Republican Celeste Maloy has defeated Democrat Kathleen Riebe, a state senator, in the special election for Utah’s 2nd congressional district. UT-02 encompasses a broad area including parts of the more Democratic-leaning Salt Lake City as well as large rural regions, and gave Donald Trump a double-digit victory in 2020.
Maloy, a congressional aide to the district’s former representative, Chris Stewart, said she consciously avoided “red-meat issues that people get wound up about,” in her campaign, and that she hoped Republicans would learn “you can still win running on the issues” from her example.
Maloy’s opponents tried to stop her from even running in the election, as she wasn’t registered to vote as a Republican in Utah when she filed – but these efforts were defeated in the courts. She is the first woman to join Utah’s congressional delegation since 2019, and only the fifth woman in the history of the state’s congressional delegation.
