The money from Vote Save America, which began as a project of the parent company of “Pod Save America,” will target 10 Utah Republicans.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) People attend the first day of the state Legislature at the Capitol in Salt Lake City, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025.
Utah is one of ten states where more than three-quarters of lawmakers are Republican.
A political advocacy group that began as a project of Crooked Media, the parent company of “Pod Save America,” says it’s putting $20,000 toward recruiting candidates to attempt to unseat 10 of the Legislature’s 82 GOP members next year.
The podcast hosted by aides to former President Barack Obama was ranked the 11th most listened to nationwide in the first quarter of this year, and debuted when President Donald Trump first took office in 2017.
Shaniqua McClendon, who leads the political action committee Vote Save America, said in a statement, “Utah is uniquely positioned for change.
“It’s the youngest state in the country,” she continued, “one of the fastest-growing, and the most college-educated red state. … There’s an independent streak here that national politics has ignored for too long.”
Just over half of Utah voters are registered Republicans, and the next largest category of voters is unaffiliated. In November, nearly 60% of Utahns cast their vote for Trump.
Vote Save America’s donation will go to the political action committee for left-leaning Utah political consulting firm Elevate Strategies, the group announced Tuesday. It will target GOP lawmakers appearing on the ballot in 2026 who currently represent districts covering Salt Lake, Utah and Weber counties.
Among those Republican legislators is the representative who introduced the anti-union law that is subject to a referendum in the same election, the representative who pushed through a law enabling the state to ban certain books from all public schools and the senator who proposed Utah’s blocked near-total abortion ban.
All of the ten lawmakers Elevate PAC is targeting faced at least one challenger in their last general election, except Dunnigan.
“We’re done waiting for the political establishment to fix itself,” said Gabi Finlayson, the president of Elevate PAC, in a statement. “This partnership with Vote Save America gives us the resources and reach to go find the people who’ve been shut out or ignored — people with real stakes in their communities, not just the usual insiders.”
Among the lawmakers targeted, Koford, during the 2024 election, had the closest race, beating Democratic incumbent Rep. Rosemary Lesser by less than 2% — 50.98% to 49.02%. MacPherson’s race was next closest, as he beat Democrat Jeanetta Williams by a margin of 53.62% to 46.38%.
Other than Dunnigan, who had no challenger last cycle, it was Teuscher who won most handily of the targeted Republicans, beating Democrat Greg Green 61.01% to 38.99%.
McCay and Cullimore won their previous Senate races by significant margins, and both faced Democratic and third-party challengers in 2022. McCay garnered 66.39% of the vote, while Cullimore won 58.44% of the vote during his last contest.
Along with their announcement Tuesday morning, the Elevate Utah PAC released a recruitment tracker, which noted, so far, the group had recruited a candidate for House District 10 — to challenge Koford — and that recruitment for a challenger to MacPherson in House District 26 was “in progress.” The rest of the districts were listed, as of Tuesday morning, as having “no candidate” yet recruited.
“We’re not running everywhere. We’re running smart,” the recruitment website reads. “We’ve identified 10 competitive districts where the numbers, the moment, and the map align. In each one, we’re focused on finding the right candidate and making sure they have the training, support, and infrastructure to win.”
This story is developing and will be updated.