It got me wondering when the last time was that Utahns elected a Democrat to statewide office. It turns out that Utah has not had a Democrat in statewide office since Scott Matheson (father of current Rep. Matheson) left the governor's office in January of 1985. That's about 26 years. Utah has not had a Democrat in the United State Senate since Frank Moss was defeated by Sen. Hatch and left office in January of 1977. Sen. Hatch, ironically, made a big deal that Sen. Moss' 16 years in office were too many and that he had lost touch with Utahns. Sen. Hatch has now been a senator for about 34 years.
I then began to wonder how this Republican hegemony stacked up against other states that are perceived to be dominated by one political party. The results were not good for Utah. No other state has gone as long as Utah voting for a single party in the major statewide elections of governor and senator. The results follow.
I first looked at governors. Out of all the states in the Union, 42 have elected governors from both parties in the last 16 years (since the 1994 elections). Those that haven't, with the last year of opposite-party control in parentheses, are: South Dakota (last Democrat in 1978), Utah (last Democrat in 1984), Washington (Republican 1984), Oregon (Republican 1986), Delaware (Republican 1992), North Dakota (Democrat 1992), and North Carolina (Republican 1993). Connecticut last had a non-Republican Independent governor in office in 1994, and a Democrat in 1990. Every other state has voted for both Republicans and Democrats for governor in the past 16 years.
So I took those eight states that showed a lack of diversity in governorships and compared the last time they elected a United States Senator from the opposite party. Connecticut was easy because while they have been voting for Republican governors for the past few years they have also been voting for Democratic senators. Both current Connecticut senators are Democrats, and the last time they had a Republican senator in office was 1998. So hegemony is not a problem there.
North Carolina was similarly easy in the opposite direction. That is a conservative state but has been voting for Democratic governors consistently for years. They have a healthy mix of both Republican and Democrat senators over the past few years and currently have one of each.
The Dakotas, I would have thought, would have been the conservative states to challenge Utah in terms of hegemony, but I was wrong. North Dakota currently has two Democratic senators and South Dakota has one.
Delaware and Washington, a couple of liberal states, both last had Republican senators in 2000, and Oregon, another liberal state, last had a Republican senator in 2008. That last Republican Oregon senator was Gordon Smith, a Mormon, who was defeated in the Democratic surge that year.
And that leaves Utah, who, as I mentioned earlier, last had a Democratic senator in 1976. That means it has been 26 years since Utah last had a non-Republican hold major statewide office. No other state comes close to that record of hegemony. The closest competitors for this ignominious distinction are Idaho and Texas, both practicing hegemony for 16 years. Idaho last had a Democratic governor in 1994 and last had a Democratic senator in 1980. Texas last had a Democratic governor in 1994 (the election that George W. Bush won) and last had a Democratic senator in 1993. Delaware and Washington, as outlined above, have seen ten years of hegemony.
This is a bad thing, as I've written about before. It detaches the controlling party from reality in that they are not really accountable to voters and there is never a threat that their bad choices will be reflected in election results. Most importantly, though, is that one-party hegemony suffocates opposing points of view, healthy debate, and thus democracy itself. As the Deseret News reported recently, it also suppresses voter turnout at elections. Utah has seen voter turnout decline for decades to go from one of the highest voter turnouts in the country to 48th out of 50 states. Many Utahns feel that our elections are foregone conclusions, which in essence they are. I doubt Utah has had a surprise election result in decades.
I'm sure we could dig deeper and look at state legislature control, party identification, and how close elections have been, and I'm sure they would all show that Utah is far more one-party oriented than any state in the country. It is not hard to see why people believe that many, many Utah Republicans blindly vote for the party without studying the candidates and issues and voting with an independent mind. If voters never knew which parties Herbert and Corroon, Lee and Granato belonged to and simply voted based on their characters and stances on the issues, I think this election would have gone much differently. Herbert and Lee hold extreme positions on many issues whereas Corroon and Granato hold moderate positions on just about every issue. The latter two, in my opinion, more closely represent the beliefs and positions of a majority of Utahs, unfortunately they both had a D next to their names and never stood a chance.
I've been saying for a long time that the time will come when Utahns will take a turn toward the left (or at least more towards the center) and start voting in a more balanced way. I'm beginning to doubt myself, to be honest. It may be that this rut will last for another 30 years, or it may be that some big scandal or decision will cause a sudden course change. Or maybe we need some sort of Huntsman-esque Manchurian candidate type who gets elected as a popular moderate Republican and then reveals that s/he will switch parties to become a Democrat, broadening many horizons along the way. In the meantime, the current hegemony that prevails in Utah is harmful to our state.
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