When COVID-19 was first about to hit Utah, the governor went into action. Schools were shut down, public gatherings were restricted, and restaurants were forced to serve take out if they wanted to serve at all. In those early days of the virus, there were few cases in Utah, and the spread was slow. Hospitals had few if any cases of COVID to deal with.

We are in the midst of a primary season in Utah. The Republican race for governor is dominating the headlines, as well as the ad time. Other Republican races for lower level offices also are going on simultaneously. Thousands of Utahns are receiving emails, mailers, texts, and phone calls asking for their vote for a Republican candidate for this or that office. And thousands of signs are dotting the sides of roads or in yards to catch voters' attention.

All eyes are on the government.

We are waiting.

For a change, or a promise, or anything that might signal movement.

It’s been two and a half weeks since the death of George Floyd. Two and a half weeks of daily protests. Gov. Gary Herbert and Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox met with members of Utah’s black community to listen to their stories, and the Governor said that he wanted to see change. 

Ed Phillips, who served as one of Utah’s longest-serving sheriffs, is now the United Utah Party candidate for the Millard County Commission. He will be holding a Virtual Town Hall on Wednesday, June 17th, at 7:00 PM. 

In last weeks blog post, we spoke about the death of George Floyd and what we could do to push for meaningful change towards better policing and to reduce the suffering of blacks and other people of color in America. Since that time, we have seen little movement for change from our government, either here in Utah or in our country. We’ve seen some politicians show some empathy, but many have shown precious little. We’d like to see our elected political leaders, both local and national, act more like some of these Utah community leaders, who have shown great abilities to work across political and cultural divides, and help where they can.

The United Utah Party is saddened by the events of the past week commencing with the tragic and wrongful death of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last Monday, but also including the reaction of some that included burning, looting, and vandalizing in a large number of cities across the nation.  We support those who exercised their American right to protest, including marching and demonstrating, in opposition to racism.  We oppose those who took advantage of those protests to cause destruction and hurt the cause of protests against racism.

Both Governor Gary Herbert and Republican gubernatorial candidate Thomas Wright are acknowledging that the two had a conversation where the governor urged Wright to drop out of the race and endorse Spencer Cox, who is Herbert’s handpicked successor. The discussion may also have included a promise from the governor that if Wright were to drop out now, Herbert would agree to assist Wright in a race against Senator Mike Lee in 2022. 

On May 25, George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis Police Department. The alleged crime was forgery. The police handcuffed him and put him on the ground where one of the officers began to kneel on his neck. Despite distress signals from Floyd, and despite the protests of those around him, the officer kept his knee on Floyd until an ambulance arrived to take Floyd away. He didn’t have a pulse by the time the ambulance arrived. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. 

During an emergency, certain rules and regulations are relaxed in the office of the Governor in dealing with the emergency. The idea is that it is an emergency, and that they need the ability to move quickly. Minutes matter when dealing with disasters, and Covid-19 is a disaster. However, there is a difference between moving quickly, and making rash decisions. 

Guest Opinion piece by Brent Allsop and Jim Bennett.

In the recent State Convention, Bruce Lindsay wonderfully clarified a big problem we have with the United Utah Party when he listed synonyms for “moderate,” including “average, middle of the road, mediocre, unbiased, compromising, and boring.” We believe we can create a party that doesn’t match those synonyms. The way to do that is make this a party that directly reflects the consensus of its members.

To date, all political parties are modeled after traditional hierarchies.  And for thousands of generations, we’ve been bred to only support what the guy at the top of the hierarchy wants.  Anything else is feared and something that needs to be destroyed.  Any group that tries to function without a hierarchy is like “herding cats” and can’t scale.

But what if it could?