Riverton • Four presidents reside, in some form or fashion, in this Utah mayor’s office.
A portrait of John F. Kennedy sits on one wall of the Riverton room, accompanied by one of Abraham Lincoln. Along a large window overlooking the city sits a bust of Ronald Reagan, alongside a framed letter Mayor Trent Staggs received from President Donald Trump.
A Staggs campaign contributor donated the office’s furniture to give it an “Oval Office” feel, the mayor said. Although Staggs won’t be running for a third term to lead the suburb in the Salt Lake Valley’s southwestern corner — and despite his loss last year in the race to replace retiring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney — some believe the star-studded connections Staggs has made in the Republican Party could catapult him to the real Oval Office in the future.
“Sky’s the limit,” said Salt Lake County Council member Sheldon Stewart, a longtime friend of Staggs who served with him on the Riverton City Council. “… Mayor to president, I don’t know. You never know. He’s a young 50 right now, and we’ve got 20 to 30 years, if you look at past presidents and current presidents and their age as president right now. Anything could change for Trent in the next 20 to 30 years.”
Although Staggs told The Salt Lake Tribune he doesn’t have presidential ambitions — at least not yet — a brush with presidential power helped fuel his popularity among Utah conservatives and may have opened the door to a future within the executive branch.
Staggs’ popularity among Republicans
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Trent Staggs campaigns at the Utah Republican nominating convention in Salt Lake City in April 2024.
On the morning of April 27 last year, Staggs was on his way to the Utah Republican nominating convention when he got a text from a friend who just had breakfast with then-former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
The friend told Staggs he would be getting an important phone call soon, so the mayor pulled off the road while on his way to the Salt Palace Convention Center.
“I get this random phone [call] with a number I don’t recognize, and I just pick up, and it was ‘Trent, Donald Trump,’” Staggs said, doing an impression of the president’s voice. “We spoke for probably five or six minutes. Just wanted to offer, as he sometimes he does and writes out, ‘my complete and total endorsement.’”
Trump also took to his Truth Social platform that same morning to give Staggs a shoutout, calling the mayor “100% MAGA” in a post on the site.
“A Highly Successful Entrepreneur, who has served brilliantly as Mayor of Riverton for the past six years, Trent knows how to Create Jobs, Stop Inflation, Grow the Economy, and Secure the Border,” Trump wrote in the post. “…Trent Staggs has my Complete and Total Endorsement — He will be a GREAT Senator, and never let you down!”
Later that night, Staggs took the stage amid thunderous applause from delegates who had just hours earlier booed Gov. Spencer Cox. He told the crowd about his call with Trump from early that morning, and that night Staggs received 70% of their votes ahead of the June primary.
Despite endorsements from Trump and other prominent conservative figures like now-FBI Director Kash Patel and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, former Rep. John Curtis beat Staggs 50% to 31% in the four-way primary race.
“After my Senate run ended when I lost the direct primary in June,” Staggs said, “it’s been kind of figuring out that next chapter.”
The Riverton mayor’s rise to prominence
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs at his office on Friday, March 14, 2025.
Staggs has served Riverton and its 45,000 residents for 12 years — including four on the City Council and nearly eight as mayor — while also balancing a career in business consulting, most recently for an energy company called Vivakor.
On March 11, he announced he wouldn’t seek a third term as the leader of the growing city.
Through the years, Staggs’ conservative responses to local issues have garnered admiration from state Republicans.
In March 2020, he defied Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson’s mandate to restrict gatherings of 10 or more and directed Riverton’s police chief not to enforce the county’s order that punished violators with a class B misdemeanor.
Staggs had announced his campaign against Wilson to lead Utah’s most populous county just weeks earlier, on March 4. He lost to Wilson by nearly 37,500 votes that November.
Five years later, Staggs feels “a lot of vindication” in his decisions to defy Wilson’s order and to not enforce a mask mandate, he said. Riverton did use some of its federal pandemic relief dollars to provide masks to business owners, but, Staggs said, ”by no means should [masking] be mandated.”
“I put that in my letter to residents as well, as one of my accomplishments. I thought it was noteworthy — that we need to remember those that are put in positions of authority if they’ve exercised compulsion, when I think it was a clear violation of our rights,” Staggs said. “I think people hopefully will remember that about me, that I’ve been one that’s wanted to err on the side of just liberty.”
From Staggs’ response to the pandemic to his 2023 push against books he alleged contained explicit material, he has become a well-respected figure among Utah Republicans, said former Salt Lake County GOP Chair Chris Null.
“One of the things a lot of the [convention] delegates recognized … was that it didn’t matter whether it was a local issue, or if it was a state issue, or even a federal issue,” Null said, “He stood his ground for Utah values… not just to be popular; he did it because he knew it was right.”
In May 2023, Staggs set his sights on a different office: then-Sen. Mitt Romney’s. The senior statesman had endorsed Staggs during his run against Wilson three years earlier.
In a campaign video, Staggs said during Romney’s time in Washington, he’d only seen the senator fight for “the establishment, wokeness, open borders, impeaching President Trump and putting us even deeper into debt,” as headlines about Romney marching with Black Lives Matter protesters and voting for a $1.7 trillion spending bill to avoid a government shutdown flashed on the screen.
Romney announced he would not seek reelection for the Senate seat a few months later, in September. After winning the primary, Curtis cruised to victory last November to secure the seat.
Despite Staggs’ Senate loss, he remains admired within the party, according to Salt Lake County GOP Vice Chair Sarah Montes.
“With whatever he decides to do,” she added, “I know he will continue to lead and inspire others.”
What’s next for Staggs?
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Trent Staggs answers a question during a GOP U.S. Senate debate at the SCERA Center for the Arts in Orem in April 2024.
Staggs said he’s done everything he wanted to do as mayor.
He promoted economic development by establishing a regional shopping center in the city called Mountain View Village. That, he said, kept tax revenue local, allowing his city to cut taxes and keep utility fees low.
The city also established its own police force, withdrawing from the Unified Police Department to use funding more effectively, he added.
Beyond his accomplishments, Staggs said he believes in term limits. There are challenges from other levels of government, he said, that are “are really going after our liberty and our quality of life” on which he wants to focus.
“At the state level, for example, I’ve been critical in my 12 years — I’ve been fighting the state Legislature almost every single year with respect to local land use control, right?” Staggs said. “They want to take that away.”
He pointed to SB337, a bill proposed in this year’s legislative session, that would’ve established the Beehive Development Agency, giving the state sweeping power in local development. The measure did not make it out of the Senate.
“It was the most egregious bill in my 12 years here,” Staggs said. “The state government loves to preach federalism, right? They love to say that, and we should be ‘states’ rights,’ and ‘separation from the federal government.’ We’re these laboratories of democracy, but they don’t take that same approach with respect to municipalities.”
On the national level, he’s concerned about government overreach, but said he’s optimistic about recent efforts by Trump and Elon Musk to shrink the government.
“The federal government is out of control,” Staggs said. “I’m glad to see some of the steps that are being taken now, which is great. I think it’s long past due that they really try to rein in the size and scope of the federal government.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs at his office on Friday, March 14, 2025.
Despite those concerns at the state and federal levels, Staggs said he doesn’t have any immediate plans to run for another office. He’s focused on finishing his term — which ends next January — for Riverton residents, but said he’s also called to public service and won’t rule out any future opportunities, should they arise.
As for what’s next, Staggs recently signed an agreement to publish a book with Post Hill Press — the company that also published Patel’s book “Government Gangsters” in 2023. He also looks forward to returning to business after years on a mayor’s salary.
The nation’s capital, he said, has also called.
The Trump transition team reached out to Staggs in December — a month before the mayor attended the president’s January inauguration — to ask how he might like to serve the new administration, he said, adding that he could be tapped to work within it if a position becomes available that fits with his family’s needs.
“That’s one thing you learn, too, in politics: Never say never,” Staggs said. ” … An opportunity presents itself in the future, depending on what that is, I could entertain it.”
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