Many of the top issues that came and went each legislative session while King was on Capitol Hill remained the same: education, the economy and the environment.
Despite a Republican supermajority in the Utah Legislature, King said he was still able to pass dozens of significant bills.
“When you're not the super majority, you find yourself fighting to stop some terrible bills or to keep good policy in place. And there are examples of that across the board. For example, to not prevent the legislature from gerrymandering legislative districts, both in 2011 and in 2021 with the redistricting. Thankfully, I hope we'll get another chance to do that in light of the Utah Supreme Court decision," King said.
Still, he wishes he had been more effective providing more resources for education.
“And that ties into addressing the kind of persistence that we saw from the super majority in saying, ‘we want tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts,’” he said. “And the problem with that is every dollar that was cut from taxes came straight from public and higher education, the needs of children and people with disabilities. And I don't think that's what Utahns wanted. So, I regret that we were not more successful on some important policy issues that persuading our colleagues to do a better job of protecting children.”
Even through the pandemic, Utah’s economy continued to flourish. And while growth is everywhere, he said there’s still not enough attainable housing being built.
“I think what we're missing is quite honestly a real sense for and a commitment to the needs of working people, regular folks, who are just doing the best they can to make ends meet. Sometimes they'll have a second, even a third job. They'll be working to afford a mortgage and afford a car payment and those are the needs of Utah that I think should be prevalent on the minds of legislators to a much greater degree than they are,” King said.
King has no regrets running for governor which forced him to retire his legislative seat and now, Hoang Nguyen, also a democrat, will serve.
