- Ben McAdams says Democrats must deliver solutions to win back the White House in 2028.
- McAdams said vote to impeach Donald Trump in 2019 likely cost him his reelection.
- McAdams said he's open to national standards on redistricting after national gerrymandering rush.
SALT LAKE CITY — Former U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams said Democrats need to focus on delivering solutions for Americans if they hope to retake the White House in 2028.
The Utah Democrat acknowledged that his vote to impeach President Donald Trump in 2019 likely shut the door on his reelection to Utah's 4th Congressional District, in what was then a Republican-leaning district.
"I represented the most Republican district in the country that Democrats held, and knew at the time that if I voted to impeach Donald Trump, it was going to probably cost me my election," McAdams told the KSL and Deseret News editorial boards during an interview Monday. "I took that vote very seriously and weighed the evidence and ultimately decided that I believed that he had committed an impeachable act that warranted removal from office, and took a stand to do that."
McAdams would turn out to be correct about his electoral prospects, as he went on to narrowly lose to Republican Burgess Owens in the 2020 election.
McAdams is now running for Congress again, but this time he's competing in Utah's new 1st Congressional District, which is rated as solidly Democratic, according to the Cook Political Report. And although he thinks Trump's second term has seen a "level of corruption from this administration (that) makes 2019 look quaint," McAdams doesn't sound interested in just going after the president if Democrats retake the House in November.
"(The) Democratic Party needs to be the party of solutions and what we are doing to help people who are really hurting right now," he said. "I think there are a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump who are good and caring people who love this country and don't endorse what he's done. And so how do I explain that to myself? It's because ... they believe the system does not work for them, and they want anybody who will tear down the system."
McAdams isn't one who wants to tear down the system but said Democrats need to show those disaffected voters "that we can solve hard problems that are causing pain for them."
"And if we don't do that," he said, "I don't think we win the 2028 election. ... I can't control what other members of the caucus are going to do. My focus is going to be on solutions that can ease the suffering of people who are counting on my, that just want to see cost of housing come down."
Trump himself has said Democrats will "find a reason to impeach me" if Republicans lose the House in November, and some Democrats have called for investigations into the administration. McAdams didn't rule out supporting those inquiries if he's elected, but said he wouldn't "presuppose any outcome" and "would look at any evidence that comes forward."
McAdams believes Trump's second term has "exposed a lot of vulnerabilities in our system" that should be shored up. That includes the president's push to have Texas Republicans redraw the state's congressional maps last year to benefit the GOP in the upcoming midterms, something typically done every 10 years after the census.
"I didn't think that we would gerrymander every two years, and here we are," he said. "I would have thought that was written into law. Apparently it's not."
Democrats responded by redrawing maps in their favor in California, something McAdams said he "begrudgingly" supported, saying his party was "right to not unilaterally disarm" in the gerrymandering fight.
McAdams said he's open to national standards on not using partisan data in drawing district boundaries and not unnecessarily dividing cities or counties — both standards codified under Utah's Proposition 4 — but McAdams said he would have to see what specifics Congress and the president could actually agree on.
"If voters believe that elections don't matter because the lines have been rigged in a way that the outcome is predetermined, I see that as one of the roots of political violence," he said. "What I've seen in this election is for the first time in a long time, Utah Democrats are engaging, and they're engaging for their candidate. ... How healthy is that for our democracy?"
McAdams is one of four Democrats vying for the party's nomination for the 1st Congressional District, along with Nate Blouin, Michael Farrell and Liban Mohamed.
Primary Election Day is June 23.
