Utah Democrats urged to 'come home' to party, stop registering as Republicans

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Party leader Brian King urges Utah Democrats to stop registering as Republicans, citing ineffectiveness.
King argues party-switching disguises GOP extremism, hindering Democratic growth in Utah.
Republican party leader Rob Axson welcomes genuine converts but criticizes undermining the Republican Party.

SALT LAKE CITY — The era of "party raiding" in Utah is over, at least as far as the Utah Democratic Party is concerned.

Some liberal voters have for years suggested they should register as Republican in order to participate in the party's closed primary elections. Because the GOP is dominant in the state, some would-be Democrats see the strategy as the best way to push for more moderate candidates in primaries, though it's unclear how many undercover Democrats there actually are and whether they have made any difference.

But Brian King, the chairman of the Utah Democratic Party, on Thursday urged Democrats to "come home" to the party, saying he believes the strategy is "no longer" effective — if it ever was — and that it may stunt the growth of the party into the future. King said the continued embrace of President Donald Trump and his style of politics shows no sign of letting up within the GOP.

King said the party has not supported or advocated for party switching in the past, but wanted to publicly emphasize his position that Democrats register with the party.

"We've hoped now for nine-plus years, as we've seen Trump ascend, that Republicans would have the courage and the spine to stand up and really defy some of his worst ideas. And in my opinion, it's just not working very well," he told KSL.com. "I want to look at my friends who are Democrats who register as Republicans in an attempt to dilute the extremism of that party and say, 'How's that working out for you?' Because I just don't think it is, quite honestly."

I want to look at my friends who are Democrats who register as Republicans in an attempt to dilute the extremism of that party and say, 'How's that working out for you?' Because I just don't think it is, quite honestly.

–Brian King, Utah Democratic Party

The idea of party switching first came to prominence in the summer of 2020, when voter registration records showed Democrats and other major parties losing registered voters to Republicans in advance of a crowded gubernatorial primary, which was won by Gov. Spencer Cox, then the lieutenant governor. Cox beat out former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. by only 6,319 votes.

The state Legislature passed a bill in 2021 to push back on "party raiding," by preventing voters who switch parties after March 31 in an even-numbered year from participating in their new party's primary election.

Last year, the GOP lost a net 7,646 voters between Jan. 9 and Aug. 8, according to Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, while the Democrats lost a net 3,281. Henderson said the "biggest shift by far was voters switching from a political party to become unaffiliated."

Even if Democrats have been successful in moderating the candidates who emerge from the Republican primary, King said he thinks that has only served to "disguise" the party as being more moderate than it is, and thinks Democrats could capitalize in the future by running against more "extreme" GOP candidates.

"I think that Democrats are likely to do better because Republicans are revealed as being extreme and not being in touch or effective in addressing the problems that people have," he said.

Rob Axson, chairman of the Utah Republican Party, took issue with King's characterization of his party as extreme or lacking real solutions, but he commended his counterpart's announcement and said Democrats should focus more on building up their own party rather than "trying to tear down the Republican Party."

While he said his party is a big tent that welcomes converts from any other ideological lane, Axson said it's unhealthy to have party members who are opposed to the party's mission.

"If somebody wants to ... become one of us and they're doing so meaningfully and jumping in truly — welcome. We need you. We're going to be better off with you," he said. "But if somebody is here just to continue to spite us and to criticize us and to undermine us, I would encourage them to go and find a party where they can be positive and building-oriented instead of destructive."

Axson said he's not worried that party switchers will or have impacted primary election results.

"But I do believe that the number is not insignificant of folks who have registered as Republicans but actually have no fidelity to or support for Republicans or our platform or principles," he said. "So, to each of those, I'd say go find the party that you actually want to build and spend your time there."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.