Politics
A MAGA push to erase a Dem House seat is triggering accusations of fraud and violence in Utah
National Republicans are throwing money and bodies at a down-ballot initiative to try to wrest back a congressional seat in Utah. Their efforts could blow up in their face.
With a looming February 15 deadline, Republicans have seen only half the number of verified signatures they need to move things forward. And the effort, which has the backing of President Donald Trump and support from multiple MAGA groups, has devolved into chaos.
Local county clerks are flagging hundreds of potentially fraudulent submissions. People have reportedly been repeatedly misled into signing the petition by signature-gatherers, with some telling local news outlets that they were told it was an anti-ICE petition. Those signature-gatherers have reported being assaulted by hecklers and their signature packets stolen or destroyed.
In the Beehive State, where politics are often seen by outsiders as cartoonishly friendly, this effort has turned so tumultuous that Republican Gov. Spencer Cox — who earned national attention for his pleas for civility after conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated in the state — called on Utahns to “resolve [their] disagreements peacefully.”
While the GOP groups insist they’ll have the numbers needed, they’re still far short — which would represent a major failure in a ruby-red state.
The effort aims to overturn a new judge-ordered congressional map that hands Democrats one safe blue seat by attempting to repeal an anti-gerrymandering law that would allow the Republican-controlled legislature to reinstall a more favorable map ahead of the 2028 elections. It has garnered support from Trump and his allies, who had already spent $4.3 million on the effort as of November — and have only ramped up since.
The signature-gathering initiative represents an early test of Republicans’ ground-game efforts in a midterm year where they face strong headwinds in the polls.
Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr, have signaled support to the Utah initiative, with Trump recently encouraging his Truth Social followers to support the “very important effort” to ”KEEP UTAH RED.”
Turning Point Action — the 501(c)(4) founded by the late Charlie Kirk, who was killed in the state last summer — is “all in” on the effort, its COO said, and is canvassing the state with a half-dozen events over the next week. A fleet of about 700 paid workers, many of them from out of state, have been hired to gather signatures, bankrolled by Securing American Greatness Inc., a 501(c)(4) previously run by former Trump White House official Taylor Budowich. And MAGA celebrity Scott Presler parachuted in last month for a series of events.
But so far, those efforts don’t appear to be paying off. As of Friday, the initiative had garnered just over 76,000 verified signatures, about half of the more than 140,000 required statewide for a measure to be added to this November’s ballot. A daily analysis conducted by independent journalist Bryan Schott shows the initiative on track to fall well short of the required signature thresholds: eight percent of all active registered voters statewide, and eight percent in at least 26 of the 29 Utah state Senate districts.
“The only thing that will matter is on the very last day, do we have enough signatures, and I strongly believe that we will,” said Brad Bonham, a Republican National Committeeman and initiative sponsor.
The initiative’s Republican backers claim the lagging signature count is part of their strategy. Bonham said the initiative’s sponsors have “many, many thousands of signatures” they are independently verifying and have not yet submitted. Utah Republican Party Chairman Rob Axson said “many tens of thousands” more have been submitted to county clerks and are undergoing verification.
“We feel very, very good about the strategy that we are executing on and the momentum that we’re building,” Axson said.
Dropping a large tranche of signatures close to the February 15 deadline could backfire, said Elizabeth Rasmussen, the executive director of Better Boundaries, the anti-gerrymandering group opposing the repeal, as signers still have a 45-day window after their signature is verified to remove it.
Rasmussen said her group mailed nearly 8,000 letters last week to petition signers encouraging them to remove their names, and will continue to do so in coming weeks. Her groups’ previous efforts have led to over 500 signatures removed, Rasmussen said.
And she’s not so sure that Trump’s involvement will help the GOP in a heavily conservative state whose voters nonetheless have long been skeptical of the president.
“Trump’s approval rating in Utah is at an all-time low,” Rasmussen said. “We’re not seeing that as a value add, if anything.”
The ongoing saga in Utah is an odd addendum to the nationwide redistricting push. In 2018, Utah voters passed Proposition 4, a ballot measure that created an independent redistricting commission to prevent partisan gerrymandering. Earlier this year, District Judge Dianna Gibson ruled that the GOP-controlled state legislature failed to comply with Prop 4 when it drew four safe Republican districts in the 2022 map. The GOP submitted another map with four safe seats last fall, but the judge selected a different map, which includes a blue seat in Salt Lake County, in November.
The GOP-controlled state legislature is appealing Gibson’s decision to the state Supreme Court, and two sitting U.S. House members joined a federal lawsuit pushing for the current, Republican-friendly map to be used in 2026. The state GOP’s signature-gathering push would repeal Prop 4 and allow the legislature to redraw a map ahead of the 2028 cycle.
If they meet the requisite signature threshold, the initiative will go on the ballot this November, where voters will decide.
In Utah County, the state’s second-most-populous county, the clerk’s office has flagged hundreds of signatures for possible fraud. Some appear to be forged signatures, and when the clerk’s office called the signers, they denied ever signing the petition; others appear to be made-up names and addresses.
“I think it’s just the signature gatherers that are doing this are just trying to find an easy way to make money,” Aaron Davidson, the Utah County Clerk, told Blue Light News.
The Salt Lake and Davis county clerks — the first- and third-most populous counties in the state — said they have not seen any significant irregularities. “The number of alleged fraudulent voters that Utah County has found, that is startling,” said Lannie Chapman, the Salt Lake County clerk. “We all take this very seriously.”
Axson, the GOP state chair, said some of the signature-gatherers under review were flagged by his team before submission, and several paid signature-gatherers who are under review for fraud have been fired. “I don’t want a single fraudulent signature counted,” Axson said.
“Are there going to be a couple of bad actors, or bad examples, or places where the process has fallen short, or whatnot? Of course there are,” added Axson. “But what’s not being talked about in all of these stories is the fact that out of 3,000 people engaged in this effort, you only have a small handful of bad actors.”
But as the signature push enters its home stretch, tensions have only accelerated.
“Violence is not the answer to any of this. I don’t understand anybody that would do that,” added Bonham, the initiative sponsor. “It brings me back to Charlie Kirk losing his life here in our own backyard. It’s like, what on earth is going on here?”
AUSTIN — Democrats’ vision of a blue Texas is finally here.
James Talarico has been elected a U.S. senator and Gina Hinojosa as governor, the first Democrats to win either office in more than a generation. The four other statewide candidates are leading as ballots continue to be counted. Democrats further down the ballot are leading some red districts, changing the complexion of the state legislature, congressional delegation and courts.
“It’s something that I haven’t seen in decades, that none of us have seen in decades,” said former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a moderate Republican.
It’s an outcome that even the most bullish Democrats didn’t dare enunciate in the late days of the election. But as results have poured in Tuesday night, the party is outpacing its expectations across the country’s second most populous state amidst a national romp.
Both Hinojosa’s and Talarico’s victory margins came by running up vote counts in Texas’ deep-blue urban centers and while also leading in the largest Republican-led county in the country, Tarrant County. They reversed Republican gains across the Latino-heavy Rio Grande Valley region, an ancestrally Democratic area that had swung hard to the right in recent years. Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez romped to a near-20 point victory in a seat Republicans drew to favor them during last year’s redrawing of the state’s House map, ousting a top Republican recruit who campaigned alongside Speaker Mike Johnson to begin election day.
It amounts to a set of remarkable results in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988 and to the governor’s mansion since 1990. In recent cycles, Democrats have tried and failed to flip the state in presidential and U.S. Senate contests but have been largely uncompetitive for state offices. But Tuesday’s blue wave slammed into Texas particularly hard, as it combined frustrations over the economy, immigration enforcement, data centers and corruption with a collapse of Trump’s 2024 coalition.
“We reminded voters that Republicans have been in charge in Texas for 30 years. That every problem we have, was caused by Republicans,” Michelle Lowe Solis, chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party. “They aren’t going to fix the problems, they caused them.”
As votes continue to be counted, Democrats appear poised to blunt the impact of Republicans’ attempted gerrymander, likely sweeping the Rio Grande Valley congressional seats while holding onto another San Antonio-area district drawn to favor Republicans. In state Supreme Court races, they lead in all four seats up for grabs, potentially turning a 9-0 conservative majority into a 5-4 split. Among the first 36 state house races called by the Associated Press, 34 have gone to Democrats and just two to Republicans.“Voters aren’t dumb,” said Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ BOLD PAC. “Even though the Republicans have tried to cheat with the series of gerrymanders, that has, I think, only made voters in those areas more willing to participate.”
Talarico’s and Hinojosa’s victories will be felt nationally. Texas Democrats, who have long asked for national money and resources in a state where elections are costly, now have a test case of how to win. And it will bolster their arguments that their state, with 40 electoral votes, should be treated as a presidential battleground.
Ali Bianco and Jonathan Martin contributed reporting.
Just a few hours into election night, Republicans acknowledged what appeared to be a historic midterm defeat — a long-feared “blue wave” that had started washing across the nation.
The extent of the washout became clear soon after polls closed: Republicans lost a South Carolina Senate seat for the first time in nearly 30 years. Democrats nipped on the heels of House incumbents in deep red Florida districts. And the man in charge of the party’s House reelection effort was at grave risk of losing his own seat.
By 10 p.m., Democrats had already flipped three GOP House seats — itself enough to win a majority if Republicans can’t make gains elsewhere — and many in the party feared dozens more could follow as voters registered their dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump.
Voters in Texas, a ruby-red state for a generation, appeared at risk of handing multiple statewide races to Republicans and possible control of the legislature. Joe Straus, a former state House speaker, cast it as a historic rebuke of an unpopular president.
“President Trump hasn’t exactly done any Republicans favors across the country,” he said on a Blue Light News election night broadcast. “They haven’t done themselves favors, frankly, by following so closely along.”
Many of the political professionals charged with getting GOP candidates elected in this environment said the results could be potentially historic in nature.
“We are looking at tsunami territory,” said one national Republican operative who, like others, was granted anonymity to candidly describe the returns.
“This is the worst electoral defeat in my lifetime and likely in history,” said another GOP operative working on battleground races. “Trump said his name and record was on the ballot and people responded — resoundingly.”
At an ill-fated victory party for Senate candidate Michael Whatley in North Carolina, staff were already packing up the room less than two hours after polls closed. Returns showed Democrat Roy Cooper on track to win by as many as 20 points in a race that was supposed to have been tooth-and-nail.
Standing in the room, one North Carolina Republican openly pondered what many others in the party had long avoided saying openly — that it was finally time to think about life after Trump.
“Trump has done some excellent things, and I appreciate that. But it can’t be the party of Trump forever,” said Jonathan Fletcher, a former GOP county chair. “If the Republican Party is going to be serious about winning, we have to be serious about winning people in the middle.”
Nearly every state, district and county shows movement toward Democrats, from counties that Trump won three times to blue strongholds where Democrats are improving their margins. County-level data shows Democrats doing on average more than 5 points better than Kamala Harris did in the 2024 presidential race.
That suggests that districts Trump won by double digits just two years ago are in reach for Democrats.
The losses threatened to pile up even after Republican candidates, committees and super PACs spent massive sums in an effort to retain control of Congress — including more than $380 million from President Donald Trump’s political operation.
“I can’t believe how these House races aren’t close given the amount spent,” a senior Senate GOP operative said. Another senior Senate GOP official called it a “bloodbath.”
Many of the Republicans said the war in Iran, which sent voters’ gas prices soaring, and continued frustration with the economy drove frustration with a party that won on those same issues in 2024.
On top of that some quickly vented about substandard candidates — such as Darline Graham in the South Carolina Senate race and Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate contest.
“Not only were folks upset about the war, inflation and gas prices, but add to that the fact they think he was making them eat a shit sandwich in Darline, and they just had enough,” said Mick Mulvaney, a former Trump White House chief of staff and South Carolina congressman.
Trump said on Truth Social his own absence from the ballot for the drastic Republican underperformance — even after barnstorming the country begging Republicans to “vote like I’m on the ballot.”
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump posted shortly after 10:30 p.m.
Other Republicans were ready to blame Trump’s own decisions.
“Republicans got their asses kicked tonight because of the Iran war — plain and simple. Everything else is just noise and spin,” said a person close to the White House.
Meanwhile, power in Washington was already shifting. The likely next chair of the House Oversight Committee, who has been gearing up for massive probes into the Trump administration, issued a two-word statement Tuesday addressed to administration officials and the “Trump Crime Family.”
“Lawyer up,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California said.
Will Steakin, Erin Doherty, Lauren Fedor, Ashley Ahn and Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
Joe Biden was unceremoniously ushered out of the White House two years ago.
On Tuesday, he got a small measure of revenge.
Prominent Biden administration alumni are winning in a handful of notable races, with Keisha Lance Bottoms — the one-time Atlanta mayor turned Biden’s senior adviser and director of the Office of Public Engagement — leading the pack by flipping Georgia’s governorship.
The victories, his former staffers say, are an important part of rehabilitating his legacy within a Democratic Party that all but banished him in 2024.
“It’s proof that President Biden assembled a talented team of public servants — who the public is calling on now to help turn this country around,” said Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff. “These fantastic men and women will make life more affordable, health care more available, protect our rights, fight corruption, and make our country stronger.”
Biden was not a regular on the trail this year, and most Democrats kept their distance from the former president. But he did weigh in on a handful of primaries, helping put loyal lieutenants in front of voters who still held him in high regard.
While Bottoms was the highest profile victory, there’s a number of Biden alumni also poised to head to Washington. Gabe Amo, who won a 2023 special election in a blue Rhode Island seat, secured his first full term in Congress. And Dan Koh, who won Massachusetts’ 6th District to succeed Rep. Seth Moulton, was Biden’s deputy Cabinet secretary and deputy director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
He leaned into his Biden endorsement throughout the campaign and this week reposted a video of a phone call he and his family had with Joe and Jill Biden on primary night in September.
“Mr. President and Madame first lady, thank you so much for all of your support,” he told them. “It wouldn’t have been possible without both of you. … You changed my life by giving me a job of a lifetime. And you got my back the minute I decided to run.”
Biden’s Cabinet also had a strong night in other governor races. Xavier Becerra, Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services, had a solid polling lead over Republican Steve Hilton in the race to be California’s next governor going into Tuesday. And, Deb Haaland, Biden’s Interior secretary, was projected to win the New Mexico governor race.
“In his farewell speech, President Biden warned that ‘an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy,’” said Andrew Bates, the former president’s longtime spokesperson. “He urged his team and supporters to keep standing up for the values that we all care about, including decency, hard work, and a sense of national community. On the ballot and off, a whole lot of his alumni are fighting to carry on that legacy.”
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