Since January, Ogden mayoral candidates Angel Castillo and Taylor Knuth have been drilling the old election dates into the heads of Ogden voters. Show up at the ballot box on Aug. 15 for the primary and return on Nov. 7 to select the next mayor. But that’s changed, and candidates have a lot of work to do to educate voters about the new election dates.
Last week, the Utah Legislature voted to move the municipal election dates to coincide with the special congressional election to replace Republican U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart. Only voters in Utah’s 2nd Congressional District can vote in the special election, but the new dates impact municipal elections statewide. The municipal and special election primary is now on Sept. 15, with the general election on Nov. 21.
Leah Murray, a political science professor at Weber State University, said the new election dates are absolutely going to change candidates' campaign strategies. People who hit the pavement before the election date changes “probably had everything all mapped out,” Murray said. But now, they have to accommodate for the extra three weeks before the primary election takes place.
Knuth said his campaign printed more than 3,000 pieces of literature before a special election was even on the radar.
“We had 3,000 conversations before then with that literature that listed the wrong date, which is frustrating,” he said. “But it's not wasted because we had a conversation with someone who cares about their community.”
He’s already poured more money into updating the voter literature to inform Ogden voters of the new election dates. His team has begun placing new labels on mailers that reflect when Ogdenites need to show up to vote. Those changes alone, Knuth said, “will make the race more expensive.”
But to him, volunteer efforts are the biggest loss with the updated election days. The Knuth campaign has focused the bulk of its resources on voter-to-voter contact.
“I had to divert volunteers from direct voter contact that is so important to our campaign into putting labels onto literature because we did not want to waste what we had printed,” he said.
For Castillo, the change doesn’t necessarily mean altering her campaign strategy. But it will require conditioning people to know when they need to vote.
“I am hopeful that they're [the state and local governments] going to put money into a reeducation social media program so that people are aware of it,” she said. “It's hard enough to get people to vote in primaries.”
It will require more organizing and outreach to constituents, Castillo said. While she added there will be more time to connect with voters, she is going to have to campaign longer. That inevitably means spending extra money on every aspect of the campaign.
“You have to be able to reverse engineer how much is this going to cost. How many fliers do I need? How many people do I have to pay to send texts or how many volunteers [do I need]? I mean, that's the trick,” she said.
Since it’s such a stacked field, Murray said the additional time to campaign could be viewed as a positive for the mayoral candidates. While mayoral hopefuls may have to spend more money, they also have a few more weeks to reach voters.
“I think in local elections, canvassing really matters,” she said. “Having three extra weeks is good because there are a lot of people you have got to get out and talk to.”
On the other hand, pushing back the election “maybe does give an advantage to late entries,” who filed for the race after Castillo and Knuth. But Murray added it won’t hurt “the early prepared candidates” to “get out to [voters] more than once.”
