“Shh, it’s a secret. Utah’s worst kept secret.”
That was the message a small group of Ben McAdams’ supporters received Tuesday night announcing that “Ben McAdams is running for Congress!”
The invitation to a formal campaign launch, scheduled for Nov. 13, comes even before anyone knows what the districts will look like for the 2026 congressional elections.
Tickets to the event, according to the message sent Tuesday, range from $1,000 to $7,000.
While McAdams, the last Utah Democrat to serve in Congress, had been reluctant to commit to a bid, a national political action committee — the Welcome PAC — had been urging him to run. He filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Elections Commission last month.
McAdams declined to comment Tuesday night.
His decision comes as 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson is still mulling which of three maps she will choose from next year’s midterm election. That decision will come after three years of litigation over the Legislature’s repeal of Proposition 4, a Supreme Court ruling that found the repeal to be unconstitutional and Gibson’s order that the maps be redrawn.
A map submitted by the Republican-led Legislature creates a district that is potentially winnable by a Democrat, with a 6-point GOP advantage, according to an analysis by The Salt Lake Tribune. In McAdams’ past runs for office, the Republican advantage was more than double that.
Both maps submitted for Gibson’s consideration by the plaintiffs in the litigation would create a district that favors Democrats — one map with a district leaning toward Democrats by a margin of 8 points, the other with a sizable 17-point Democrat advantage.
Without knowing which map will be chosen, it is impossible to know which Republican McAdams may face, assuming he wins the Democratic nomination next year. Candidates for the U.S. House are not required to live in the district in which they run.
State Sen. Kathleen Riebe, D-Cottonwood Heights, previously announced she is also exploring a possible bid for one of the new congressional seats.
McAdams is a former state senator, a two-term Salt Lake County mayor and served a single term in Congress. Elected in 2018, he lost a narrow contest to Republican Rep. Burgess Owens in 2020 by about 3,000 votes. After new congressional maps were adopted in 2021 solidifying Republican dominance in all four districts, a rematch was off the table.
In 2022, McAdams was active in the effort to have Democrats forego nominating a candidate for U.S. Senate to challenge Republican Mike Lee, instead convincing party delegates to throw their support behind independent candidate Evan McMullin.
McMullin lost to Lee — but finished just over 10 points behind Lee, the narrowest margin a Republican in Utah had seen in decades.
At a court hearing last month, the expert who drew the Legislature’s proposed map testified that, while the map favors Republicans, if McAdams ran in one district and McMullin in the other, they could win half of the state’s congressional delegation.
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