Utah district dumps once-rising GOP star Love, embraces Dem
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s Mia Love was tabbed as a rising star in the GOP when she became the first black Republican woman in Congress with her 2014 victory.
But she became the latest Republican incumbent to fall in the midterm election’s Democratic wave that has seen more than three dozen Republican-held seats flipped across the
country.
Ben McAdams, a Democratic mayor of Salt Lake County, defeated Love by fewer than 700 votes in a back-and-forth race that took two weeks to sort out in deep-red Utah, according to final results released
Tuesday.
Love had a built-in advantage with Republican voters outnumbering Democrats nearly 3-to-1 in the mostly suburban Salt Lake City district, but she never seemed to catch on with voters the way other Republican incumbents have in the state, said Damon Cann, a political science professor at Utah State University.
McAdams, 43, touted himself as a moderate in a pitch that seemed to resonate in the district where nearly 4 in 10 voters are independents. He also benefited from record voter turnout that was driven in part by a medical marijuana ballot proposal that spurred progressive voters to the polls, Cann said.
Love, 42, tried to walk a tightrope regarding her support for President Donald Trump in a state that elected him in 2016 but where the mostly-Mormon electorate has been uncomfortable with his brash style and his comments about women and immigrants.
She tried to distance herself from Trump on trade and immigration. She highlighted the times she stood up to the president, like when Trump used an expletive to describe her parents’ home country of Haiti. But she backed Trump on the GOP-supported tax reform and appealed to voters to keep the House of Representatives in Republican hands. Trump didn’t appreciate her approach, calling her out by name in a news conference the morning after Election Day, where he also bashed other Republicans who he said lost because they didn’t fully embrace him.
“She seemed to struggle a little bit more how to strike that balance without losing too many votes,” Cann said.
Jill Hanauer, a Denverbased Democratic strategist, said Love couldn’t shake the association with Trump despite her efforts.