Curtis winner in Utah GOP primary
Provo mayor seeks Republican Chaffetz’s seat in House
A Republican Utah mayor celebrating a primary win will have to fend off competitors linking him to embattled President Donald Trump as he prepares for the general election to replace Jason Chaffetz in the U.S. House of Representatives.
John Curtis, the popular mayor of the Mormon stronghold of Provo, won a GOP primary Tuesday in Utah after fending off two challengers in Utah’s 3rd Congressional District who were both backed by further-right conservatives. The challengers tried to undercut him for having once been a Democrat.
The win gives him a heavy advantage in the November special election in the district, where Republicans outnumber Democrats 5-to-1. But Curtis’s opponents have already cast him as the candidate of Trump and his party.
Jim Bennett, the first candidate of a new centrist United Utah Party, congratulated Curtis but said Wednesday that as a good man, Curtis should feel uncomfortable in the “Party of Trump.”
“Mayor Curtis is going to be just one more log on the fire of Republican dysfunction,” Bennett said.
Democratic Dr. Kathryn Allen agreed Wednesday, saying Curtis can’t avoid being linked to the president.
“Members of the GOP seem to fall in line, no matter what,” she said. “It’s kind of hard to believe that another representative from the same party would behave any differently.”
Curtis has walked a line between party loyalty and distancing himself from the turbulence surrounding the president, a similar tension Chaffetz faced before he abruptly resigned in June, saying he needed to spend more time with family.
Before resigning, the five-term Republican carved out a reputation for using the House Oversight committee he chaired to run aggressive investigations of Hillary Clinton. Chaffetz took a tepid approach to Trump’s alleged conflicts of interest and ties to Russia.
During last year’s election, Chaffetz rescinded his endorsement of Trump after recordings surfaced of the president bragging about groping women, but Chaffetz later re-endorsed the president.
Utah’s 3rd Congressional District, stretching from Salt Lake City suburbs and several ski towns southeast to the Mormon-stronghold of Provo, Utah’s coal country and the tourist-heavy red rock deserts, is heavily conservative, but lukewarm on Trump.
The president won the district in November, but he did so with only 47 percent of the vote — far below Republican presidential candidates in 2012 and 2008, who collected more than two-thirds of the vote.
In the race to replace Chaffetz, Curtis was the only GOP candidate who didn’t vote for Trump, saying he had significant moral concerns.
Opponent Tanner Ainge, a business consultant and the Sarah Palin-endorsed son of Boston Celtics President Danny Ainge, voted for the president, as did former state lawmaker Chris Herrod, who was known for strict immigration positions and spoke at a Trump rally.
While Trump has endorsed candidates in other special elections this year, including a Republican runoff this week for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, the president didn’t weigh in on Utah’s primary until after Curtis won, tweeting him a message of congratulations Wednesday.
Curtis, 57, said he’s happy to support Trump’s agenda, including tax reform, his Supreme Court nominations and calls to “drain the swamp.” But he hopes that turmoil surrounding the White House doesn’t derail the GOP agenda.
“I believe that the district, I think, generally supports the Trump agenda, but they struggle with some of the distractions,” Curtis said last week.