Utah Republican Celeste Maloy will have something new to be thankful for on Thanksgiving Day this week after winning her former boss’s vacant House seat in a special election on Tuesday.
Voters in Utah’s reliably red 2nd Congressional District chose Ms. Maloy over Democratic state Sen. Kathleen Riebe to replace long-time Republican Rep. Chris Stewart.
The Associated Press called the race about 40 minutes after the polls closed.
“I saw early on in this campaign that I was going to outwork everybody else, and I think I’ve made good on that promise,” Ms. Maloy said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, ahead of her victory.
Ms. Maloy served as Mr. Stewart’s chief counsel before he resigned in September to care for his ailing wife. She was endorsed by the former congressman and was heavily favored to win heading into Tuesday’s contest.
As with the September primary, the Cedar City resident saw a strong showing of support from rural voters in her sprawling district, which spans the southern and western portions of the state up to Salt Lake City.
Her platform prioritized securing the U.S.–Mexico border, protecting religious freedom, reining in “out-of-control” federal spending, and giving Utah more control over its lands and resources.
Ms. Riebe, the minority whip in the Utah Senate, had focused her platform on her background as a teacher. A resident of the Salt Lake City suburb of Cottonwood Heights, she promised on her website to continue teaching full-time throughout her campaign, and to promote “freedom from the red tape of book bans and extreme censorship.”
She also pledged to support labor unions and expanded access to affordable housing, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Ms. Maloy raised nearly twice as much as her Democrat opponent in the seven months leading up to the election, bringing in nearly $588,000 and spending roughly 80 percent of it.
With her victory, she becomes the first woman in Utah’s congressional delegation since 2019 and only the fifth in history.
Primary Contest
Mr. Stewart’s announcement in May that he intended to step down on Sept. 15 triggered a rush to find a replacement for the six-term congressman and U.S. Air Force veteran.
State law gave Republican Gov. Spencer Cox just one week to set the election dates and the political parties no more than 28 days to select their nominees for the seat.
Ms. Maloy was selected as the GOP nominee at a June convention, but controversy later arose amid the revelation that she had not voted in Utah in the 2020 or 2022 elections. That news prompted one of her defeated convention challengers to launch an unsuccessful bid to strip her name from the primary ballot.
Two other Republican hopefuls were also listed on the ballot after collecting the necessary signatures: former state Rep. Becky Edwards and former Utah Republican Party chair Bruce Hough.
The primary contest was viewed by some as a litmus test for former President Donald Trump’s support in the Beehive State, given the candidates’ varying views of the 45th president.
While Mr. Hough and Ms. Maloy both expressed support for President Trump amid the criminal indictments he is currently facing, Ms. Edwards stood out as a supporter of President Joe Biden and an outspoken critic of the former president.
Although the race between the two female candidates was too close to call on election night, Ms. Maloy emerged victorious the next day with 38.8 percent of the vote—a win she attributed to her focus on rural counties.
“I did debates in the rural counties. I showed up and held events in the rural counties,” Ms. Maloy said. “We decided early on that our strategy was going to be to win the rural counties, and then get as much as we could in the more urban counties.”
She will now fill the last remaining vacancy in the House, where her vote will bolster Republicans’ slim majority as they work to complete the 2024 appropriations process.
Caden Pearson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
