SALT LAKE CITY — As the old saying goes, if you think the Utah gubernatorial race is crowded, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
A total of 16 candidates are now in the running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) at the end of his current term of office in 2025, nearly double the number of candidates lined up to challenge Gov. Spencer Cox.
That’s 11 Republicans, three Democrats and two candidates representing the Independent American party, according to filing data published Jan. 8 by the office of Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson.
U.S. Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) leads the parade of prominent Republicans seeking to replace Romney, followed by the former speaker of the Utah House Brad Wilson and Brent Orrin Hatch, the son of the late Sen. Orrin Hatch.
That list of GOP hopefuls continues with Jeremy Lewis Friedbaum, Carolyn Phippen, Clark S. White, Chandler H. Tanner, Josh Randall, Trent Staggs, Brian Earl Jenkins and Jason J. Walton.
Also in the running for Romney’s seat in the Senate are Democrats Laird Fetzer Hamblin, Caroline Gleich and Archie A. Williams; as well as Independent American candidates Robert Newcomb and Carlton E. Bowen.
In September, Romney sent seismic shocks through Utah’s political landscape by announcing that he would not seek re-election in 2024.
In retrospect, the hints that Romney would be a one-term senator were clearly there to see in his legislative record, as the former Massachusetts governor has increasingly found himself out-of-step with fellow Republicans in recent years.
He participated in several high-profile bipartisan collaborations on Capitol Hill legislation that angered GOP loyalists since the start of the Biden administration in 2021.
Romney was also the only member of the Republican Party to have voted twice to convict former President Donald Trump on impeachment charges brought by the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
While both the Republican and Democratic fields of candidates will be trimmed by their respective party nominating conventions on April 27, more than half of the declared candidates will seek to immunize themselves from that culling by gathering voters signatures.
Seeking to gather 28,000 signatures from registered Utah voters will be Curtis, Wilson, Hatch, Jenkins, Bowen, Williams, Tanner, Hamblin, Walton and White.
In the U.S. House District 1 race in northern Utah, incumbent Rep. Blake Moore will be defending his seat against three Republicans and one Democrat.
Those challengers are Paul Miller, Derek L. Draper and Daniel R. Cottam, all Republicans, and Democratic hopeful Bill Campbell.
Only Moore and Draper have indicated that they will seek to gather the 7,000 voter signatures that are necessary to guarantee them places on the GOP primary ballot.