How one choice in 2009 set up the dominoes that remapped Utah politics

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A single choice in August 2009 set the course for Utah politics for the next 15 years.

On May 16, 2009, then-President Barack Obama jolted the Utah political establishment by nominating Gov. Jon Huntsman to become the United States Ambassador to China. The Republican governor of one of the reddest states in the union going to work for the Obama administration was a political earthquake.

Huntsman would be the second Utah governor in a decade to depart midterm; Mike Leavitt had done it in 2003 to run the EPA for President George W. Bush.

With Huntsman's leaving, Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert had to pick a new No. 2. His transition team started with 26 names.

By August, two finalists remained: state Sen. Greg Bell and Utah Transportation Commission Chairman Stuart Adams. On August 5, Herbert chose Bell—over the objections of Utah Eagle Forum president Gayle Ruzicka, who deemed Bell too moderate.

Huntsman leaving for China was the catalyst. Herbert's selection of bell was the hinge.

When Bell became lieutenant governor, he vacated his seat in the Utah State Senate. In September, Davis County GOP delegates picked Adams to replace him. Adams returned to the Legislature, having served from 2002 to 2007.

Fast forward to September 2013. Bell made the surprising announcement that he was resigning as lieutenant governor to return to the private sector because of pressing financial obligations and a need to prepare for retirement. A month later, Herbert picked then-state Representative Spencer Cox as a replacement.

Now the counterfactual: If Herbert had picked Adams in 2009 instead of Bell, Utah's political landscape would look very different.

Adams, a successful businessman, likely wouldn't have stepped down in 2013.

No Bell resignation, no vacancy in the executive branch. And, without that vacancy, the rise of a little-known first-term state representative named Spencer Cox-from the House to lieutenant governor to governor-would have been unlikely.

Would Adams have run for governor in 2020? Maybe. He might also would have tired of being Herbert's No. 2 and bowed out before the 2016 election. Either way, the board would have been set up differently.

And the ripples keep going. When Spencer Cox left his House seat, GOP delegates chose his distant cousin Jon Cox to succeed him.

Jon Cox resigned from the House in 2015 to join the Herbert administration as communications director and a senior advisor. He would go on to become a top lobbyist in Utah. Delegates then picked Juab High School counselor and rancher Derrin Owens to fill the vacancy. Owens won a Utah Senate seat in 2020.

All from Herbert picking Bell over Adams in August 2009.

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