reap the same political advantage from another Trump term.
Plus, he said, the Republicans retaking the White House in such a close and divisive election would clearly be "a setback" for Utah Democrats, hurting them "not just in terms of sort of their partisan plans, but on an emotional level," making it even tough this year to shift their focus to future elections.
Lewis agreed losing the White House to the Republicans would make it harder to achieve her party's goals. She said having a woman in the White House would be a big boost to recruiting more female candidates to run as Democrats for office in Utah up and down the ballot.
Asked what Democrats would do if Trump returns to the Oval Office, Lewis said simply, "Recover. I think we'd need to grieve a bit and see what happened." Mata, who said he believed Harris' "common sense solutions" like offering financial assistance to first-time homebuyers would help attract Utahns to the party, said the efforts to build support wouldn't end if Trump wins.
"We as Democrats, we can't cry. We've got to organize," he said, noting the party had made contact 1.4 million times with Utah voters through calls and knocking on doors this election, compared to about 400,000 in past years, work that should continue even if Trump wins.
Should that happen, he said, "a lot of folks will need to take some time. We'll give them over the holidays."
