SALT LAKE CITY — Tyler Boyles is getting ready to spend his weekends in Nevada and Arizona.
The University of Utah student, who is a member of the College Republicans group on campus, has signed up to canvass for the GOP in both critical battleground states in the final weeks of the election.
"It's a great opportunity for me to make a difference and hopefully swing some voters and turn Arizona and Nevada red," Boyles told FOX 13 News on Monday.
Boyles is among a number of people the Utah Republican Party is signing up to help out former President Donald Trump's campaign and other down ticket races in Nevada and Arizona.
"With the comfort level that we have with most of our races outside of Salt Lake County, that gives us some ability to go and be a force for good and a force multiplier for a couple of our neighboring states," Utah GOP Chair Robert Axson told FOX 13 News on Monday.
The volunteers will knock doors, hand out pamphlets and urge people to vote Republican in states that could flip the balance of power for control of both the White House and the U.S. Senate. Both Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris' campaign have been aggressively targeting Arizona and Nevada.
"Voting is just as important here as it is in Nevada, but it might make a difference more so in Nevada," said Riley Beesley, a University of Utah student who will be going to help the GOP efforts. "We really need to get that to flip red."
For U student Alexis Morgan, it is an opportunity to make her voice heard.
"This is a very critical time especially for young voters, specifically for me it’s the very first time my age range is able to vote for president," she said. "But also other races are important as well. So I want to make sure youth voices are heard in political spheres."
It is not the first time the Utah GOP has mobilized volunteers to go into swing states (and both major parties have done it in the past). The Utah Republican Party actively did it in 2012 when Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee for president, Axson said.
But the Utah Democratic Party is critical of the timing of the effort this year. The first wave of volunteers will head out the same weekend as the semi-annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Democratic party put out a statement last week blasting the effort.
"You don’t try and politically organize people in the time that would conflict with General Conference," said Eric Biggart, the chair of the Utah Democratic Party's LDS Democrats Caucus. "But also it shows some weakness and vulnerability on the part of the Trump campaign in Arizona and Nevada."
Axson rebuffed their criticism as "short-sighted."
"There’s no reason I can’t do both. Conference sounds just as good in Nevada as it does here in Utah," he said. "There’s nothing keeping us from being faithful members of whatever our faith community is as well as dedicated neighborly citizens as Republicans."
The Utah Democratic Party said it would not be sending any of its members to the battleground states, focusing instead on its local races. The Utah GOP said it has additional plans to send volunteers to swing states as long as they're needed in the critical weeks leading up to the elections.
