The United Utah Party and the Utah Forward Party held an unprecedented combined convention on Saturday at Salt Lake Community College in Taylorsville, where both parties voted nearly unanimously to approve a memorandum of understanding to formally merge under the umbrella of the national Forward Party.
It’s the first time two political parties have ever joined together in the state of Utah. Party officials said they’re coordinating with the state’s top election officials in the lieutenant governor’s office to facilitate the merger, for which no legal process exists in state law.
Still, the parties are charting their own path for the merger, for which the now-approved memorandum of understanding lays out a process that will take place over the next several months.
The new party’s name, the MOU stipulates, “shall be the ‘Utah Forward Party,’ the ‘United Forward Party’ or such other name selected and approved by the National Forward Party.”
On Saturday, both parties voted independently to approve the merger before combining in a joint session, where leaders gave speeches applauding the merger as a momentum-building move for Utah’s moderate and centrist movement.
Speakers included newly-elected Chair Michelle Quist — who last year ran as United Utah’s candidate for attorney general — and Sen. Dan Thatcher, a former Republican from West Valley, who recently announced he’d left the GOP to join the Utah Forward Party.
“There are real problems that Utahns are facing, but our leaders aren’t listening because they’re too busy trying to win their partisan blood sport,” Quist said. “The two-party system has not served us well. … We cannot see beyond the us-versus-them mentality. So it’s time to move beyond that psyche and look to do what’s best for Utahns.”
Former New Jersey governor and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman — who co-founded and co-chairs the national Forward Party alongside businessman and onetime presidential candidate Andrew Yang — also spoke Saturday, encouraging Utahns to break the stranglehold of the two-party system, which she said is more focused on winning than representing Americans.
“I honestly believe that we are within a hair of losing our democracy,” Whitman said. “There is, to me, an unconscionable lack of respect for the rule of law, the lack of respect for the Constitution. … It’s not about solving problems, it’s about staying in power.”
She pointed to states like Utah, where most districts are largely controlled by “one party,” the GOP, resulting in elections where “voters don’t have a choice. There’s one candidate, and that’s it. And that has never served the public.”
“When all an incumbent has to do is worry about their base in the primaries, they don’t care about the rest of the people. To heck with it, and they don’t represent the rest of the people when they get in,” Whitman said.
Yang also issued a prepared statement in a news release issued by party leaders, pointing to Gallup polling that shows roughly 60% of Americans agree that the U.S. needs a third major party because the Republican and Democratic parties “do such a poor job” of representing Americans.
“It’s no wonder why,” Yang said. “The existing parties have failed to address the biggest issues facing voters. People want job security and to plan for their retirement; they want their kids to be safe, they want to live in a nation of laws that protect them, they don’t want to be told they need to hate their neighbors if they disagree with them on some policy position. They want their representatives to pay attention to their lives and listen to their needs.”
Instead, Yang said, “the legacy parties are focused on maintaining power and the ‘us versus them’ fight that keeps their fundraising totals high.”
Yang said Utah is at the “forefront” of the Forward Party’s effort to build a “50-state movement.” So far, the Forward Party or an affiliate party is recognized in 13 states, Whitman said, compared to just five states two months ago. Plus, she said the party has 50 elected officeholders who have affiliated in some way with the Forward Party. Their goal, she said, is to be “on the ballot in all states” by the next presidential election, in 2028.
Read the full report at UtahNewsDispatch.com.
