More than five decades after he first joined the Utah Legislature — going on to serve as House speaker and later in Congress — Rob Bishop is seeking a return to Utah’s Capitol.
Bishop aims to replace state Rep. Matt Gwynn, who announced he would step down to help care for a daughter who was struck by a truck in September.
Bishop said in an interview Tuesday that he thought his career in politics was over until Gwynn, R-Farr West, called him a few weeks ago and asked him to consider running. Bishop said others in Republican House leadership did as well.
“There’s a little romanticism to it, where I’d like to end my political career where I started,” said Bishop, who decades ago proposed to his wife in the gallery that overlooks the House floor. “The House has always been my favorite place.”
In a Dec. 19 letter to House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, Gwynn said he had planned to run for one last term, but his daughter’s accident prompted discussions about whether he should retire sooner.
Ashlyn Gwynn, a member of the Cal State Fullerton soccer team, was riding electric scooters with teammate Lauren Turner to a men’s soccer match when they were struck by a box truck, according to the Los Angeles Times. Turner died six weeks later from her injuries.
Rep. Gwynn said in his letter that doctors could not assure the family that Ashlyn would live, but two months later she is walking and talking.
“While Ashlyn’s recovery has been prodigious and undeniably touched by divine intervention,” Gwynn wrote, “her road to recovery will be intensive, lengthy, and requires a multidisciplinary team of therapists.”
Gwynn said he will resign from the House effective March 9, shortly after the upcoming legislative session concludes.
Bishop, now 74, said he plans to file next week to be on the ballot in November. Republican delegates in House District 6 — which spans parts of Weber and Box Elder counties — will choose a replacement to fill the remaining months of Gwynn’s term.
If Bishop is elected, it would write an unexpected epilogue to his political career. A public school teacher, he entered the Utah House in 1974, not long after finishing college, and served 16 years in the body, the last two as House speaker. He logged two terms as chair of the Utah Republican Party before being elected to Congress in 2002. He left the U.S. House in 2021.
Bishop said the reason he is seeking a return to elected office is that many of the issues he cared about in Congress — water development and control, housing affordability, “clawing back authority to the state,” and removing red tape so teachers can teach — are still important “and I want to make sure northern Utah has its voice heard.”
In 2020, Bishop ran as the lieutenant governor candidate in former GOP Chair Thomas Wright’s failed bid for the Republican nomination as Utah governor.
In 2021, Bishop was appointed as a member of Utah’s first Independent Redistricting Commission, created under the 2018 Better Boundaries initiative. He resigned abruptly before maps were recommended, saying that the process produced a gerrymandered outcome that neglected rural interests and guaranteed Democrats a seat.
Bishop said he still believes that all four of Utah’s congressional districts should have a mix of urban and rural voters, so that all the members of the delegation “are on the same page” in representing constituents’ interests.
He said a recent map adopted by 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson — chosen after she struck down the prior maps because they were gerrymandered in violation of the voter initiative — failed to include an urban-rural mix.
“That’s where the judge missed it big time,” he said. “I think I’m one of the few who can step back and understand what went wrong and how we can improve the process.”