‘Community Spread,’ Episode 3, Season Two: Fighting The Utah Republican Power Grab
Kevin and Representative Rosemary Lesser Discuss Amendment D That will appear on ballots this November
PODCAST/OPINION
Episode, Season Three: Fighting the Utah Republican Power Grab
In this episode of “Community Spread,” Kevin and Representative Rosemary Lesser discuss the Utah State Legislature's deceitful power grab when they passed a constitutional amendment during an "emergency" special session. Amendment D will appear on ballots this November and if ratified by the voters it will effectively gut the power of the citizen led ballot initiative that brought us medical marijuana and Medicaid expansion in 2018.
Listen here.
Episode 3 opening Monologue
By Kevin Lundell
The Utah State Legislature has recently made it clear that they do not respect Utah voters. They don’t trust your judgment; they don’t honor your voice; and most of all they don’t fear any repercussions from your vote. Buckle up because in the next five minutes, I’m going to walk through a complex set of events, where at every step the state legislature cheats and lies with the intent to grab power away from Utah citizens and hoard it for themselves. It all starts with a deceptive little stunt called gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering is the process by which elected officials choose who votes for them by drawing the boundaries of the districts they represent. If you're not familiar with how undemocratic this process can be, look no further than what the Utah Legislature did when drawing boundaries in 2022. Before these maps were redrawn Utah had one competitive US House of Representative District. In 2018 Ben McAdams, a democrat, was elected to the US house by 0.2 percentage points, a mere 694 votes. In 2020 McAdams lost that same seat by 1 percentage point to Republican Burgess Owens. Clearly this was a highly competitive district where every vote counts. So what happened after maps were redrawn in 2022? Owens won that same district by a whopping 29 points! And just like that Utah no longer has a competitive congressional seat and the new maps all but guarantee that all 4 US House of Representatives from Utah will be extreme conservatives.
These same tactics were also used in drawing the maps for the Utah House and Senate. I currently live in the center of downtown Ogden. My neighbors have a different state senator than I do because the line is drawn right through the center of our city. The same is true if you live in Park City where they also divided that community by drawing a line right through the center of it. This is not a mistake. The legislators who drew these maps are intentionally dividing cities with progressive strongholds and diluting their votes out among more conservative rural areas. Let’s call this what it is — Cheating!
In 2018 the people of Utah voted, via ballot initiative, that they didn’t want this kind of cheating taking place in their state. But the Legislature brazenly ignored the 2018 ballot initiative, overturned the will of the people, and drew their own maps so they could continue to cheat. These maps were the ones responsible for Representative Owens 29 point win in 2022.
Fast forward to July of 2024 and The Utah Supreme Court unanimously rules in favor of the people’s 2018 ballot initiative. Justice Paige Petersen writes in her opinion: “We hold that when Utahns exercise their right to reform the government through a citizen initiative, their exercise of these rights is protected from government infringement.” Effectively the supreme court slapped the state legislature on the wrist and said the people voted that they don’t want you to cheat anymore and you cannot ignore them.
This is existential for the current makeup of the state legislature; if they aren't allowed to cheat by drawing their own maps they will lose several seats to the opposing party potentially ending their super majority and they will have to work infinitely harder in many areas to actually listen and respond to their voters. So what did the legislature do this time to preserve its power? Well, they held an illegal “emergency session” to change the state constitution in order to get around the supreme court's ruling.
So let's summarize — for decades the Utah Legislature has been cheating when drawing district election maps. The people then voted, via ballot initiative, that they were fed up with this kind of cheating and that they wanted an independent commission to draw those maps. The legislature ignored that vote and drew their own maps anyway. The state supreme court then ruled that the legislature could not ignore ballot initiatives and that they had to listen to the will of the people. The legislature, hell bent on continuing to cheat, immediately held an emergency session to try to change the state constitution so that they can snatch power away from the people making ballot initiatives non-binding. Remember the ballot initiative process was the only way Utahans got access to medicaid expansion and medical marijuana.
Well now it’s up to us, the voters. An amendment to change the state constitution requires the majority of Utah voters to pass and it will be on the ballot this November. But this is going to be a challenge because as you’ll hear in this discussion the state legislature is so afraid of Utah Voters that they are intentionally using deceitful language on the ballot to hide their true motives. It is the job of everyone listening to this podcast to help inform your neighbor that this amendment will allow the state legislature to take away your power and your voice while consolidating its own. Vote No On Amendment D.
On the Pod today we have Representative Rosemary Lesser. Representative Lesser served 15 years in the United States Air Force, where she ended up moving to Ogden, Utah. After her service in the Air Force, she continued her career as an OB/GYN serving Utah Women in the Ogden area for 28 years. She is currently the only elected democrat outside of Salt Lake County and she has been fighting against these sorts of shenanigans every step of the way.
Two days after we recorded this conversation some big changes happened; Judge Dianna Gibson ruled that Amendment D was invalid and won’t be counted citing the deceptive and misleading language that was to appear on the ballot. Now there is a little caveat: the amendment will still be printed on the ballot just in case her ruling gets overturned on appeal, in which case Utahans will be voting on the amendment. Phew are you keeping up? So it’s still important that we inform our neighbors to vote no on amendment D.
Listen to “Community Spread” Episode 3, Season Two here or an your favorite podcast streaming service.