Preconvention I was able to interview most of the candidates for the races I covered and have write-ups. I noticed a disturbing trend though with the mailers, town-halls, and text messages. I was hearing a lot more about how loyal people were to Trump and a lot less about the Constitution.
Convention day I arrived early and tried to park in the Salt Palace underground parking. They were still letting cars in even though it was completely full and I was stuck there for over 30 minutes. I even called the Salt Palace and asked them to tell people it was full as more cars were still coming in. The guy said he couldn’t do anything. I was finally able to park at City Creek.
Proceeded in and saw the huge credentialing line. I was told that people had to wait for over 2 ½ hours to get credentialed and I wondered how that would affect the early races. Later I found out that they pulled people out of line who needed to vote, and they were credentialed quickly. I think this significantly contributed to the delay but was necessary. The party chair later said that the Salt Palace was the only place available when the SCC finally gave him authorization and that other places were booked more than 3 years ahead.
It was fun going and talking to many of the candidates. Some I had interviewed or talked to online but had never met in person. It was also great to see old friends and I even talked to my county clerk a few times about an issue I will write about in a future article. I eventually got credentialed and it only took me 10 minutes. The convention started a few hours late and I was encouraged by how quickly the rules and agenda passed.
My son, who is at the U, even came down to join me. He loves pizza so we had to stop by Cox’s booth and get some. He later went and got me a footlong at Subway. That was lunch and dinner. I sat in the media section and he wrote down some ideas. I was going to help him move some things, if we were done at a reasonable hour. He quickly realized that we wouldn’t be.
The AG’s race went fine. It was interesting to hear Trent Christensen play the victim card. Several times the chair asked non-delegates to not sit in the main area. He said he didn’t want to call out any campaigns. I noticed that a lot of people wearing Phil Lyman shirts that weren’t credentialed were sitting up front.
When the governor came out there was a lot of booing.I went around to see who was doing it and saw that it was largely people wearing Lyman shirts. If you consider this free speech, why was Lyman and his supporters given so much extra time? Why were non-delegates allowed to “speak”? This was such a problem at county conventions that Carson Jorgensen even spoke up about it on Facebook, saying we aren’t antifa.
This must have been very frustrating to the governor. I know it was very frustrating to me. I don’t think the governor responded well. There was a lot of misinformation being spread by delegates and candidates and I remembered back to the sudden change in the transgender sports bill that the governor vetoed, only to have an improved bill pass later, which he signed. I was told then by an elected official that it was a political ploy to make the governor look bad. It worked.
Eventually we moved on to the CD races. And finally, the senate race. I enjoyed talking to even more friends and we were able to have some longer discussions. I enjoyed talking to former elected officials, such as my old representative, Jack Draxler, thanking him for how patient he was with me back in the day. Late in the evening, I even had a good conversation with former Governor Herbert, and I thanked him for always being kind to my kids. We were both very tired.
I was very glad I brought some noise dampeners that I could easily stick in my ears. Staggs was literally yelling into the microphone and was extremely loud, even with the noise dampeners.
The convention could have been run much more efficiently but was forced into a lot of constraints by the SCC and the number of candidates. Realistically all the voting could have happened in less than an hour without all the speeches and ranked choice voting but maybe you lose something by being too efficient.
Overall, it was a very long day and many people had hours of driving ahead when the convention was forced to end at midnight. But running until midnight was ridiculous. These events can be a lot of fun but I am more tired the next day than if I would have stayed up all night. I am just grateful my travel time was only about 30 minutes each way.