The Davis County Republican Party (DCRP) is holding a special election to replace retiring County Surveyor Max Elliot, who is leaving after eight terms in office. To get on the ballot for the party delegates’ vote, candidates have to pay the party a $400 “filing fee,” which party leaders say helps to cover the cost of renting a facility for the vote.
At first glance, the party doesn’t seem to need the money. Its most recent financial disclosure shows nearly $90,000 on hand in the bank. But that balance doesn’t match the paper trail. The disclosure shows zero financial activity of any kind after March 17. And it shows no expenses for major party events that happened after that date. The party also failed to submit a required pre-primary financial disclosure on June 16.
A Utah Political Watch review of campaign finance filings found close to $21,000 in donations and payments to the party that never showed up on the pre-convention report at all.
The Missing Money
Utah Political Watch cross-referenced the Davis County GOP’s disclosure against reports filed by candidates and political action committees.
In February, outgoing Senate President Stuart Adams’s leadership PAC gave the party $5,000. House Speaker Mike Schultz’s leadership PAC kicked in another $3,000. Neither donation appears anywhere on the party’s books. The party did report a $2,000 donation from Rep. Blake Moore’s campaign in January but missed a second, $1,000 donation from Moore in March, which shows up on his Federal Election Commission filings.
Most of the rest of the unreported money is smaller-dollar stuff, $130 to $700, tied to ticket and booth sales for the party’s Lincoln Day Dinner in February and its county convention at Syracuse High School in April.
The Party Responds—Sort Of
After questions from Utah Political Watch, Party Chair Don Guymon said in an email that the missing report had been submitted to the state. As of Tuesday, it still wasn’t posted online. Guymon did not respond to questions asking him to explain the missing transactions or why the party missed the June 16 deadline in the first place.
He also ignored a request for the party’s FY2026 budget and for the quarterly financial reports the treasurer is required to give the party’s executive committee under its own rules.
In response, Guymon offered a six-word statement: “The county party follows its bylaws.”
Those bylaws state the treasurer is supposed to “submit statements and reports required by State law,” which is exactly what didn’t happen with the June pre-primary report.
Missing expenses
If the DCRP’s revenue reporting is incomplete, the expense reporting is almost non-existent. The only disbursements on the books are three monthly $80.44 payments to Mailchimp. No expenses for the Lincoln Day Dinner fundraiser in February. No March neighborhood caucus meetings. No April county convention. Those events, according to the party’s previous reports, are not cheap.
Last year’s disclosure shows two payments to the Davis Conference Center for the Lincoln Day fundraiser: $7,861.52 in March and $6,195.80 in May, the latter marked as a deposit toward this year's event. That’s the pattern in the party’s older filings. This year, none of it shows up.
This year's Lincoln Day headliner was historian Larry Schweikart. Whether the party paid him a speaking fee, covered his flight, or put him up in a hotel is anyone's guess, because none of it is disclosed. For comparison, when the party flew in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as its 2024 keynote speaker, it reported $1,950 for his airfare and $291 for his lodging.
Costs for materials or renting Syracuse High School for the county convention in April aren’t disclosed either. The Davis School District’s own rate sheet lists the cost for renting the auditorium at up to $300 an hour with the commons and cafeteria running $75 to $150 an hour. In 2024, when the convention was held at Clearfield High School, the party reported paying the school district $4,661, with most of those costs coming around convention time, plus more than $2,000 in related expenses. This year, there’s nothing on record.
Same story with the neighborhood caucus meetings. In 2024, the party spent just over $5,500 on materials and another $2,500 renting space for them. This year, according to the filing, they apparently held the caucuses for free.
There’s also nearly $20,000 that should be accounted for in the overdue pre-primary report—donations to six candidates who won at least 60% of the vote at convention but got dragged into a primary by signature-gathering candidates. The missing transactions include $4,825 checks to four county-level candidates and $1,420 to legislative candidates. Four of the six went on to win their primaries.
Ryan Cowley, Utah’s director of elections, said the state is aware the Davis County GOP failed to submit the pre-primary report and will issue the standard $100 fine—not much of a deterrent for a party sitting on tens of thousands of undisclosed dollars.
Enforcement with no teeth
The larger problem is nobody seems to be actually checking. Utah’s campaign finance system has no built-in way to reconcile one filer’s disclosure against another’s, so a PAC can report writing a $5,000 check, and the recipient can simply not report receiving it, and nothing flags the mismatch. Cowley called it a technical issue with the state’s disclosure website. “We are working toward funding for a new system, which would resolve this and many other commonly encountered issues,” he said.
Until that happens, Utah’s campaign finance reporting will keep running on what Chase Thomas, senior policy adviser for Alliance for a Better Utah, calls the “Wild, Wild West.”
“Up to a certain extent, we have to be trusting these reporting entities that they are going to be reporting them according to the law, whether that’s filing on time or filing truthfully and honestly in everything that they’re reporting,” Thomas said.
The trouble, he added, is that there’s little cost for not following the rules. Thomas pointed to outgoing Senate President Stuart Adams’ recent history. Adams improperly reported hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign spending, and state election officials let it slide rather than sanction him.
“The rules have to be consistently applied, and they also have to be enough of a deterrent so that people actually follow the law,” Thomas said. “If you’re going to be involved in politics, you have to know what the laws are.”
State law gives the Davis County GOP seven days to file its missing report once the lieutenant governor’s office notifies the party of the problem. If a formal complaint is filed over the missing transactions on the pre-convention report, the party gets another seven days to correct that error. If they miss either window, they face a $1,000 fine and a referral to the attorney general’s office.
“I would hope that, whoever’s enforcing this, whether it’s the lieutenant governor’s office, the AG’s office, would do a thorough investigation, and then, based on that, follow the law,” Thomas said.
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