An interesting way to make my debut as a diarist.
This morning (28 April) I made a rather lengthy comment on a diary posted about the Utah State Democratic Convention “strategically” declining to nominate a Democratic candidate in favor of throwing in with Independent candidate Evan McMullin. Several commenters—including True Blue Majority, who was kind of the clincher—asked me to publish my comment (and anything more about it I wanted to say) as a standalone diary.
So, as I swallow the ravening dragons congregating in my stomach at the thought, here we go…
NOTE: This is simply a copy of the comment I made on Liberal in a Red State’s diary. I’ve only made a couple of basic proofreading edits. True Blue said go ahead and rant, but in all honesty I’ve finally managed to alleviate the worst of the seared-from-the-inside-out feeling, and I’d just as soon not drag it all up again. I have work to do in down-ballot races, and further work to do (with others who are far better at parliamentary procedure than I am) on an amendment to our State Bylaws so that this never happens again in the chaotic and underhanded fashion that it did.
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I wondered if someone was going to do a diary about this, and what take it would involve. I truly considered writing one myself. But I chose not to, because I could not have prevented it from turning into a towering rant. So I'm going to try to keep my emotions in check for this.
You see, I was there. I was a state delegate, participating remotely (with voting privileges on everything but motions made on the floor in real time—we were able to vote for the various candidates) and texting with another state delegate from my county who was there in person. I watched it all go down.
And while many of you seem to think this is a good thing, it’s not. Not because McMullin might have a better chance than any Democratic candidate of winning, despite a number of things I’ll bring up in a minute, but because of the way all of this went down.
I live in Utah County. That’s Provo, Brigham Young University, rich white Mormons in the river bottoms and the foothills, and the former polygamist settlements on the far side of the lake.
Others are Mormons whose grandparents were told by “the prophet” that they HAD to vote Republican. It was actually a requirement for Utah’s statehood that it come in “neutral” — purple, essentially. Neither blue nor red majority, despite the fact that, honestly, most Mormon doctrinal values are pretty progressive. The leader of the LDS Church himself had to announce it over the pulpit to get half of congregations to vote Republican, and that commandment was passed from father to son to grandson and onward, to be obeyed regardless of what opinions on the issues you actually hold. (I’m dead serious—there are some people here who actually do feel that they would literally be struck down to hell if they voted for a Democrat. I’m hoping it’s only a few, but it is true).
It’s RED-red.
But we have been working our asses off for the last eight years in particular to pull together all the little Blue drops into at least a puddle.
That shattered on April 23, 2022.
Two weeks earlier (April 9th) we’d had our county convention, and I was there in person. At the county level, we don’t endorse state candidates. The Weston campaign wasn’t even there (as is proper).
But the McMullin campaign, even after requesting inside table space and time to speak and being DENIED both—because it’s a county convention and we’re not about state candidates, though we do select/register state delegates—set up shop right outside the door where county delegates were coming in (which was on government property, btw — we met in the Utah County Health & Justice Building. Pretty sure all their signs posted were illegal).
I found out later they did this in EVERY COUNTY in the state.
We don’t have a lot of Democrats in Utah. Full stop. We have even fewer who really get involved. So our caucuses and our conventions are open to include unaffiliated voters. They can serve as county delegates and they can serve as state delegates, on the understanding that they are supporting the party’s platform. Which means that apparently even a conservative, who would be a Republican if it weren’t for the recent strain of insanity, could be a state delegate as long as they said they would uphold the platform ideals. And that’s exactly the sort of folks the McMullin campaign would likely have recruited, as well as those who are simply tired of fighting for baby steps. Fully one-third of our county convention attendees were holding McMullin signs before the convention even started.
The McMullin campaign had intended to request speaking time at our county convention. We made it a point—because county conventions have nothing to do with state offices—to adjourn the convention as soon as we reconvened from caucus breakouts, since we had no further county business to conduct. But we knew this was coming. We knew state convention would be a fraught moment.
Fast-forward to the 23rd. Instead of simply requesting time to speak AFTER usual party business had been finished—at which point McMullin could have said his piece and a new motion could have been made to switch support or whatever—Jenny Wilson, Salt Lake county’s mayor, and former Congressman Ben McAdams made a motion in the middle of us voting to nominate all uncontested candidates (and Kael Weston was uncontested, as far as the Democratic party was concerned) that instead we should move Weston to a separate vote and then instead join McMullin’s coalition. Which first of all was TWO motions, prompting a parliamentary question, and then turned into THREE HOURS of a circus about bylaws and wording and parliamentary procedure. By the end of it, a great many of us were scraped raw inside.
One state delegate made a very valid point that, being broadsided by this, he did not feel he could in good faith make this decision on behalf of his constituents—since most of them knew nothing about this little stunt. He moved to table the matter until it could be put to the entire party (sort of an informal primary, in essence). Which is exactly what I would want my state delegate to have done in this situation.
It was at this point that I believe the Weston campaign understood exactly which way the wind was blowing; a motion was made for a recess by BOTH campaigns, in order that they could work out the wording for a new motion that would settle the matter once and for all. It was then decided that just ten people would be given one minute to speak on the matter: five for Weston to be nominated as the uncontested Democratic candidate (which simply meant McMullin would have to do his own legwork to sway Democratic voters) and five for the party to join McMullin’s coalition INSTEAD of nominating a Democratic candidate. At the end of that debate, the vote would be taken.
One of the speakers did bring up the fact that McMullin is, by every public statement he made when he was running for President, a conservative centrist who is on record saying he would never caucus with Democrats. He is pro-rich, pro-birth, pro-gun, repeal-ACA, and anti-climate. [In 2016, when McMullin ran for president,] "On The Issues" rated him then as a right wing Libertarian-leaning Conservative. No one who spoke for him (and he tried to speak himself, until it was pointed out that HE was not a state delegate and as such did not have authority to speak at the convention AS a delegate) indicated that he has agreed to make any concessions in exchange for the party’s support.
1,376 votes were cast.
Option 1, to nominate Kael Weston: 594 votes, 43%
Option 2, to join McMullin’s coalition, 782 votes, 57%
The state convention hadn’t even closed before there were questions among attendees as to whether the state party leadership had been in on this as well, and talk of a “playbook.”
This has already shattered the Utah Democratic Party. We will lose any and all momentum we’ve gained over the past eight years. Ben McAdams and Jenny Wilson will likely become pariahs for a great many, should either of them ever decide to run for a statewide office (or even a US House office). Irreparable damage, all for a conservative candidate the Republicans don't want (we have lots of MAGAs here for some unfathomable reason) and who wormed his way among the Democrats in some of the shadiest crap I have ever seen, in a race he cannot guarantee winning and will not gain Democrats in Utah anything (an R vote is an R vote, regardless of where on the R spectrum you land—reference Mitt Romney.)
The Republican Party here is laughing at us.
And Utah County? As a party, we’re ignoring it. Our chair isn’t telling people to support or shun, but as a party we’re going to concentrate solely on down-ballot races. Individuals can do as they like in regards to the Senate race. We have one very promising US House race (Darlene McDonald challenging Burgess Owens) and a couple of promising state house races.
Maybe it is “sensible” looking at it from the outside (I don’t know what state the [original] diarist is from). I just wanted you all to understand the whole story.
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I will add one final note: Had this been an Independent candidate running to the left of the main body of the party, or centrist like a Claire McCaskill rather than a Joe Manchin, things might not have been so fraught. But then again, I’d have expected such a candidate to present themselves honestly with respect for the process, rather than sneaking in under the radar like this.
I don’t believe I’m overstating the damage this is going to do; I witnessed it for HOURS after the State Party announced the results on FB (and there are still new comments going up as it disseminates via the news), and after our County chair was forced to issue a press release explaining to OUR voters WTF had just happened. I suspect she was not the only county chair to have had to do it.
I thank you for allowing me the momentary podium.
