Utah's new 3rd Congressional District is big. It’s not only the biggest district in the state by geographic size, but it's also the most economically diverse. Spanning much of southern and eastern Utah, it includes communities from booming St. George, to urban Provo, affluent Park City and large swaths of rural Utah.
That means there are some unique factors at play in the Republican primary between Rep. Celeste Maloy and former state lawmaker Phil Lyman.
“As opposed to CD1, where you have the density of an urban area, you really have to be well versed in a lot of different aspects of the same issue,” said Mary Weaver Bennett, director of the Michael O. Leavitt Center for Policy and Public Service at Southern Utah University. “It will be a challenge to try to bridge the gap and represent all kinds of populations.”
So challenging, in fact, that Bennett likens the 3rd District race to something much bigger.
“The rural and urban dichotomy is so evident in this district,” she said. “It is a microcosm of the entire state; it's almost like running for a statewide office to run for this congressional district.”
Maloy and Lyman fought a tight battle at April’s Utah GOP Nominating Convention, which saw Maloy emerge with a slim majority of support, but not enough to eliminate Lyman from contention.
To emerge victorious in the June 23 primary, Bennett said the candidates need to focus on the area’s feast-or-famine nature. While St. George and Cedar City are among the fastest-growing communities in Utah, and Park City is one of the highest-net-worth areas in the state, some of the district’s former mining communities in Carbon County and elsewhere have seen economic hardships and shrinking populations.
Both candidates zeroed in on rural issues like data centers and public lands in their lone debate. They also paid special attention to affordability and economic growth in rural parts of the state.
For Maloy, the future is all about ensuring rural Utah doesn’t miss out.
“I have worked with the elected officials in those areas to make sure that we are investing in water infrastructure, in road infrastructure,” she said. “Making sure that these rural communities that don't have the tax base … have the ability to keep up with the infrastructure needs that make it so that people can live there, to make it so people can move there, can invest there, start their small business there.”
Lyman took a more emotional approach. He said rural Utahns are tired of seeing their money being spent in other parts of the state, singling out the upcoming 2034 Olympics and the downtown Salt Lake City sports and entertainment district.
“What [people in these communities] are feeling is treated poorly by those people who are making decisions that are divvying out the money,” he said. “Those people in those communities, they're not dumb and they can see where the money is going.”
Something working in their favor is that they grew up in the district. Maloy calls Cedar City home, and Lyman is a Blanding native. Bennett called that significant.
“I know for many decades now, citizens in southern Utah have felt that the state Legislature represents the Wasatch Front,” she said. “And that so very often issues below the Wasatch Front they feel don't get addressed by the state Legislature.”
That representation on the national stage is precisely how Maloy positioned herself following the debate. She said she’s leaning into being the voice in Washington for a part of the state that hasn’t always felt heard.
“I think people in CD3 are going to be looking for someone who can competently represent their issues on a national stage and solve problems, and that's what I love to do,” she said. “I'm making an argument to the voters in the third district that I'm in the right position with the right skills to help them solve the problems that they're telling me they want solved, and so I'm the right person for this job.”
In contrast, Lyman tapped into a more skeptical mindset. He wants voters to question Maloy’s record, something he said ties her to the establishment politics of Washington, D.C.
“People need to be told the truth, and we, and we've not been told the truth for a very long time,” he said. “I don't think anybody even expects to hear the truth from members of Congress. I'm not trying to be critical. I'm saying the stakes are very, very high.”
Bennett said that their differing approaches play to their unique strengths. For Lyman, she said, his small-town, anti-establishment bona fides are his biggest selling point for many voters, while Maloy’s experience in Congress is her greatest asset.
In the end, Bennett thinks Maloy and Lyman occupy two different lanes in the Republican Party. The question now is which wins out with the voters of the 3rd District.
