With Senator Mitt Romney not running for reelection the field is wide open. Here are the GOP challengers. A party nominee may be chosen April 27th at the state convention.
Candidates
Brad Wilson – Qualified through signatures
Brad did not respond to requests to interview him.
Trent Staggs – Qualified through convention
Trent did not respond to requests to interview him.
John Curtis – Qualified through signatures
John did not respond to requests to interview him.
Jason Walton – Qualified through signatures
Jason did not respond to requests to interview him.
Josh Randall – Lost at convention
Josh Randall is a CPA and oil and gas accountant and works for SITLA, Utah Trust Lands Administration as an audit manager. He graduated from Utah State University in accounting and received his Masters in accounting from Weber State University.
When asked what books he was reading or had recently read, he listed –
The Creature from Jekyll Island – Edward Griffin
Writing of Neal A Maxwell – Neal A Maxwell
The Doctrine and Covenants
The Book of Mormon
Teaching in the Savior’s Way
Josh said that Utah is one of the top 9 states for oil and gas and that 20% of Utah is trust lands. Per the state constitution, all of the revenue from them goes to public education. His office administers leases for solar, oil, gas, and grazing… leases with dozens of industries.
Josh said that when he worked for a company in southeast New Mexico and helped change the way they did reporting for land owners and to save millions in royalties. He helped another company in midwest Texas. After spending time reading the laws, he changed some business practices, getting 6 million more in tax refunds. The Wyoming government called to see why they were able to get such a big refund. This helped the company get out of the red.
Faith, Family, Fiscal Discipline are Josh’s priorities. Josh said our greatest need is an infusion of faith. He paraphrased John Adams that the Constitution is inadequate for an immoral people. Josh believes in the hard work of knocking doors to persuade people and that faith precedes the miracle. He wants to empower people to live their religion and believes that the separation of church and state has been misinterpreted. He wants more people to live their religion when they go to the ballot box. We need God’s help to reach across the aisle.
When asked about supporting Trump, Josh said that it is very hard to judge Biden and Trump. Neither have a perfect character and Desantis was his first choice. Josh said that Trump was very pro religious freedom and good at protecting the unborn. Trump doesn’t drink alcohol or smoke. He has many terrible statements but seems repentant of some. Nobody is going to be a perfect candidate. He then compared Trump to Saul from the New Testament and Alma the Younger from the Book of Mormon, saying that people can change. It is far better to do the right things and try to fix the problems than give up. Josh said he tries to vote for those who can become the president.
Josh disagrees with the 2016 Obergefell decision to allow same-sex marriage and said that marriage is between a man and a woman. All state constitutions reference God, so does the Declaration of Independence.
Josh believes in a divine origin for this country and the Constitution. When other international coalitions conflict with our Constitution, our Constitution takes precedence. All men are created equal. It is a beautiful concept, even though it took a long time to get there. The US has advanced the world far more than any country. If we can’t make it work in America, where can we? Other countries look up to us.
Josh sees immigration as another big deal. He is pro-immigrant and has been friendly to every culture in the world as long as they have a reverence for God. Josh believes that former President Trump did a good job on the border. He said that we shouldn’t shelve the Constitution to appease NATO, he explained that we have defense and certain freedoms that our federal government protects, and other countries don’t have those same priorities. Josh doesn’t agree with funding priorities of coalitions that are in direct opposition to what is best for the United States. He mentioned Turkey as an example of a country that hasn’t prioritized freedoms that our constitution prioritizes. He conceded that allying with Russia during World War 2 was a bit of an anomaly but stated that an enemy to our enemy became an ally in an extreme case where the United States had a greater enemy than Russia.
Part of Josh’s plan to reduce the deficit is to privatize Social Security/Medicaid, decentralize and repeal certain mandates of the federal reserve, re-locate 1-1.5 million federal employees to the private sector, and send food stamps and Medicaid to the states. He wants to use his own experience to improve the situation. Josh believes in working to persuade 99 other senators and believes people can change. He talks about fiscal discipline and practices what he preaches. Josh and his wife and volunteers run their campaign. He doesn’t believe in buoying up the elections industry or trying to solve problems by just throwing money at them. He and his wife run their website and campaign. We need that mentality shift. He has been able to change his life and has helped others do the same. And he strongly believes he can help the Senate and country to adopt major positive changes and cultural shifts. He wants to hear from the millions of Utahns that this position represents.
Clark White – Withdrew
Clark withdrew from the Senate race after being interviewed.
Carolyn Phippen – Lost at convention
Carolyn Phippen has worked in state politics for the last 10 years in various jobs. She started at BYU and later graduated from the U with a Bachelors in Political Science and Government. Carolyn researched issues and wrote white papers about policy and bills. She worked as Chief of Communications for Representative Greg Hughes when he was speaker for the Utah House. Carolyn was also the Area Director and Intergovernmental Affairs Advisory for Senator Mike Lee. She was then Executive Director for Freedom Front before running for the Senate. Carolyn handled internal communications much more than external ones. She has also raised kids for the last 20 years.
When asked what she is currently reading or has recently read Carolyn had a long list.
Intellectuals – Paul Johnson
America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything – Christopher Rufo
Dark Future: Uncovering the Great Reset’s Terrifying Next Phase – Glenn Beck
Saving Nine: The Fight Against the Left’s Audacious Plan to Pack the Supreme Court and Destroy American Liberty by Senator Mike Lee
Sold Out: How Broken Supply Chains, Surging Inflation, and Political Instability Will Sink the Global Economy – James Rickards
America’s Choice: A Nation Under God or Without God -Tad R Callister
The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity – Norman Doidge
Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans: The Battle That Shaped America’s Destiny – Brian Kilmeade
Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies – M. Stanton Evans
The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On – Peter Zeihan
Carolyn talked about how Obamacare expansion was sold to Utahns as Healthy Utah, a program that would expand Medicaid to a population of mostly single, able-bodied men without dependent children. She was responsible for researching and writing the arguments to convince the Utah House and Senate why this was bad. She has focused on answering “What is conservative policy?” and “What kind of principles are we trying to focus on?”.
Freedom Front is a group formed by business executives who were concerned about government overreach during the Covid-19 pandemic. She worked to educate the public and worked with elected officials regarding good policy.
Carolyn is concerned that we are producing soft kids that aren’t able to do hard things. Adversity is necessary to drive us forward. We put them in really structured environments early on and this defies the historical developmental process. Kids being too focused only on academics is making them unstable. Kids aren’t learning to navigate challenging situations.
She said that she grew up a Mormon in New York and learned to question everything. While serving an LDS mission, she was one of the first sister missionaries into Czechoslovakia after the Berlin Wall came down. Carolyn has loved deeply studying and researching policy, even when she was young. Policy is what drives her and she thinks she understands policy much deeper than other candidates. She always subscribes to newspapers she disagrees with.
Carolyn believes that she understands context better than others in the race. Our time is unique and there has never been this level of prosperity and opportunity. There have been so many developments in recent generations.
Carolyn believes that we are following an existential crisis and we need people in positions of leadership with ideas and experience as to how to solve these problems and have experience fixing them. She has not been the one in front of the cameras, but the one actually doing the work and knowing how to effectively drive good policy.
Carolyn wants to return to constitutional principles. 90% of the problems were created by the government. We will fail if we don’t have the right people working together, ones that can explain why it matters. We have already been kicking the can down the road for 4 decades. She said that we are having violations of executive power, too many regulations, and ¾ of new jobs are government jobs but was unsure of the source.
Carolyn then said that when the dollar is the reserve currency for the world, but we continue to print without restraint, it impacts not only our own citizens but it crushes those in developing nations. She then said that Twitter stifled free speech during Covid at the government’s behest. Good information drives good results. When information is hidden it raises red flags. Government isn’t meant to control us.
One bill that Carolyn is very interested in is the REINS Act. She believes that the government has put too much power in unelected bureaucrats. This act forces regulation that raises consumer prices or costs more than $100 million a year has to go through Congress. This act made it through the House this year but is stalled in the Senate. She said that Senator Rand Paul is currently trying to get it through. Agencies have been given broad deference by courts and Congress but the Chevron case before the Supreme Court will reconsider this.
Carolyn told about her dad, as one of the people who held a patent on the catalytic converter and this has done more for clean air than all the politicians in the world combined. She explained what happened to the station wagon. With the increase in fuel efficiency standards, automobile manufacturers stopped producing as many station wagons and instead started building big cars on a truck chassis so as not to hurt their automobile fleet average. Trucks, obviously, had a higher average fuel efficiency standard. It did nothing to reduce the level of pollution, but the politicians probably felt better.
Carolyn sees taxation as enslavement when it crushes our economy. She mentioned that many African countries that are tied to the dollar have suffered with all of the inflation. Their currencies have been weakened and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are taking advantage of these changes.
She questions if tax cuts actually reduced revenue to the treasury and doesn’t defend the massive deficit spending, even by her own party. She is not a shill for any person or party and maintains that it is immoral what we are doing to our children and other countries.
When asked about some of her tweets blaming democrats, she said that she never throws barbs or seeks to offend but to state facts. As a leader she isn’t afraid to speak the truth or say how it is. We have laid down and played dead for too long.
Brent Orrin Hatch – Lost at convention
Brent went to BYU and then Columbia for law school. He then worked for Judge Robert Bork. Bork was later nominated by Reagan to the Supreme Court. Brent then went and worked for President Reagan himself and became the youngest general counsel in the federal government at the time. He handled civil litigation for the Department of Justice. He was also an Associate White House Counsel for President George H.W. Bush.
When asked what he was currently reading or had recently read, Brent listed –
Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton
Centuries of Meditations – Thomas Traherne
Life and Fate – Vasily Grossman
Brent said that back then they were viewed as right wing crazies. The idea of original intent for judges was a strange concept back then but later caught on. Reagan couldn’t care less what was in the newspapers though. Eventually he left to raise his kids in Utah. He worked with the Federalist Society and others to help recommend Supreme Court nominees to Republican Presidents. Brent also helped start a law firm in Salt Lake City. He eventually left that to start a small litigation boutique. He recently handled a case where the client was sued for $3.6 billion dollars.
Brent said you won’t like him if you are a John Curtis fan. He believes in limited government and fiscally conservative budgets. When asked where he would cut, he said he would start with going back to a pre-pandemic budget. You could also start by cutting the pork from things like the omnibus bill. Some would raise taxes or cut entitlements. He would first cut the red tape and create productivity in the federal government. Brent said that the debt is now higher than the GDP.
Bent also said that you need to be smart about things because issues come up, such as Haiti. When asked about Haiti, he didn’t know much, but he said that you need an international coalition to help create some type of government there. He also said that Governor Desantis has stationed national guard troops to block refugees coming into Florida.
Regarding the war in Ukraine, Brent said that we were promised that we were sending old military equipment and it would be replenished with new equipment. He said that this hasn’t happened. There is always something new that comes up and we need to protect our homeland and allies.
When asked about growing up with his dad being a politician, Brent said that he was in college before his dad was elected. They would go on long walks together and discuss various issues and what legal cases he was dealing with. He praised his dad for being able to move legislation more to the right and that he spent a lot of time doing the really hard work. Brent added that he is more conservative than his father was.
He said that you have to be able to hold on to your core principles before you can talk to the other side. If you are uncooperative with others, your voice won’t be heard. He doesn’t have an interest in all the drama.
Chandler Tanner – Lost at convention