Special Session with Bryan Schott

>> Bryan Schott: This is Special Session. I'm your host, Bryan Schott.

This week on the show, Utah lawmakers get

outmaneuvered by Salt Lake City, the most

successful signature gathering effort in Utah

history. Could Donald Trump help

decide who will lead Utah Republicans for the next

two years? And speaking of the gop, here

we go again. They're taking aim at

signature gathering candidates. Plus, we've

got a couple of corrections from our last episode

before we get into the show. Like to ask you to take

a moment and subscribe to my newsletter at Utah

Political Watch, uh, news. It's free. Or you

can become a subscriber and support my work

for as little as $5 a month.

Now let's talk about what happened this week in Utah

politics.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've no

doubt seen much of the discourse online around

the question whether 100 men

could beat a silverback gorilla in a fight. Now,

I'm of the opinion that the gorilla would probably

rip the first guy's arms off and beat him to death

with them and then everyone else would turn tail and run.

This last week we had another

kind of similar situation play out in

Utah. Could 74 Republican

lawmakers beat one mayor of Salt Lake

City in a fight over

pride flags? Well, we got our answer this

week and nope. The Republican controlled

legislature passed HB 77, sponsored by

Republican Trevor Lee, that banned the display of flags

that are not specified in the legislation

in schools and government buildings. There's a

list of which flags are allowed. But

essentially the spirit of the bill, the idea of the

bill, the genesis of the bill, is to ban the

display of pride flags in schools. Bill

was scheduled to go into effect this week and

Salt Lake City Mayor Aaron Mendenhall and

her advisors looked at the legislation

and they decided to drive a truck right through

the massive loophole that's in the bill

online 54 and 55. It specifically

says that acceptable flags would be a

flag that represents a city,

a municipality, a county or political

subdivision of the state, which is Salt Lake

City. Salt Lake City's flag, which they adopted in 2020,

has a blue stripe on the top, a white

stripe on the bottom, and in the corner, a

representation of the sago lily, which is the

state flower. So what Salt Lake City has done

is they took that sago lily flower so

symbol and slapped it on

a rainbow pride flag, the blue and pink

transgender visibility flag, and

the red and blue flag that commemorates

Juneteenth or the end of slavery in

the United States. That symbol is the same One that's

on the regular flag of Salt Lake City. And they just

adopted those three new flags as official

flags of the city.

>> Aaron Mendenhall: In all three of these new proposed flags, the

sago in the upper hoist canton of each

of these designs is our city's most

recognized emblem, leaving no question

that each flag is representative of Salt Lake

City. Specifically, a

Utah state senator once said, people don't

rally behind the flag. They rally behind the

ideals and principles that a flag represents.

In each of these flags, our city's

residents see that representation.

Representation of themselves,

representation of the people and communities

they love and care about, and representation

of the broad, beautifully diverse makeup of

this city. These city flags represent

the ideals and principles Salt Lakers

know as core tenants.

Belonging and acceptance, or

better stated, diversity, equity and

inclusion.

>> Bryan Schott: Its malicious compliance to technically, it

complies with the law. You, uh, are technically correct.

The best kind of correct. Essentially what happened

here is Mendenhall and her advisors were

playing chess while the legislature was

playing checkers. She beat them.

The Boise did something similar. They adopted a

pride flag and a flag that promotes

organ donation as official flags of the

city. Salt Lake City went one step further. They took an

element from the regular flag and, and

slapped it on these other flags and then adopted them as official

flags. Reaction to this among

legislative Republicans was they were

not amused. Uh, they called it political

theatrics. Uh, uh, they stressed that

the reason that they decided to pass this

list of only approved flags is they wanted to

make sure that government buildings remain neutral.

They want to make sure everybody felt welcome when coming

into schools and government buildings. And that flags like

a pride flag or a transgender visibility flag flag,

or even a Make America Great Again flag were

too divisive and they

wanted to keep them out. But at the heart of

it, this was a pride flag ban.

Representative Trevor Lee even said so. I reported a

couple of months ago that he said he was tired

of seeing pride flags all over the place in Salt Lake

City, especially at the government buildings. When he came here and he

wanted to get rid of it, well, he tried,

and Salt Lake City found a

loophole around it. Another criticism from lawmakers is

that they said Salt Lake City should focus their

time on more important issues like

addressing crime and homelessness. And that'll make

sense. I agree with that. Government should be addressing

those issues. But you could make the same argument about

the legislature spending time and resources

policing which flags can be

flown in schools and government buildings.

Who knows what the reaction to this will be? I

would be shocked if the Republican controlled legislature

did not retaliate in some way either by changing

the law again to try and undo

what Salt Lake City has done. I don't see how they can do that.

It's going to take some very creative thinking to do

that, or they'll retaliate in

some other way, which they have done

in the past when a mayor stood up to them.

Labor groups needed to collect just over

140,000 signatures

statewide to put Utah's union

busting HB 267 on the

ballot. Their referendum drive to put it up

to a public vote. They blew past that

requirement with 250,000

signatures. The signature verification

process ended this week. Not only

did they get a quarter of a million signatures

statewide, but they also needed to hit

certain signature goals in 15

of the state's 29 Senate districts. When

it was all said and done, they surpassed those

signature requirements in 23 of the

state's 29 Senate districts. HB

267 was legislation passed by

lawmakers earlier this year that

blocked public employees from collectively bargaining

with their employers for wages

and benefits and working conditions.

Essentially what it did was it cut public sector

unions out of the negotiation process.

Lawmakers argued that these unions don't represent

all of the workers. Not everybody's a member of the union.

And that is true. And the collective bargaining process

had the state negotiating essentially against

itself. When the state is negotiating with

teachers to come up with salaries, that's not the best system for

Utah taxpayers. And that's why they passed the bill.

Republicans in the legislature shoved this bill through the

process. It was signed by Governor Spencer Cox. But

as you know, they did not get a super majority,

a, ah, 2/3 vote in either the House or the

Senate. They needed a two thirds vote in both of those chambers to

avoid a referendum. They didn't get it. Coalition of labor

unions and other organizations called Protect Utah Workers

launched a referendum effort and they were

able to collect enough valid signatures to put this

on the ballot. The bill passed the Senate with

16 Republicans voting in favor of it.

And organizers exceeded the signature

threshold in 12 districts

of senators who voted in favor of the

legislation, which undeniably sends a

message to those lawmakers. Now most of them are in safe

seats, but it does send a message. Even if that

message is unions in Utah are still able to

organize on a large scale to get things done.

And that's got to give lawmakers pause, at least a little

bit of pause if they try to do something like this again.

So what happens next? Well, the law is

on hold it was supposed to go into effect earlier

this week, but Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson

issued an order to put the law on hold so

it cannot be enforced

because as it stands, at least right

now, they have enough signatures to put the

issue on the ballot. That hold will be in place until sometime in

the coming weeks when Lt. Governor Henderson will make

a final determination about whether or not the

referendum effort met the required number of

signatures to get on the ballot. And

it's unlikely that she's going to determine that it has

fallen short given how many signatures they

ultimately ended up with. It is the single most

successful signature gathering effort in

Utah history. After she makes that

determination, Governor Spencer Cox will issue a

proclamation putting the issue on

the ballot, where voters statewide will

vote up or down whether to keep the law in place

or to veto it. And that will come in the

next statewide election. We don't have a statewide election

currently scheduled for this year, so right

now it looks like that will happen in 2026.

Now Governor Cox's proclamation could say we will have

that statewide election this year, but that means lawmaker

would have to fund it. I don't know if they're going to do that,

although there's a lot of rumblings about a

special session coming up in

September. We might have one this month in May,

but lawmakers keep talking about a special session in

September. And in a special session,

I don't know if it would be in May or in September or whenever, but

in a special session, the legislature would have to approve

paying for this statewide election. So that's

where we are right now. This anti union bill is on

hold. It's probably going to remain on hold until voters get

a chance to weigh in, either later this year

or next year. And you can expect the

spending trying to convince voters one way or the

other to be through the roof. Labor

unions from Utah and around the country

poured millions of dollars into the signature

gathering effort to put this on the ballot. And there's no

reason to believe that they won't do the same thing

when it's finally on the ballot, when we've got an

election coming up.

In an effort to convince voters

to veto this law at the ballot box,

Congress is currently at work trying to

come up with ways to implement President

Donald Trump's big beautiful bill that

contains tax cuts, extending his tax cuts,

cutting taxes further and implementing much of

his agenda. Earlier this week, the House Natural

Resources Committee was doing their markup of the bill, going

through the bill, trying to figure out what to leave in

when, what to Take out what programs to

cut, how to pay for things. And literally

at the 11th hour, early in the morning,

Utah Representative Celeste Malloy and Nevada

Representative Mark Amadei added an amendment

to this bill. They propose an amendment that seeks to sell

off more than 11,000 acres

of public lands in Utah and

Nevada. Most of the land that's in this

amendment, which was approved on a party line

vote, most of that land is in Utah, in Beaver

and Washington, Washington counties. And they say it would

generate billions of dollars in revenue for

the federal government. This amendment does not sell the

land to private entities and real estate

developers. It sells it to local governments.

Representative Malloy, when she was talking about her portion of

the bill, said that it will help local entities deal

with growth. There's exploding growth in that part of the

state. And she also went out of her way to point out that

it only represents about a third of

1% of all the federal lands in the state.

>> Celeste Malloy: Washington county, home to the city of St. George in southwest Utah

in my district, is one of the fastest growing counties in the country.

The influx of new residents, many from out of state, has

significantly driven up housing demand. The median

property value rose by almost 12% in just

2023. Because this is a desert region

region, Washington county is also proactively responding to the

increasing pressures of water resources and water use.

Many of the difficulties we face at a local level are of course

related to the fact that the county is surrounded by by federal

land. Approximately 82% of the county

is federally managed, mostly BLM. The

high percentage of federal lands impacts the local government's ability to

work on economic and transportation development, manage natural

resources and fully take advantage of recreational activities. The

net impact will be to reduce the federal debt and deficit

through fair market value sales of targeted land,

targeted lands needed by local governments for

infrastructure.

>> Bryan Schott: Now, as you might imagine, public land advocates

are not happy about this. The Southern

Utah Wilderness alliance ripped Malloy for this

plan. They said, quote, malloy is hell bent

on selling off and privatizing public lands,

attempting to do so in the dark of night, hoping her actions

wouldn't be noticed. This plan was cooked up

behind closed doors. Utahs and Americans aren't

going to let her get away with this. Her actions will see.

Her actions will be seen for what they truly are. A sell off of

public lands to pay for billionaire tax cuts.

That's a pretty strong statement from

opponents. Malloy's office did not

respond when I reached out to them for comment.

I should just put that on a loop. They don't

Respond. They don't respond. They don't respond. They didn't

respond, Nobody responds. This is part of the process

where the Republican majority, they're trying to

figure out how to pay for this

bill, they're trying to find $4 trillion

of spending reductions and they also need

to increase revenues by

almost $2 trillion. And part of

it apparently is selling off these parcels of

public. That justification doesn't make a lot of

sense when you think about it in the grand scheme of things, because

when you sell off a parcel of land that's a one time

sale, the government is going to get money

for that one time. Now, I've seen estimates around

$20 billion for these lands, which is

a pretty good chunk of change. But it's only

one time. But if you are trying to fund tax

cuts which happen every single year with

one time money, that does not make a lot of

fiscal sense. That doesn't make sense at all. So while it will

raise money for federal government in the short term,

it's not a long term solution to pay for these

tax cuts which are ongoing

every year in the future. There was reporting on Friday

morning that Republicans in Congress are, uh,

thinking about scaling back their plans for

tax cuts because they realize they might be too

expensive and they might not be able to pay for them.

And President Donald Trump has

said that he would be in favor of a

slight increase of the tax rate

on and people making more than two and a

half million dollars a year or couples making more than

$5 million a year. This whole thing will be

hammered out in the reconciliation process, meaning

that they really only need to get the

Republicans to vote in favor of it because they have a majority

in both the House and the Senate and there's not much

Democrats can do to stop it. It would take Republicans

deciding to vote against the bill to stop it from

moving forward. So at least for now, about 11,000

acres of land in Utah that's owned by the federal government

could have a for sale sign on it.

Utah's largest political party stands

at a little bit of a crossroads right now.

They'll be electing a new chairman to

lead the party for the next two years.

There are two candidates running. Rob Axon, who is the

current chair, he's had the position for the last two

years. And Phil Lyman, former state

legislator who unsuccessfully ran

for governor last year and has

been spending the last year trying to

claim that Governor Spencer Cox, who he

lost to in the GOP primary and then again

when Lyman had a write in candidacy in the

general election he's been claiming

that Cox cheated and

he was an illegitimate candidate. Couple of things

happened this week in the race. First of all,

uh, President Donald Trump waited into

the contest. He posted on Truth Social

on Thursday that he was endorsing, endorsing

Rob Axon. He was endorsing the incumbent.

And if you're wondering why that happened, well, it makes a lot of

sense. Rob Axon for years worked

for Senator Mike Lee. He was one of his top

staffers. Senator Mike Lee is tight with

President Trump. It doesn't take much to

connect those dots and see that it was probably

center Lee's connections that got Trump to weigh in

on the contest. Last year, Donald Trump

stepped into the Republican convention as

well. If you remember, he endorsed USC

Senate candidate Trent Staggs the morning of

the convention. Staggs went on to win the

convention vote but lose the primary. So

it'll be fascinating to see what kind of impact this actually

has among delegates because

Republican delegates, they love Donald Trump, they

love Mike Lee, but a lot of them really

like Phil Lyman. And this is a race that Lyman

could actually win. Lyman could win this vote

next week. The cynic in me thinks that

the only reason that Donald Trump steps in on this

race, an internal party matter, but the only reason

he steps in on this race is because

actions people, including Senator Mike Lee, are

a little nervous that Phil Lyman could win

this. Now, on Monday, the two candidates were in

Washington county and there was a debate hosted

by the Washington County Republican women's group.

The two candidates, they're not very far apart when it

comes to policy. They both advocate for the

same things, which makes sense. They are Republicans. What it

comes down to is a matter of how they

would approach the job. They both want the same things,

but Lyman is a little more

bombastic, a little more militant in the way

that he would approach it. Both candidates want to

abolish SB 54. That is the signature

gathering path to let candidates get on

the ballot. But this is a perfect example

of the candidates different approach. ACCENT

advocates for working through the

existing structure, the legislature,

the legislative process to repeal

SB54.

>> Rob Axson: But I don't take no for an answer. You figure

out how to move forward even when you're running against,

uh, uh, a law that is preventing

you from fully exerting what is the authority and the

purpose of the party. And so we work with the legislature. I

have spent countless hours with many legislators.

I've spent countless hours in conversations pushing back

against this, this, uh, gubernatorial administration or the

Lieutenant Governor's office where I felt that they were wrong, were

interpreting things incorrectly, and you

push for that. So let me tell you a couple of things that we've accomplished

this last legislative session in addressing

SB54. Uh, the issue of signatures is

brought up. Well, when you actually identify the

problem and come up with solutions, you can get it

fixed.

>> Bryan Schott: Lyman sounds like he wants to flat

out defy the law and dare the state

to do something about it.

>> Phil Lyman: It's still our party. We are still a Republican party.

Now, the legislature has tried to convince us that

the legislature, if we don't do what they want, will

take away our caucuses. Well, they can't take away the right of

association.

>> Rob Axson: They can't take away free association.

>> Phil Lyman: They might think they can, but we're guaranteed the

freedom of association through the Constitution. And that's where we

can start looking to the federal government.

If the state's going to take that away, if the legislature

lieutenant governor is going to try to take that away, we do start

looking to the federal government to ambandy or

cash Patel or somebody to say, hey, something

is happening in Utah that is not right.

>> Bryan Schott: When SB54 came about, which established the

signature path for candidates, it created two

classifications for political parties.

There's something called a qualified political party and

a registered political party. A qualified political

party or QPP can use

the caucus and convention system for

candidates. They can use that to nominate candidates,

but they must also allow

signature gathering. Otherwise they're just a

registered political party or an rpp.

And the only method that an RPP can use to get on

to put candidates on the ballot is signature

gathering. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a

second.

There was another exchange in the debate that I thought was

fascinating. Question came up about

the court's ruling against the Republican

dominated legislature. It was specifically about

the abortion ban passed by lawmakers. The

trigger law that went into effect when Roe

v. Wade was struck down a couple of years ago.

That's been put on hold by the Utah Supreme Court

until a lower court can decide whether or not

it's constitutional. But

Republicans have been frustrated because

courts have ruled against lawmakers on

proposed constitutional amendments. You remember the Amendment

D kerfuffle from last year about whether

lawmakers have the ability to override

citizen approved ballot initiatives. It was also

Amendment A which would change the way

that schools are funded in the state. We've

also seen courts rule against Utah on the

issue of school vouchers, transgender

athletes competing in girls sports

and gerrymandering. And that's been

extremely Frustrating for Republicans. And a

question was asked about what the party

should do about that. And again, a

perfect example of the different approaches from the two

candidates. Axon highlighted some changes made

by lawmakers in the past couple of years, which

removes the Utah Bar association from playing

gatekeeper for judicial nominations.

>> Rob Axson: I think there is, uh, a tremendous vulnerability

that we have as a state right now that we have to be

prepared for. And the party certainly plays an

important role and needs to continue to play an important role in

pushing back against this, and that is the

judicial activism that we're seeing here in Utah. On

there was, uh, um, some law changes in the code

that removed the Utah Bar association from being

the gatekeeper on the judicial nominations.

So regardless of who the governor was

in the past, you had this gatekeeper from a very

liberal organization that was approving the list,

and then you're picking from a list that met their approval.

I don't want the Bar Association's approval. I want the

approval of the people who have the majority vote here in

Utah. The principal that we have as Republicans

and as conservatives, we need to support those

individuals when they're trying to rein in what had

been this march in our legislative

process that had further empowered radical activism

within the courts. We have to push back against that.

>> Bryan Schott: But Lyman wanted a much more confrontational

approach, saying that

essentially Republicans, the Republican Party needs

to flex their muscle.

>> Phil Lyman: The Republican party is the

800 pound gorilla, ah, in Utah. And we don't

flex our muscle. We act like we're the subjects of,

uh, the courts, of the, of the

legislature. Um, I'm not about breaking laws,

um, and I don't break laws, but I do challenge

laws that need to be challenged and we have to challenge those

laws.

>> Bryan Schott: So those are the two men who are vying to lead the

Republican Party for the next two years.

And that vote next Saturday at Utah Valley University

is going to be fascinating because

as I said, Phil Lyman could

absolutely win this race. Action's

reelection is not assured. Two years ago, when

Axon was elected party chair, he was the only

candidate other people thought about running but

ultimately didn't. And Axon was the only person.

So he was elected by default this

year in a competitive race, who knows what

could happen because Republican delegates, really

all, all delegates are mercurial.

And who knows what's going to cause them to sway their

vote? Will the Trump endorsement cause them to change

their vote? Who can say? Lyman is

pitching a specifically anti

establishment message, breaking up the

existing power structures not only in the

Republican Party, but in the state as well.

And that appeals to a lot of these

delegates. So this race is going to get really

intense and I expect Saturday's vote to be

close, but I have no idea which way

gonna go.

So I just told you about the qualified political

party and the registered political party. At next

week's GOP convention, there are a couple of proposed

changes to the party's constitution and

bylaws that would crack down on candidates

who gather signatures. Under one proposal,

any candidate who is a Republican who

attempts to gather signatures or gather signatures to get

on the ballot, takes any route outside of the caucus

and conve system to get on the ballot would have

their party membership stripped for

one year. It also lowers the

threshold for winning the nomination at the convention

outright from 60% to a

simple majority, meaning that there would be fewer

primary elections if this were in

place. In the 2024 election cycle,

a number of high ranking Republican office holders

who gathered signatures to get on the ballot would no

longer be members of the Republican Party. And one could

argue that they would wouldn't even be in office anymore.

Governor Spencer Cox collected signatures

where he defeated Phil Lyman in the primary. But

Lyman won the convention vote. So Cox would not have been

the Republican nominee because they would have kicked him out of the party.

Same thing for Senator John Curtis. He collected

signatures to get into the four way

primary for U.S. senate, which he won. The

only candidate who did not collect signatures

was Trent Stagg. Representative Blake

Moore, who's in Republican leadership at the House of Representatives.

He collected signatures and was defeated at

convention by Paul Miller. So hypothetically,

Blake Moore would not have been in the delegation.

Derek Brown, who won Attorney General, he collected

signatures. Frank Mylar didn't and

Mylar won the convention vote. That change

would have also made a huge difference in the legislative

races. 31 Republicans who

won their election last year collected

signatures to get on the ballot. That

includes House Speaker Mike Schultz, House Majority Leader

Jefferson Moss, House Majority Whip Carrie Ann

Liszenby. Over in the Senate, there were six Republicans

who also gathered signatures or declared

their intent to gather signatures. That includes Senate

Majority Whip Mike McKell. You know who else

declared an intent to gather signatures?

Representative Trevor Lee. He would no longer be in the

Republican Party. This is not the first time that we've seen

this idea bubble up among

Republican hardliners. In 20

there was a group of 51 people on the

Republican State Central Committee. They were

dubbed the gang of 51. They held

an emergency meeting of the State

Central Committee where they rammed

through a uh, bylaw change that revoked the

party membership of any candidate that took the

signature path. Now, what they were trying to do

was set up a court battle over

this. They had already lost their lawsuit against

SB54, but they were trying to set up another challenge

challenge and they were going to openly defy the law to

set up this legal challenge. The problem is

what would have happened in the short term is

if they had done that, the state

essentially would have stripped QPP

status from the party, making them an

rpp. And any candidate they nominated

through the caucus of convention system would not have been put on the

ballot. Because although it is a party function

to nominate candidates, the party does not own the

primary ballot. That's owned by the state. It's paid

for by the the state. It's owned by the state.

So they have to follow state law when they

do this. But they were trying to set up another

court challenge when this happened. It

freaked out Republicans in the

legislature because there was the very real chance

that they were going to have to run for

reelection in 2020 as

unaffiliated candidates because the Republican Party

would not be able to nominate anybody. They wouldn't be able to

put anybody on the ballot because they would have had their

QPP status stripp stripped by the state

and they would have been an rpp. But they were going to try to

nominate candidates through the caucus and convention

system to force this court battle. The party chair at the

time, who was Rob Anderson, decided to

ignore the bylaw. He said he wasn't going to enforce

it and the state was going to ignore

it as well. Eventually they quietly

repealed the bylaw. A couple of years later. It was still

on the books. It was still there for a while.

The Republican Party had this rule to kick candidates out

of the party who collected signatures, signatures which was in

violation of state law. But everybody just kind of acted like

it wasn't there. But here this idea comes again. The

problem with this idea is there's no mechanism

for the party or anyone to

challenge somebody's party registration. You

cannot do that. There's nothing in state law

that says a political party can challenge

someone's registration as a member of that

party. It simply does not exist.

And it doesn't exist retroactively

to someone registered as a member

of that party. So I don't know how this would work. But

as we saw back in 2018 and

2019, they were gonna try it and

let the chips fall where they may. I doubt that this

goes forward at the convention. They'll need a 2/3 vote to

put it into the party constitution,

and I just don't think that they'll have enough support to get there.

But who knows? Stranger things have happened before.

There's one other change to the party

constitution that specifically targets something

happened earlier this year. Representative Kara

Berkeleyn, you remember, abruptly resigned

her seat in the legislature the day after

Christmas in 2024. She had just been

reelected to another term just a couple of weeks

earlier, and Republican delegates

got to pick her replacement. They held a

special election to pick a replacement. One of the people

who ran in that special election who filed as a candidate

is Chris K. Campbell. Chris Campbell

lost to Berkeley twice when they

were the Democratic nominee in

2024 and 2022. But

Campbell changed their registration to Republican

and then filed in that special election. They

didn't get anywhere. But that didn't stop them from trying to prevent

a similar situation from playing out in the future.

This constitutional change would require

candidates to be registered as

a Republican for the previous year

before launching their candidacy for any office.

Aaron Bullen, who is one of the more hardline

members of the Republican State Central Committee

and, um, not my biggest fan. Well, he

is the sponsor of this. He said in an

explanation that he attached to this proposal that he wants to

make sure that candidates would buy in to what the

Republican Party stands for. He wrote, I fundamentally believe

someone's first act as a Republican should

not be to run for elected office. Now,

under Utah law, a candidate must be

registered as a member of

a political party when they seek that party's

nomination, unless the party has a rule allowing

someone who's not a member of the party to try to

win their nomination. There's nothing in state law that says

you have to be registered for a certain amount of

time. And Bowen admits that as of right

now, unless there's a change in the law, his proposal would

only apply in the case of a

special election to fill a vacancy in the legislature,

which they can do because that is an internal party matter.

It's not something that involves a state

elections office. Again, this would need a two thirds

vote at convention, and this one may have the

support to get there. The convention is next Saturday

at Utah Valley University. I'll be there covering

it. Come up and say hello if you see me.

There's a shakeup in Republican leadership in the Utah House of

Representatives coming on Friday morning. House Majority

Leader Jefferson Moss was tapped by

Governor Spencer Cox to become the next Executive

director of the Governor's Office of Economic

Opportunity. Moss is going to step down from

his post as Majority leader in The

House. Interestingly, this is the second time

that Governor Cox has tapped a member of

Republican leadership in the legislature for

that job. When he was first elected, Cox picked

Senate Majority Whip Dan Hemmert to head up

that office. It was known as the Governor's Office

of Economic Development. Then they did a big

rebrand and shuffling of responsibilities

and now instead of go ed, it's goo. But dam

Hemmert was also tapped to head up

that organization. This is also the second House

Majority Leader to step down from that

post sin the last last four years.

In 2021, then House Majority

Leader Francis Gibson resigned from the

legislature. He's now a lobbyist for

Intermountain Healthcare. But he stepped down from

that position and that caused a big

shuffling of the leadership structure.

When Gibson stepped down, Mike Schultz, who

was the Majority Whip at the time, became the Majority leader

and Jefferson Moss became the Majority

Whip. And then in 2023, when House Speaker

Brad Wilson resign run for the Senate,

Mike Schultz became the House speaker and Moss

became the Majority leader. And we'll see a similar

shuffling this time around. I would say right

now the favorite to become the new Majority Leader in

the House would be Representative Carrie Ann Lisbon.

Right now she is the Majority Whip. She's the number three

Republican in the House behind Moss and Schultz. She

would move into that number two slot. And then you'll

probably see Representative Casey Snyder move from

a system majority Whip into the Majority

Whip position. And that could leave an opening

for someone to become the Assistant Majority Whip moving

into leadership. When I started thinking about

this, there are a number of Republicans in the House

who are ambitious enough who would want to jump

into that leadership team. The first one who

comes to mind would be Representative Jordan Tusher. Although he is

the chair of the powerful Rules Committee.

Would he want to leave that sort of spot and move into the Assistant

Majority Whip slot? Maybe it is after all

a promotion. Others who might take a look at it,

maybe Val Peterson, who is the House Chair of the Executive

Appropriations Committee. There are even some rank and file

Republicans who might want to jump

into the leadership race. Maybe Representative Jason

Kyle, Anthony, Lubay, Bridger,

Bolender, Tyler Clancy, they've all

been very high profile in the House over the

past couple of years. Maybe we'll see someone from Southern

Utah jump into that for race and then we

might see a shuffling of committee assignments. If someone who

is a committee chair jumps into leadership, maybe they'll put

someone else in charge of that committee

because of the added responsibilities of being on the leadership

team. This will all Shake out. When House Republicans

will meet probably sometime this month to select

someone to take over that spot in the

leadership team. There'll be a lot of behind the scenes

politicking for those leadership positions. And then

you'll see a special election in House District 51 where

Republican delegates will select someone to

serve out the remaining year and change

of Moss's term in the

legislature.

I have eight different bosses right now. I beg your pardon?

>> Rob Axson: Eight bosses.

>> Phil Lyman: Eight.

>> Bryan Schott: Eight Bob. So that means that when I make

a mistake, I have eight different people.

>> Rob Axson: Coming by to tell me about it.

>> Bryan Schott: Time to check in with the Department of Corrections. I heard

from some of our listeners over the last week

who wrote in. First one was Hank Postma.

He sent in an email email about my segment in

last week's show about the poison pill in the

voucher bill. If you remember, I explained how

lawmakers tied teacher salary

increases to the Utah Fits all

scholarship when it was first passed in

2023, which created a poison

pill in the legislation. If you wanted to vote against

vouchers, you would also vote against giving

more money to teachers. He points out that the

salary adjustment that was in that, that bill,

which was originally $8,400, rose

to $8,904

the following year. And next year it goes up to

just over $10,300. And that's part

of new legislation that ties those

increases in the salary adjustment to the percentage

increase in the wpu, which is the Weighted Pupil

unit, which as I've explained before, is how

much the state spends per student.

And lawmakers are required by state law

to increase that amount every year to pay

for any inflationary increases. Hank

says it's a mess and I agree with him.

Uh uh. He writes, I'm a teacher and even though the legislature has done

a lot of things that I don't like, I have to acknowledge that

they have significantly raised education funding over the

last 10 years and that's resulted in large

increases in teacher salaries. Hank

is absolutely right there. They have done a lot to increase

teacher salaries and that's why it's going to be

really difficult to unwind

everything if the Utah Supreme Court

upholds the lower court ruling that the Utah

Fits all scholarship school vouchers is

unconstitutional. I explained the judge's

reasoning in last week's episode and when

the Supreme Court finally gets around to hearing this appeal, it is going

to be really messy trying to

untie everything if they keep the lower court

ruling in place. I also heard from Kelly Willis,

who chimed in on Blue sky to correct

my pronunciation of Mackinac. Last week I

told you how Senate president Stuart Adams is on

the board of a workers rights initiative from a

conservative think tank in Michigan. Kelly

wrote to tell me that it's pronounced Mackinaw,

not Mackinac, because it's named after

Mackinaw island in Michigan,

which he says is, quote, home to

amazing fudge. To which I reply,

I'm a fat guy, Kelly. To tell me

about amazing fudge and then not offer it

to me, that's just flat out

rude. But in my defense to this whole thing,

I spent a summer in college

as a camp counselor. Counselor at a sleepaway

camp in the Berkshires in Massachusetts

called Camp Mackinac. Now, they were

trying to lean in on, I think, some Native

American pronunciation, but they called it Mackinac.

So that's where my brain went. Not Mackinaw, but

Mackinac. Quick story about that camp. It was a

camp for very wealthy families. Like several

thousand dollars was the tuition for

nine weeks. Kids stayed there for 29 weeks. There were

families who would just basically dump their kids at this camp

and then go vacation in Europe. There were

camp counselors from around the country, all of them

college students. And they also brought in a number of camp

counselors on some program from

England where I think they had to pay

them less because they paid for their travel over to the United

States and then they could travel around the country afterward. Anyway,

I didn't understand the whole thing, but there were a lot of counselors

from and England in the mix. Now, at this

camp, candy and sweets were

pretty much banned. There were some times where counselors,

in order to bribe kids to write letters

home to their parents, they would offer

a small candy bar if they wrote a letter home. And you'd

get letters like, dear Mom, I'm writing this to

get a candy bar. Love, Steve, or whatever it was.

Anyway, that's. That was pretty much the extent

of the character candy. The only exception

was parents weekend about halfway through the

camp. And the parents could visit on

either Saturday or Sunday. And what

a lot of parents would do is the dad would come visit on Saturday

and then the mom would come visit on Sunday. And the

parents, during that time, they would bring

chips and food and

candy and all sorts of

junk for the kids to just pig out on. And

because of that, there was a 74, 72 hour

grace period after the weekend

that the kids could have this stuff and it wouldn't be

confiscated. During that 72 hours,

I literally saw one kid

drink two full cases of

coca cola in a matter of days.

It. It was something to behold.

Just pounding Coke after coke after

Coke. I've never seen anything like it. I don't think I'll ever seen

anything like this. That again. It was incredible. That was worth the

whole summer right there. And as you can imagine, he

did not feel very well after doing it. One other side just to

demonstrate just how wealthy the people were who

went to this camp in my bunk, one kid's dad was

the head of cardiology at Harvard Medical School,

and when he came to pick up his kid at the end of the summer,

he tipped me 200 cash, which was

great for a college student. Anyway, we regret

that the error.

I think that's enough for this week. But before we go,

a reminder, a request for you

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If you are a business or you know someone who

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Also, if you have any feedback, complaints,

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You'll find my email in the show Notes. Thank you

so much for listening. I really appreciate it. And

we'll be back with a new episode next week.

>> Rob Axson: Sam.