How popular primaries foil conservatives and protect the uniparty

Letting the masses decide the party’s nominee for down-ballot offices is tantamount to letting the elites and special interests decide the outcome.

We are stuck with a uniparty because incumbents are rarely defeated in district races and are almost never defeated in primaries for statewide offices — including senator and governor. The only way to change the party in one election cycle is by transitioning from popular primaries to representative conventions where high-information delegates may separate the frauds from dedicated conservatives.

Money can buy you name ID in popular primaries, but it can’t buy you love from highly informed delegates and precinct captains.

If Utah would only return the glory to its convention system, it would stand as a model for the nation.

Republicans have liberal governors ruining red states. This is why we only hear about the successes of Ron DeSantis in Florida and few others. Western red states — from Utah and Idaho to Wyoming and North Dakota — are full of progressive Republicans. It is practically impossible for insurgent candidates to raise enough money to win statewide elections, and it is essentially unheard of to knock out a sitting governor in a primary.

And yet, if Utah’s convention had been the final deciding election for the nomination, Governor Spencer Cox would not only have been defeated, but he would also have lost by a 2-1 margin.

GOP delegates met on Saturday for the Utah nominating convention and selected state Representative Phil Lyman as the party’s nominee for governor with 67.5% of the vote. The delegates are so much better informed about the issues, true records, and motivations of each candidate that a sitting governor without a known scandal only received a third of the vote from the delegates.

Sadly, in recent years, the party has gutted the power of the convention by allowing the loser to collect signatures and head to a popular primary, which is decisive. Cox has already qualified for the GOP primary on June 25 by gathering 28,000 signatures. Can you imagine the sort of party we would have if the convention delegates had the final say in every red state?

Thus far, however, we have failed to knock off a single House incumbent in a primary. Had the convention results been binding, 1st District Rep. Blake Moore would have been booted. He was defeated by 10 points in the final round of voting by political novice Paul Miller, who criticized Blake’s votes for the spending bills. Miller would never stand a chance in a popular primary, and unfortunately Blake has collected enough signatures for the primary. As vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, Moore is the seventh-ranking Republican member and will have infinite money to run a campaign full of oleaginous political ads misrepresenting himself as a conservative.

In District 2, incumbent Republican Celeste Maloy was edged out by former Green Beret Colonel Colby Jenkins. Maloy was a congressional staffer who took over for her moderate Republican boss, former Rep. Chris Stewart, and has voted with leadership. Jenkins was endorsed by Senator Mike Lee, himself a product of convention success. Lee is one of the few people to successfully knock off a long-standing incumbent Republican from the right because in 2010 the convention was still decisive.

And speaking of the open Senate race, Trent Staggs beat out Rep. John Curtis by a 2-1 margin at the convention for the nomination to replace Mitt Romney. Again, Staggs would never have had the ability to crush a sitting congressman in an open primary, although he does have a boost from Trump and his network. Ironically, Mitt Romney also lost the convention in 2018 to Mike Kennedy, a member of the legislature, but was able to advance to a popular primary, where his war chest and superior name ID won the day with low-information voters.

It's unclear whether these insurgent candidates can carry their momentum into the primaries, but the convention demonstrates that meaningful party change requires moving away from popular primaries.

The problem is that although most Republican voters have similar expectations for their candidates, they are often unaware of the specific records and associations of their particular Republican representatives. Every Republican, particularly in conservative districts, runs broadly on conservative talking points. The one with the most money and name ID espousing those talking points usually emerges as the winner, but more often he is a creature of the uniparty engaged in perfidious campaigning to disguise the truth. Money can buy you name ID in popular primaries, but it can’t buy you love from highly informed delegates and precinct captains.

Popular primaries were an innovation of the Progressive Era over a century ago, and now we know why. They ensure that no matter who wins the general election, the progressive always comes out on top.