Republican Derek Brown ahead in Utah AG race
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Image courtesy of Derek Brown's campaign
Republican Derek Brown is poised to become Utah's new attorney general after Sean Reyes announced his retirement from the scandal-plagued office.
By the numbers: Brown had won 57.8% of the votes as of 11:30pm Tuesday.
The intrigue: The race was the latest unsuccessful effort by some Democrats to rally behind a third-party candidate — Michelle Quist of the United Utah Party.
- Democrat Rudy Bautista, who ran as a Libertarian in 2020, ran a $100 campaign that did not even have a website, leaving progressive voters to throw their support behind Quist, a former Republican.
Yes, but: Bautista had won 29% of the vote, over Quist's 7.2%, with more than half of expected votes tabulated.
Zoom in: Brown is a former chair of the Utah Republican Party and former state lawmaker representing Sandy and Cottonwood Heights.
Catch up quick: Reyes announced in December he would not seek reelection amid controversy over his close ties to embattled anti-sex-trafficking crusader Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad, the nonprofit Ballard founded.
- The Utah AG's office has been beset by more than a decade of scandal, with Reyes and his two predecessors leaving office in a cloud of accusations.
- John Swallow resigned in 2013 amid investigations into an alleged pay-for-play scheme.
- Swallow and his predecessor, Mark Shurtleff, were arrested in 2014 on charges relating to public corruption. Prosecutors dropped their case against Shurtleff in 2016, and in 2017, a jury acquitted Swallow.
Flashback: Democrats tried to rally behind independent candidate Evan McMullin in the 2022 U.S. Senate race, but he lost decisively to U.S. Sen. Mike Lee even with the state Democratic Party supporting McMullin, which refused to field its own candidate.
- A number of left-leaning voters and activists then supported former state Rep. Becky Edwards, a Trump critic, in a special primary against conservative Celeste Maloy after former U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart announced his retirement in 2023. Maloy defeated Edwards by 5.5 points.