When speaking to reporters Monday, U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy and her challenger for the 3rd District Republican nomination, former state Rep. Phil Lyman, emphasized the distinctions they believed made them the better choice for GOP voters in the June 23 primary.

However, for an hour before that, Maloy and Lyman spent their only broadcast debate largely in agreement on the big issues — war, water, public lands and data centers.

After the debate, Maloy focused on her seat on important committees in the House — the appropriations committee in charge of spending, the committee in charge of natural resources and the Western Caucus, a group of Republican members from western states.

Being in those positions, she said, “gives me the ability to focus my colleagues’ attention on the issues that matter to Utah.”

Lyman targeted Maloy’s voting record in her nearly three years in the House. “She’s done a lot of good things, but she’s done a lot of really bad things that I think are going to hurt people,” he said.

He said she voted not to reveal payments the House made to people who said they were sexually harassed by members of Congress; she voted to continue legal immunity to makers of pesticides; and she voted to allow the government to continue monitoring communications without a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“I think people recognize that we’re heading into a surveillance state,” Lyman said. “It’s not to be negative about my opponent. It’s about saying, ‘Do you realize that the stakes are very, very high on these things and the person that we elect is going to affect these things moving forward?’ And this is her track record, so far, which I think is a poor track record.”

A spokesperson for Maloy did not immediately comment on Lyman’s allegation.

Guiding the Iran war

During the debate, both candidates declared support for President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, a country Maloy said has been “the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism since before I was born.” They likewise agreed that Israel has been an important ally in the Middle East that the United States should continue to support.

But they also agreed that Congress needs to be involved in guiding the war. Giving Trump carte blanche to execute the war as he wants without congressional involvement will mean the Democratic presidents in the future will claim to be able to exercise the same authority.

Lyman left the state House to run against Gov. Spencer Cox in 2024, losing in that effort but refusing to accept defeat, filing a series of unsuccessful lawsuits contesting the results and referring to Cox as an “illegitimate” governor.

Maloy won the special election in 2023 to replace former Rep. Chris Stewart, and held on by just 176 votes to win the party’s nomination in her reelection bid in 2024. At the party’s nominating convention in April, she edged Lyman, 51% to 49%. She had raised nearly $870,000, as of the April campaign disclosure filing. Lyman has not filed a disclosure, because he had not raised or spent $5,000 as of the April deadline. The next reports are due June 11.

The winner of the June 23 primary will face Kent Udell, Democratic nominee for the race. The district favors the Republican nominee by more than 40 percentage points, making it one of the safest GOP seats in the nation.

Decisions over data centers

Lyman said he was at a meeting in Box Elder County with opponents of a hyperscale data center making its way through the approval process. They had different political views than he did, Lyman said, but “the one thing I think we have in common is we don’t like being treated poorly, and the people were treated poorly in this instance.”

He said elected officials dismissed residents’ concerns. “The response was a reprimand, condescension towards those people,” he said.

Maloy said that “on paper, Utah is a perfect place to build data centers. Unfortunately, data centers aren’t built on paper.”

She said Utah has the potential to lead when it comes to artificial intelligence, “but in order to build data centers in Utah, we’ve got to make sure that we’re siting them where people want them” and the state’s natural resources are duly considered.

Maloy said the U.S. needs data centers domestically to keep pace with China and be a leader in AI policy; Lyman said, of the Box Elder, specifically, he believes it is a tool to surveil citizens.

Helping the Colorado River

Both candidates supported increasing federal investment in water infrastructure along the Colorado River corridor.

Lyman said big, well-connected developers have been given too much control over how Utah’s water resources are allocated. “If you control the water, you control everything in this state,” he said. Lyman said the federal government should give Utah more flexibility in managing national forests and watersheds.

Maloy said she would like to see the federal government develop a plan that would make water use sustainable for the next 50 to 100 years. After the debate, Maloy also said she would support federal investment in desalinating ocean water along coastal areas.

Who should control public lands?

Maloy touted her push to use the Congressional Review Act to repeal a land management plan for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that she said did not give adequate consideration to local residents. The House has not voted on the bill.

She said she would support transferring parcels of federal land out of federal ownership — those that are islands within cities or those adjacent to cities that can be used for housing or infrastructure, but she would oppose relinquishing federal control of national parks.

Lyman said he does not support transferring federal property to the state.

“I’ve seen what they will do with that land,” he said. “I’ve watched the cronyism and the pay-to-play and the picking winners and losers, and I do not trust the state of Utah in this situation to be in charge of divvying up the public land.”

Instead, he said, he supports a reboot of the Homestead Act that, during the 19th century, allowed federal land to be sold to private ownership.

Correction • June 1, 7:20 p.m.: The story has been updated to correct the Democratic nominee for the district.