After months of infighting over a plan to endorse candidates in nonpartisan races, the Salt Lake County Republican Party ousted its vice chair, Sarah Montes, on Tuesday night in a unanimous move by the other elected party leaders.
The party announced on social media that Chairman Mike Carey, Secretary Emily Swanson, and Treasurer Karl Jurek had invoked a provision in the party bylaws allowing them to declare an officer position vacant if the remaining officers agreed the officeholder was "unwilling or incapable" of fulfilling the responsibilities of the office.
The move came days after a chaotic county central committee meeting where some members mounted an effort to overturn disciplinary sanctions against several party members who had accused party leadership of breaking the law.
Montes said she believes she was pushed out, in part, because she stepped off the dais to join the debate over those penalties while other officers stayed put. Carey and the others, she says, accused her of siding against the disciplinary action and with the members pushing to get the sanctions lifted.
“Just because I see a problem with what you are doing, it doesn’t mean I’m on the other side,” Montes said.
Carey said removing Montes was prompted by several instances where she broke with party leadership on key decisions.
“When you are an elected officer, you have a duty and responsibility to respect the decision of the body, whether you agree with it or not,” Carey said.
He said Montes was asked to resign and refused, prompting the vote to remove her.
To understand why any of this happened, you have to go back to last year, when Salt Lake County GOP leaders considered a plan to endorse candidates in nonpartisan municipal races. A faction led by Tracie Halvorsen objected, warning that doing so would constitute “illegal election interference.” When leaders pushed ahead anyway, Halvorsen's group escalated: they sent letters to several city attorneys urging criminal charges. They also sent letters to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Political parties endorsing candidates in nonpartisan races is not illegal in Utah. Other county GOP organizations in Utah have done something similar recently.
Eight signers were then brought up on internal party charges for making false allegations against leadership. After a nearly eight-hour trial in February, seven of them were stripped of their party roles and banned from attending party functions until mid-2030.
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Saturday’s central committee meeting was supposed to relitigate the outcome, with allies seeking to overturn those punishments. The meeting quickly devolved. Members spent nearly two hours just approving an agenda. Supporters of the disciplined members tried and failed to force Carey to recuse and hand the gavel to Montes, and a move to oust the parliamentarian for perceived bias because he presided over the February trial also failed.
In the end, every attempt to undo the penalties failed. A final motion to reinstate six members, including Natalie Cline, the former state school board member, died on a tie vote.
Three days later, Montes was out.
She says she's still figuring out whether she has any recourse. Carey says the central committee will elect a replacement to finish out her term at the quarterly meeting in August.
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