As the Utah Republican Party prepares to nominate a more permanent replacement, Gov. Spencer Cox announced Tuesday that Chief Deputy Treasurer Kirt Slaugh will serve as interim state treasurer.
Slaugh will take the place of the office’s former leader, David Damschen, who announced earlier this month that he planned to resign from the seat he was first elected to in 2016. He is taking on a new position as the president and CEO of the Utah Housing Corp.
Slaugh won’t have long to serve in his temporary role. Under state law, the Utah Republican Party Central Committee gets to nominate three possible replacements for Damschen. Cox will make the final decision.
The state GOP leadership plans to open up the filing deadline for candidates to replace Damschen on Monday and will nominate possible replacements for him on June 12, according to the party’s communications director Lynda Cox.
Whomever Cox ultimately chooses will have to run in a special election next year to fill the remaining two years in Damschen’s term.
Slaugh has worked in the treasurer’s office since 2016, where he has managed operations and staff and worked on debt modeling and investment processes, according to a news release from the governor’s office. He has served as a member and chairman of the Utah Money Management Council and is a member of the Utah Association for Financial Professionals, which he served as president for in 2006.
Prior to working in the state treasurer’s office, he was the national health care treasury sales manager at KeyBank. Before that, he worked for 11 years in treasury management at Intermountain Healthcare.
Correction: April 29, 9:08 a.m. >> An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect date for when the Utah Republican Party’s Central Committee will nominate replacements for Damschen. That will happen on June 12.
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