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SALT LAKE CITY — In a state where a Democrat hasn’t held a statewide office for two decades, running for governor as a member of the minority party in Utah was always going to be tough, even before the coronavirus pandemic put an end to campaigning in person.
Already this election year, the six Democrats seeking to become their party’s nominee for governor faced vying for voter attention with a crowded and competitive field of better-known and better-funded Republican candidates led in the polls by former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and current Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox.
“I can’t imagine how difficult it is now,” said Scott Howell, a former state Senate minority leader who twice was the Utah Democratic Party’s pick to run against now-former U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, who retired four years ago as the nation’s longest-serving Republican senator.
“The traditional way of campaigning for Democrats has been going face-to-face — rallies, door to door,” he said. “Our legislative candidates have won mostly because they have that ability to go door to door and people go, ‘Well, gosh, you’re not the Democrat I hear people talk about that has horns ... you’re pretty normal.”
Matthew Burbank, a University of Utah political science professor, said Democratic candidates will be hurt the most by the new limits on campaigning.
“It makes a very difficult situation for Democrats even worse,” Burbank said. “Obviously, it’s very hard to get voters to focus on campaign politics at the moment because they have many other things they’re more immediately concerned with.”
Unlike the Republican candidates for governor, Burbank said the Democrats aren’t seen as able to put up much of a fight.
“They’re almost the complete opposite in that they don’t have any strong candidates. There’s really no competition. All they’re really trying to do, I think, is find somebody who can credibly run for governor,” he said. “I think what they can hope is perhaps the Republican contest becomes sufficiently divisive.”
But that’s “not a wonderful strategy,” Burbank said. “Hoping the other side screws up is not a great way to get elected.”
The last time a Democrat won statewide office in Utah was 1996, when then-Attorney General Jan Graham was elected to a second four-year term. That, Howell said, was “a very brief moment in time” in a state long dominated by the GOP that should serve as a reminder to Democratic candidates.
“Everybody has to have a reality check with themselves to know that the probability of winning, it’s just not there. But you never give up hope,” he said. “I’ve done it twice statewide. You build relationships and more than anything else, you as a candidate give hope to people who felt that they haven’t had a voice.”
Howell said he’s already offered advice to one of the Democrats in this year’s race for governor, University of Utah law professor Chris Peterson, telling him “it’s a tough hoe. But if you work hard and long enough there might be a possibility.”
Peterson, a former adviser to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, didn’t announce his first run for public office until early March, about two weeks before the COVID-19 outbreak shut down much of the state. But he wasn’t worried about getting a late start compared to the Republican candidates.
“It’s a little less competitive field, so it makes more sense for Democrats to wait before they start to ramp up,” he said. Then the new coronavirus, already spreading through China and others parts of the world, hit Utah and the rest of the country hard.
“It’s a bit of a shocking turn of events,” Peterson said. “I’ll be candid. I mean, I didn’t have a sense of how serious it would be. It’s not as though I had a public health staff advising me on that. ... I was nervous about it, just from reading press accounts.”
Campaigning has been a struggle, he said. “We’re making phone calls. We have a team of volunteers that we’ve put together. Every day we’re calling and calling. ... People, as they’re sheltering in place, are having a hard time connecting.”
The focus now for Peterson and the other five Democrats in the race — Zachary Moses, Neil Hansen, Nikki Ray Pino, Archie A. Williams III and Ryan Jackson — is on the state party delegates who’ll advance up to two candidates in the race to the June primary ballot at the party’s now-virtual state convention later this month.
Peterson, along with Moses and Pino, had signed up to submit voters signatures to guarantee a place on the primary ballot but none have done so. Peterson said he decided early on it wasn’t financially feasible to collect 28,000 signatures statewide, a task even more daunting now that voters can no longer be approached in person.
Moses, another first time-candidate who’s been in the race for nearly a year, said he’s reaching Utahns digitally, including through new software loaded with phone numbers from the state’s voter rolls that he intends to share with other Democrats, and daily livestreaming.
“I have to be honest. I feel like people are more interested in what’s going on. They’re stuck at home and they’re looking for social outlets and they’re finding them. People who walked away from social media, they’re all coming back to it,” Moses said. “I’m getting much more interaction now than I would have before this crisis.”
The head of a company that operates tours around the world for LGBTQ travelers, Moses said he’s not fundraising.
“I’ve just been doing wellness checks. I’ve been calling people and asking how they’re doing,” he said. “So much of my campaign already has been showing how much you can do with little money … I think we need the money out of politics.”
Hansen, a former state legislator who has asked to appear on the ballot as, “One Neil Hansen,” said he’s attempting to communicate via emails that include his telephone number with an invitation for people to call and talk about the issues.
“I’ve heard back from a few,” Hansen said, adding that while it may be harder for candidates to get attention, he’s not giving up. “People have their own lives. That’s the thing I’ve come to realize with this COVID-19. I can’t just put myself in cold storage for six months and wait for it to go away.”
Other candidates expressed more frustration.
“Quarantine has come,” Pino said, making it impossible for him to continue trying to meet with delegates in person. “Because I don’t have any money, that’s been a problem even before this. ... For Democrats, it’s a lot harder. Especially being a nobody.”
Jackson, who’d just bought two boxes of envelopes and planned to mail out letters to delegates about fighting the coronavirus, said the campaign “is not what I thought it would be.”
Williams said he’s been exchanging texts with delegates, describing his bid for the nomination as a conservative Democrat as already “an uphill battle.” He said he’s hopeful Utahns will start paying more attention to politics, since “they’ve got plenty of time now on their hands for the next couple of weeks.”
Utah Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Merchant said candidates are going to have to get creative.
“This pandemic, hitting when it did, really stymied all candidates options for getting to know voters, particularly delegates,” Merchant said. “What I’m telling all our candidates is, this is a time for innovation. It’s a time to be thoughtful and creative.”
He said the virus has also “really affected the way that we view politics in this country. I don’t know that’s going to be a long-term change.” But at least through the November general election, Merchant said there’s a new focus on the role of government in protecting the public as a result of COVID-19.
“We’re literally talking about how to keep people alive,” the state Democratic leader said. “I think that’s a good thing for Democrats, who have been talking about things like health care for years and years.”
