SALT LAKE CITY — Republican political candidates are ramping up their advertising ahead of the June primary election.
On TV, candidates for the U.S. Senate, Congress, Governor and Attorney General have been running ads. So far, FOX 13 News has seen ads on TV for congressional candidates Celeste Maloy, Mike Kennedy, Case Lawrence and JR Bird. In the U.S. Senate race, Brad Wilson and John Curtis are blanketing the airwaves. Utah Attorney General candidate Derek Brown is running an ad. Governor Spencer Cox and his intraparty challenger, Phil Lyman, are now on TV.
Political action committees have also started jumping in, backing some candidates and attacking others.
"For those people that are looking at their TV and they say, 'How am I getting this many ads?' The answer is this is more than we’ve ever had before because we’ve had more candidates than we’ve ever had before. This is the current state of politics in Utah," said Jason Perry, who heads the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.
There's several reasons why. In a Republican supermajority state, the June primary is often the decider of the November election.
"For many of these elections and these races, this is the general election," Perry said.
And it's created a feeding frenzy among candidates, Perry observed.
"What’s happening right now is people are getting their commercials out, they’re raising some money. Ballots come out in about two weeks and so they’re really trying to hit that right moment in time," he said. "But as one commercial comes out, the opponents all say 'I can't believe they got their commercial out already. I've got to get my commercial out.'"
With some races, it's an opportunity for candidates to introduce themselves or differentiate themselves with a wide variety of Republicans ranging from the MAGA wing and hardline conservatives to moderates and the "Never Trumpers." Congressional candidate John "Frugal" Dougall just launched a billboard that proclaims him as "Mainstream not MAGA," while Senate candidate Jason Walton is blanketing the state with his own billboards.
"When you have some races like CD3 that have five candidates, how do you carve out space on the political spectrum? You start tailoring your commercials to a certain segment of the Republican party," Perry observed.
The primary election is June 25. The Republican primary is closed, meaning that only registered Republicans are able to vote in it.
