State leaders offer replacements after Utah woman receives masks with ‘charged political messaging’

SALT LAKE CITY — Christine Passey-Spencer said she signed up to receive a mask under Utah’s "Mask For Every Utahn" campaign within days of it being announced on April 28 and then she just plain forgot all about it.

It makes sense; so much has happened in two months. Then she received a package in the mail.

"When we got the package and first opened it, at first I was confused as to what was in the package," she said, recalling the moment to KSL NewsRadio on Tuesday. Inside were a pair of cloth masks that featured an American flag, a handgun and a "Don’t Tread on Me" logo from the 18th-century Gadsden flag that has become associated with far-right movements in recent years. But when she saw a sticker with the state’s COVID-19 website, she figured out how she ended up with that package.

"I was just shocked," she said. "Honestly, I was really frustrated because if I say this is mine and our tax dollars that are sending me this incredibly charged political messaging that’s shocking to receive from the state — my first thought was, did the state know they were sending these? Was this approved by them?"

State officials said the design wasn’t approved at all. Since Utah officials first announced the Mask for Every Utahn campaign in late April, the program has received more than 250,000 requests for nearly 1.1 million masks, according to Ben Hart, deputy director for the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget. The masks were first shipped out to Utahns in May.

Companies that enrolled in the program were offered two mask templates to create personal protective items but the companies could make designs on the masks if they wanted. In all, 25 manufacturing companies joined in the program and it’s believed to have saved about 300 jobs.

But as manufacturers have cranked out masks in May, some designs were turned down by the state. The masks Passey-Spencer received were two of about 150 masks with either "very, very inappropriate" designs or designs that "didn’t feel like they represented the state in the right image" from the 1.8 million masks made through the program, Hart said.

"Out of 1.8 million, to have 150 masks that we had to pull out, we felt OK about that. But, unfortunately, there were a couple of those masks that slipped through that we did not catch and were sent out," he said. "We were not sending any of these other masks out, it was just hopefully an isolated incident."

Passey-Spencer tweeted about her mask Tuesday and said she was concerned about some of the responses. Some told her they received perfectly fine masks while others claimed to have received dirty masks and even masks that fell apart quickly.

State officials responded within hours of her posting about the masks, she said. In fact, Michael Mower, Gov. Gary Herbert’s chief of staff, even drove to her home Tuesday to personally deliver a pair of new masks, which she said she does appreciate.

However, she said she’d like state officials to denounce the messaging that made it through and be accountable for it instead — what she believes — is an attempt to cover it up. She wonders if others also received questionably themed masks and what the state response would have been had a design featuring a left-learning message had accidentally been shipped out — referring to Herbert's response to cheeky condom packaging the state health department released earlier this year. Herbert responded by pulling the program and making changes to the department.

"I mean ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ right now is against quarantine and wearing face masks — it’s kind of a symbol for that movement," she said. "And right now we’re having all the discussions of gun violence and policing and community policing, so they’re just such hot topic symbols that I think it needs to be renounced that it’s not state speech."

Hart said that those who oversee the program feel bad about the slip-up, adding that they will work with the mask’s manufacturer "to make sure there are no taxpayer dollars used for these masks."

"This individual had turned to the program for masks and we had provided them out, and we appreciated their willingness to get masks from us, and at the end of the day we recognize those were not good masks," he said. "Those were not masks that represent the values of the state of Utah."

Contributing: Kira Hoffelmeyer and Nick Wyatt, KSL NewsRadio

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