One of the most politically conservative states in the country is ripe to give Bernie Sanders another blowout primary victory.
Utah, where in the 2016 Democratic primary Hillary Clinton got just 27.46%, is potentially one of the most friendly contests to the senator on Super Tuesday, aside from his home state of Vermont.
Although its substantial Mormon population means Utah isn’t exactly viewed as a bastion of progressivism, its state capital city of Salt Lake City boasts a long history of electing Democrats as mayor; every election cycle since 1976, in fact.
In a state where nine cities outlaw the sale of alcohol and you can’t buy a lottery ticket anywhere, Salt Lake City shares much more in common with San Francisco or Seattle than the heavily Republican areas of far-north and southern Utah. Over half the state’s 350 bars reside in the city and its surrounding areas. In 2010, for example, the city passed an ordinance banning discrimination against anyone’s religion or sexual orientation.
The mayor of Salt Lake City, Jackie Biskupski, is a lesbian who frequently discusses the threat of climate change. Salt Lake City was one of the handful of U.S. cities that signaled its support for the Paris climate agreement after the Trump administration withdrew from the treaty. She seeks to reduce the city’s carbon emissions by 80% by 2040.
Biskupski can be found on Twitter, asking the president to help end “student debt” and the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
Bernie Sanders, a socialist and top-tier Democratic presidential candidate, has chosen the city as his second-to-last stop on his Super Tuesday campaign push.
Before returning to Vermont to watch the results come in, Sanders will spend Monday afternoon in Salt Lake City at the Utah State Fairpark. His campaign has devoted considerable resources in the state, with no other candidate still in the race opting to hold any rallies there except former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. During a stop in Salt Lake City in March 2016, roughly 14,000 showed up to watch Sanders speak in a city of just over 200,000.
His campaign calls him the “indisputable Democratic front-runner in the state,” and recent polling supports those claims. A survey conducted by the Salt Lake Tribune and Suffolk University from the end of January found that 26.5% backed him, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in second at 14.4%. A poll released Friday by the Deseret News and Hinckley Institute of Politics showed his support ticking up to 28%.
In 2016, Sanders handily won the state against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with 77% of the vote. Things might not be so lopsided this time around, as the state moved from a caucus to a formal primary after the state’s Democratic Party changed the format in April 2019. The party’s proportionate voting rules also mean it’s unlikely Sanders will earn all 29 Utah delegates to the Democratic national convention this summer, where 1,991 are needed to win.
Sanders’s wife, Jane Sanders, has also spent the last few days before Super Tuesday in the state. On Friday, she held a round table with small business owners and then a separate event with the representatives of the state’s small black population.
On Saturday, she met with members of the Mormon church before holding a rally at a park. During her remarks, she predicted her husband could flip the state in the general election.
But that’s an exceedingly tall order. While President Trump is less popular in Utah than other reliably Republican states, there’s little evidence residents are clamoring for a socialist alternative. And no Democrat has won Utah in a general election since President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
“As you say, it’s a red state,” Jane Sanders said. “But there are people who need to hear from progressive-minded individuals. I think Bernie crosses party lines.”
