Rick Egan/Pool photo/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP
As the Republican Party nationally begins to grapple with what it looks like after President Trump leaves office, Utah could provide a road map. A solidly Republican state, the last time Utah voters backed a Democrat for president was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Despite its conservative roots, Utah has always had a complicated relationship with Trump. Utahns gave him the smallest margin of victory out of any Republican state in 2016 — less than 50% of the vote. While Trump increased his support among Utahns in 2020 and 2024, he never exceeded 60%.
Republican candidates vying for Congress this primary election cycle are steadfast conservatives, but they aren’t using Trump’s name on the campaign trail. That is likely intentional, according to Chris Karpowitz, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, as campaigning on Trump and his policies might not appeal to Utah voters in the same way it would in other red states.
“There’s many Republican voters in Utah who have sort of made their peace with Donald Trump enough to vote for him,” Karpowitz said. “But that doesn’t mean they necessarily support either his style of politics or some of the policies that he pursues.”
“They are loyal to the party, not the president,” he added.
Utahns are both fiscally and socially conservative. But they have historically been turned off by Trump’s approach to issues, such as immigration. Some of Trump’s distasteful comments about Islam and other faiths have also repelled voters in a state that is heavily associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was founded on religious freedom.
Now, two years into Trump’s final term as president, Utahns’ approval of the job he’s doing hit an all-time low of 44% in April, according to a Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll. Support among Utah Republicans has dropped 10 points.
A safe Republican seat but no mention of Trump
In Utah’s 3rd Congressional District’s Republican primary, both candidates are conservative and both support Trump.
But neither Rep. Celeste Maloy nor former state Rep. Phil Lyman is making much mention of the president on the campaign trail, instead using old campaign strategies from before loyalty to Trump loyalists was a litmus test for how Republican a candidate is.
Maloy and Lyman are focused on the issues affecting the district, highlighting accomplishments and, in Lyman’s case, attacking his opponent’s voting record.
While both candidates are Republicans, they represent distinct arms of the party. Maloy is the more policy-driven, establishment candidate. Lyman is the America First, Freedom Caucus-aligned candidate.
It’s a primary election that will signal the brand of Republican Utah’s new 3rd Congressional District wants. The district was born out of mid-decade redistricting after a Utah judge ruled the congressional maps violated the intent of a voter-approved ballot initiative.
It’s the state’s largest district, spanning from the north all the way to the southern border with Arizona. It includes vast rural areas, all five of Utah’s national parks, popular ski destination Park City, a sliver of blue-leaning voters in the Salt Lake City suburbs, Brigham Young University in Provo (the college founded and owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and southwestern Utah, one of the fastest growing regions in the country.
Aside from its monstrous size, it’s also one of the reddest districts in the U.S., according to the Cook Political Report.
Maloy, who did not respond to NPR’s multiple interview requests, hasn’t had the warmest welcome from Utah’s Republican voters. She won a special election in 2023, then lost at the Republican nominating convention in 2024, only narrowly winning the primary election that year. Even though Maloy gained Trump’s endorsement ahead of the 2024 election, her margin of victory was just over 200 votes.
It’s that ambivalence to Maloy that Lyman hopes to capitalize on. Lyman is a candidate Utah voters are familiar with after he ran for governor in 2024. This time, he’s taking a vastly different campaign approach.
Lyman was pardoned by Trump during his first term after he led an illegal ATV protest tour on protected federal land, and while in the Utah Legislature, he aligned himself with Trump and the MAGA movement.
Now, in his campaign for Congress, Lyman wants to take down the establishment, limit the federal government, bolster rural viability and increase transparency, especially around elections.
“What is at stake here is are we going to go down a collectivist technocratic, centralized power model, or are we going to retain an American independent individual autonomy,” Lyman told NPR. “I believe in the Constitution. I believe in the government staying in its lanes. I believe that a government closer to the people is better. I don’t like centralized power.”
He also believes the Republican Party leadership has lost sight of its blue-collar, middle-class America roots. Lyman was raised in rural Utah, and he said he’s seen his community left behind. Lyman is drawn to the Freedom Caucus, the coalition of ultraconservative Republicans in Congress that has gained a reputation for breaking with the party — and, at times, the president.
“I don’t agree with everybody in the Freedom Caucus, but when I look at their motives, it seems like they’re loyal to the Constitution, loyal to their constituents and loyal to freedom,” he said.
But missing from Lyman’s pitch is loyalty to the president. While there isn’t a single doubt that Lyman is a Trump supporter, there is a question about how much broadcasting that will help him in the primary. Karpowitz, the BYU professor, said it makes sense not to campaign on a president who is unpopular nationwide and with a constituency that may have voted for the president but that is ready to move on.
Taking the pitch to voters
That’s on the Lyman campaign’s mind when volunteers went to knock on doors in Utah County, one of the most populated areas of the district. Neither of Lyman’s campaign volunteers mentioned the president, but they had a very consistent message.
“We are here supporting Phil Lyman because we feel like he’s the best candidate for the area,” said Lyman campaign volunteer Natalie Clawson. “He’s really big into transparency and trying to clean up government corruption. And he would take that to the national level.”
In the primary debate for the 3rd Congressional District, Maloy defended her work in Washington, like passing the tax cuts outlined in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (though she didn’t call them “Trump tax cuts” or even acknowledge the name of the legislation coined by the president). She also highlighted her work on the House Appropriations and Natural Resources Committees, saying it would benefit the voters in this district to reelect her.
“I think people in CD3 are going to be looking for someone who can competently represent their issues on a national stage and solve problems,” Maloy told Utah reporters after the debate. “That’s what I love to do. I’m a problem solver by nature. I like policy. That’s what got me into politics.”
Maloy and Lyman didn’t mention Trump in that debate unless the moderator specifically asked about him. On the U.S. war in Iran, Maloy supported the president’s intervention, despite him running on a “no new wars” platform.
“We stepped forward. We met the moment. But through the entire process, the administration has been focused on getting us to peace,” she said.
After her first full term in office, Maloy seems to have gained credibility. She won at the state’s Republican nominating convention this time, though only barely, with 50% of the vote.
Damon Cann, professor of political science at Utah State University, said for the most part, Utah’s Republican delegation has walked a fine line that has been successful.
“They’re not running as Trump Republicans. They’re running as Republicans who happened to have had support from Trump in the past, not running with an antipathy toward Trump or a rejection of Trumpism,” he said.
With less than a week before Utah’s primary election, Trump endorsed Maloy again on Truth Social. He also shared the exact same endorsement for the two other Utah Republican incumbents up for reelection, one of whom doesn’t have a primary challenger.
Karpowitz believes Trump’s endorsement won’t hurt Maloy, but it likely isn’t the golden ticket in Utah as it has been in other primary elections like Texas and Kentucky.
“Republicans in Utah are ambivalent enough about Donald Trump that I don’t think it carries quite the same weight that it might in other states,” he said.
