Trent Staggs, running for U.S. senate, speaks at the Utah Republican Party state nominating convention on Saturday, April 27, 2024. Megan Nielsen/The Deseret News via AP
On Saturday, just as Utah Republicans were gathering for their annual nominating convention, former President Donald Trump endorsed Senate candidate Trent Staggs, an upstart small-town mayor who has been carefully cultivating endorsements from national MAGA celebrities. The endorsement helped Staggs prevail over nine other candidates in the crowded convention race to replace retiring Sen. Mitt Romney, including Brent Orrin Hatch, the son of the late six-term Sen. Orrin Hatch. After three rounds of voting, Staggs won more than 50 percent of delegate votes, which allows him to advance to the June 25 statewide primary, where he’ll compete with three other better-funded candidates, including presumed front-runner Rep. John Curtis.
As I explained in this profile last week, Staggs lost the race to become Salt Lake County mayor in 2020, but he has a much better shot at becoming Utah’s next senator in the statewide primary, where he will only need to win slightly more than 25 percent of the vote. The winner of the primary will likely become Utah’s next senator; the conservative state hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1970:
His campaign is working off a well-established script that has involved courting a cast of familiar national far-right actors to raise his profile far beyond the strip malls of Riverton, Utah, and into the national conversation. In February, he made the pilgrimage to Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where Trump advisers Kash Patel and Roger Stone hosted a fundraiser for him organized by some of the club members.
He’s been endorsed by a string of national right-wing luminaries, including podcaster and former Trump Treasury official Monica Crowley, Ric Grenell, Trump’s acting director of national intelligence in 2020, and Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, who hosted a private fundraiser for him in Utah in September. Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville campaigned for him in March. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who calls himself the “Trumpiest congressman,” headlined a rally for Staggs on March 28; Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk joins him this week. And Staggs just scored the endorsement of failed GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy after signing his “American Truth Pledge,” which commits him to, among other things, seeking a 75 percent reduction in the size of the federal government and mandating that all high school seniors pass a civics test in order to vote.
Staggs had clearly been angling for an endorsement from Trump to get him across the finish line, but local media outlets had speculated that Trump wouldn’t endorse anyone in the crowded field lest he risk picking a loser. But on Saturday, the former president wrote on Truth Social, “Trent Staggs is 100 % MAGA, and is running to fill The Mitt Romney, a Total Loser, Seat as the next Senator from the Great State of Utah!…Trent Staggs has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”
The next few weeks promise to be a contentious—not to mention expensive—campaign. Outside groups have already started sending money into the state, where the MAGA wing of the GOP has a shot at replacing a moderate elder statesman who voted to impeach Trump with Staggs. The former owner of a tanning salon, Staggs has promised that if elected, he will model himself after the state’s other senator, Mike Lee, who helped Trump try to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump himself will be coming to Utah in June for a fundraiser in Park City, an appearance that could bolster Staggs’ campaign further while replenishing Trump’s campaign coffers with contributions from the state’s increasing number of political donors. President Joe Biden held a fundraiser in Park City in August, making the state an unlikely hot-spot for national politics.
The winner of the June GOP primary will face off against Democrat Caroline Gleich, a mountaineer and environmental activist.
