The Utah state GOP’s internal skirmishing over who may run for office as a Republican erupted again in a weekend leadership meeting that saw party hard-liners push through a change designed to get back in court to fight for stricter, loyalty-enforcing nominating rules.
Saturday’s special meeting of the Republican State Central Committee also saw members vote to unseat the party’s legal counsel over the objections of its state chairman, as well as renewed calls for the chairman to resign.
For the average Utah voter, the wave of internal party discord might be just a surface ripple in the deep ocean of Utah’s Republican-dominated politics, but it’s one that could rock or even swamp the GOP boat as elections approach, starting with this year’s primaries.
Saturday’s rule change seeks another legal path to challenge the 2014 state law that permits candidates to get on a party ballot by collecting signatures rather than exclusively through a party nominating caucus and convention. The state GOP went to court to challenge the law, lost, and has appealed. That appeal is pending, but amid rising legal costs, state GOP Chairman Rob Anderson told the party in November that he would abandon the fight, a move that incensed the party’s right wing.
Anderson later struck a deal with Entrata executive Dave Bateman to cover the party’s debt and finance the continuing legal appeal.
The bylaw change approved Saturday would require that candidates seek the GOP nomination only via the caucus-convention route, barring them from collecting signatures to get on the ballot and threatening those who take that route with party expulsion. It makes exceptions for 2018 to accommodate candidates who have already elected to take the petition route to getting on the ballot and thus would apply this year only to candidates in the 1st and 2nd congressional district races.
Brady Jugler, a central committee member from Davis County who sponsored the change, said it was designed to create “real consequences for a party member or a prospective candidate seeking to bypass the party’s stated method of seeking nomination,” but not to “disrupt any particular candidate or any campaign currently going on.”
“The bottom line is that we are asserting that we have control of who is a member of the party, and those who choose to go against our established method of seeking nominations would forfeit their membership. Every organization has that right,” Jugler said.
He added that the rule change was drawn up “specifically to create standing to litigate our position before any potential harm is done to any potential candidate.”
The change was adopted Saturday by a 48-21 vote, meeting the margin of a two-thirds majority of attendees required for passage. There are 183 central committee members in all but party rules say only 40 are required for a quorum; 46 members signed the call for the Saturday meeting, Jugler said.
Besides leading to possible legal fights over Republican primary candidates, the move prompted state elections officials Monday to review whether it ran afoul of state law and threatened the party’s status as a so-called “qualified political party.” Anderson, the party chairman, met to review the matter with the Lieutenant Governor’s Office, which oversees elections. He said afterward that interested candidates should continue to pursue the signature route to get on the ballot.
“My priority directive as chair of the party is to follow state law,” he said.
Anderson rejected calls for his resignation and said he would appoint a new party counsel to replace Stewart Peay, who was fired Saturday after he told meeting attendees that the rule change violated state law for qualified parties.
Anderson said he “made it clear” to party hard-liners “that I’m here to hold the line and keep the party functioning, protect our candidates, and abide by the government.” He called it “bothersome” that the group pushed to fire Peay for disagreeing with them.
“They can’t deny me the right to counsel to dictate where the party should go and how it should move forward,” he said.
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