With Brady Brammer winning the State Senate seat following the resignation of Dr. Mike Kennedy, his house seat is now open to a special convention to replace him. Here are the candidates. The special convention takes place on Saturday, December 7th at 10:00 am at Viewpoint Middle School.
Kristen Chevrier
Kristen is no stranger to politics in Utah County. While a student at BYU she worked on people’s campaigns and then later discovered the caucus system. She has served in many positions, including a legislative chair and county education officer. Kristen has also been on the State Central Committee for many years. She also spends a lot of time up at the legislature during the session helping get bills passed or blocked.
Kristen received her Masters in English from BYU and has taught at private schools and even freshman English at BYU. She has also homeschooled all five of her children and is an advocate for more choice in education. Kristen is opposed to regulations for homeschool and sees the government offering funds as attaching strings. While homeschooling, she wrote an article about how to homeschool on a shoe-string budget.
Data privacy, especially around health, is an important issue for her. She promotes informed consent and opposes all government health mandates, including vaccines and masks.
Election integrity is also an important issue. She is in favor of only having one day to vote and using paper ballots. Kristen also likes absentee ballots, which people have to explicitly request. She is exploring the idea of having people needing to request them each election.
When asked about the several issues Utah County has recently had with its clerk, including more votes cast than people that checked in, she said she hasn’t had time to research it thoroughly enough to make a statement. She is currently talking to the involved parties and will look into several proposed bills in the legislature.
When asked what books she is reading, she listed –
Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
Harry Potter – J.K. Rowling
Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human – Naomi Watts
The Coddling of the American Mind – Jonathan Haidt
The Law – Frederic Bastiat
Dr Mary’s Monkey – Edward T. Haslam
John Anderson
John received his English degree from BYU and his MBA and Masters of Health Organization Management from Texas Tech. He currently lives in Alpine, where he is friends with the mayor and works with the city council.
John loves Utah, calling it an amazing place, but is concerned about 40% growth in the next 15 years. People are discovering Utah and this is both good and bad. John has a marketing background and worked for Salt Lake County, and helped bring the hockey club and baseball team to Utah.
He also said that we just finished an amazing month of politics, and it was bizarre to see lawfare used against Trump. He said the red wave was amazing but is concerned that Utah skewed slightly left.
If elected, John wants to serve on the budget and healthcare committees. He spent most of his career in the healthcare industry and wants people to be able to get the right care at the right price. John explained how hospitals are required to show prices but they only share it in a machine readable form. He helped start starthealth.com to help people know the costs for planned procedures, so they can shop around, usually saving 70%. He said that if you are going to mandate price transparency, at least make it useful.
Regarding taxes, John sees the money as sacred. Government doesn’t make money, it just takes it. Government should be there only as a failsafe. When asked where to cut, he likes the idea of removing the Department of Education and allocating the money back to the states. When asked where he would cut in Utah, he couldn’t think of any. He admitted that Utah is already the best fiscally run state. He does want to put the brakes on departments growing though.
John also enjoys listening to delegates, saying he likes the caucus system. He wants to hear their issues. One thing he has heard, and is supportive of, is slowing down requests for multi-tenant housing. He believes that more of these requests are coming.
John wants to understand what money is coming from out of the state for ballot initiatives, such as the independent commission for redistricting along with signatures to get candidates on the ballot. He wants to explore the possibility of limiting them.
When asked what he is reading or has recently read, he listed
Undaunted Courage – Stephen Ambrose
The Killer Angels – Michael Shaara
And several religious books.
Kelly Smith
Kelly grew up in Dallas and came to BYU, getting married after her freshman year. She lived in American Fork, but now lives in Cedar Hills. She eventually finished her degree from Eastern Oregon University, online, while her kids were growing up. Kelly taught preschool at her home and then taught Kindergarten and 2nd grade, but retired in 2019. She has been on the Cedar Hills City Council for the last four years.
She loves being on the city council but is very motivated by state overreach which prevents the cities from making their own decisions. A decision might be great for many cities but cities like Cedar Hills have different needs and circumstances. For example, they have no more land to grow. When asked for an example, she talked about a law that was passed to allow “Attached Dwelling Units”. The state said where they could be put, which overrode local zoning laws. She likened it to a camel sticking its nose in a tent. We need to be consistent with having decisions pushed more locally, not just from the federal government to the states. Cities have also had to band together to have a stronger voice. The state should be a partner, not an adversary. She also feels that she has done well at the city level and wants a bigger challenge.
When asked about committees, she said she is interested in education and social issues. She thinks that we can find ways to fund our schools better. Kelly appreciates the many options that parents and kids have, including charter and online. She isn’t completely opposed to vouchers but doesn’t think it should include twice the WPU (weighted pupil unit) ($8000 vs $4000). She is opposed to regulation of homeschooling as long as they don’t take public money. If they do, there needs to be some accountability.
Kelly believes that the job is to represent, not to have her own agenda. She needs to go and seek different people’s viewpoints. The majority can be wrong so you can’t just go with them, but they can also be right. Her job isn’t to make friends but to write good policy / less legislation, not to make friends.
When asked what she is reading or has recently read, she listed
A lot of mystery books
Get out the Vote – Donald Green
Getting to Yes – Roger Fish
Rereading Brave New World – Aldous Huxley