Kay Christofferson
State house representatives are elected every two years and Kay Christofferson is up for reelection in State House District 53, as the Republican nominee.
Kay was first elected in 2012 and has served 12 years. Kay has a background in civil engineering and currently serves as the chair of the House Transportation Committee. He is also on the Government Operations Interim Committee, the House Revenue and Taxation Committee, the Infrastructure and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee, the Retirement and Independent Entities Interim Committee, and the Transportation Interim Committee.
He has already done a lot of work with UDOT on the north Thanksgiving Point freeway interchange, an ongoing effort, and with the division of responsibility between UDOT and Lehi for managing East/West traffic. Kay has a $60 million bill for UDOT to buy right of way, so they don’t have to tear up businesses and homes later. He has told UDOT to start earlier.
Another important issue for Kay is federal lands, saying we can manage our own better and the federal government isn’t sensitive to our needs. He supports the current lawsuit against the BLM to have Utah manage its own land. He further said that it contributes to the housing issue in Utah as in many areas there are only narrow areas that can be developed. Kay was unsure whether we have enough water to support more homes though.
Kay doesn’t feel he needs a spotlight and prefers to continue quietly serving. When asked what books he was currently reading or had recently finished, he said Fossil Future by Alex Epstein.
Alex Day
Alex Day is also running for State House District 53 as the nominee for the United Utah Party. He works for Utah Community Credit Union, where he started as a teller and then advanced to a loan officer. Alex is also attending Utah Valley University, where he recently changed his major from Political Science to Applied Communications. He is running to give people a choice on the ballot.
Public education is a very important topic to Alex. He said that Utah is in last place with per pupil spending again after briefly overtaking Idaho. Instead of cutting taxes for the wealthy we should be putting that money into teacher’s salaries. Alex also doesn’t support vouchers as they pull money out of the school system. He believes that people with more money should contribute more and that an educated populace makes a better society. Alex also wants to look into making school lunch free, as several other states do. He doesn’t believe that the children should suffer from the mistakes of their parents where it interferes with their learning. Alex said that there are too many hoops to jump through for some of them to qualify for free / reduced lunch.
He also wants to see some changes to our election system. Alex prefers other voting systems such as Rank Choice Voting and Approval Voting. He would like to see the current pilot for Ranked Choice Voting extended. He is opposed to Amendment D, which was disqualified by a judge for not following notification requirements and being misleading. This amendment would remove petition power from the citizenry and allow the legislature to veto or amend any ballot initiatives.
Alex was disappointed to see that during the last redistricting, the legislature ignored the independent commission’s recommendations. That commission was created after a ballot initiative was approved by a close margin in 2018 and then altered by the legislature. Alex would rather have the legislature choose one of several options presented by the commission.
When asked what books he was currently reading or had recently finished, he mentioned
- How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky
- How Fascism Works, Jason F. Stanley
- Romney, A Reckoning, McKay Coppins
- Daring Greatly, Brené Brown