The Hater's Guide to Utah's primary election debates

Three debates. Five days. Zero guarantee that anything interesting happens. Welcome to Utah's 2026 congressional primary debate season.

This is not a debate preview for people who think debates are a sacred civic institution. It's for everyone else: the people who watch these things waiting for someone to say something real, knowing the format is designed to prevent exactly that.

Buckle up.

First, a word about who's running this circus

The Utah Debate Commission was established in 2013 as a first-of-its-kind statewide organization built on a simple premise: political debates should be run by an independent body. It brought together bipartisan political leaders, media organizations, and higher education partners to organize and televise high-profile debates. Some of the funding came from the Utah Legislature, but the organization remained independent.

Note the past tense.

In 2025, the GOP-controlled Utah Legislature decided they were done paying for debates they couldn't control. A bill to create a state-funded 11-person debate committee packed with political appointees got killed in committee, so legislative leadership did what legislative leaders do when they can't get what they want through the front door. They appropriated $600,000 for a debate committee in the budget, then used intent language to create the committee and define its authority anyway.

The new entity is housed at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics and is entirely dependent on state lawmakers for its continued existence. That's not independence, it's a leash with better branding.

The context matters because Republicans have a history of throwing tantrums about debate formats they don't like. In 2022, several Republican candidates refused to participate in pre-primary debates after GOP leaders demanded to help select the moderators and choose which topics would be discussed. That same year, Rep. Burgess Owens pulled out of a general election debate hours before it started because he didn't like the moderator. These are the people who now control the process.

Keep that in mind.

CD1 Democratic primary: McAdams vs. everyone

The four-way Democratic primary in Utah’s brand new First Congressional District is genuinely interesting, which is not something you get to say about Utah Democratic primaries very often.

Ben McAdams is clearly the frontrunner: former congressman, known quantity, most name recognition. His campaign is built on an electability argument. He flipped a solidly Republican district when he was first elected in 2018.

Standing between him and the nomination are three progressives: Nate Blouin, Liban Mohamed and Michael Farrell. All three are running to his left. All three are competing for the same pool of voters. All three are united by a shared interest in stopping McAdams that is somewhat undermined by their equally strong interest in stopping each other.

What the three progressives will do: Attack McAdams on his record. Specifically, the votes he cast as a congressman from a Republican-leaning district will look, to a 2026 Democratic primary voter in a D+12 Cook-rated district, uncomfortably cozy with the other side. The new CD1 would have gone for Kamala Harris by more than 20 points. McAdams' old voting record was calibrated for a very different electorate. Expect some version of "he voted with Republicans" delivered multiple times during the debate.

They'll also try to kneecap his electability argument before he can use it. A district rated D+14 doesn't need a moderate to win, it needs a candidate who actually excites Democratic base voters. Nominating a milquetoast centrist, the argument goes, is how you turn a winnable race into a disappointing turnout exercise.

The problem for Blouin, Mohamed and Farrell is they are making basically the same argument to the same voters. Wednesday’s debate is actually two simultaneous competitions: each of them against McAdams and each of them against each other. If one of them breaks out, that's bad news for the other two. If all three are busy drawing contrasts with each other, McAdams has a very pleasant evening.

What McAdams will do: Stay calm, lean on his experience, and make every answer about November. He doesn’t need to win the debate; he just needs not to lose it. His best posture is the patient frontrunner who respects his opponents. The only way he loses tonight is if he gets dragged into a three-on-one brawl.

Bottom line: McAdams is the favorite walking in and should be the favorite walking out. The only scenario that changes the race is if one of the progressives has a genuine breakout moment, and the format makes that harder than it should be. The three progressives need a format that forces confrontation. Instead, the format rewards composure and name recognition. McAdams' team should be perfectly happy with these rules.

About that format

Let’s talk about the debate format, because it deserves its own special section of contempt.

When the Hinckley Institute took over the debates, they had the opportunity to revamp the format and improve the end product. Instead of innovating, they just decided to copy/paste the same tired rules that were already in place.

The debate runs 56 minutes because it’s on live television. The four candidates get one minute to answer each question with rebuttals and follow-ups at the moderator’s discretion, capped at 30 seconds. One minute each for closing statements.

Run the math, and each candidate ends up with roughly 11 to 12 minutes of total speaking time.

Here’s what that format actually means in practice:

One minute is not enough time to prosecute a case. Landing a real attack on McAdams voting record takes more than 60 seconds. There’s no time for context or showing receipts. Without room to develop the argument, punches land as pithy sound bites and slogans. McAdams, as the known quantity, benefits enormously from these kinds of shallow exchanges. He doesn’t need to explain himself. The challengers do.

No sustained back and forth means no accountability. The 30-second rebuttal exists, but it’s at the moderator’s discretion, meaning it may or may not be used. When it is, half a minute isn’t enough time to respond to anything substantive. A candidate can dodge a direct question, wait out the clock, and move on. The format practically encourages that.

The rotating answer order kills any sort of rhythm. Whoever answers last on a given question gets a mild advantage of framing, but with one-minute limits and no crosstalk, the first three answers are essentially forgotten by the time the fourth candidate finishes.

And then there are the student questions.

One or two questions in tonight's debate will come from university students. There's something genuinely admirable about that instinct — get young people engaged, give them a voice, treat them as stakeholders in races that will shape their future. As a civic gesture, it's understandable.

In practice, it's a little stupid.

Student questions at forums like this tend to suffer from the same predictable problems: they’re either hyper-specific hobby-horse questions that derail the flow of the debate entirely, or they’re broad and earnest (“What will you do for the future of our generation?”) that gives every candidate the cue to pivot to their stump speech. Either way, the debate loses momentum.

The format already has a pacing problem. Dropping in one or two questions from the audience mid-debate more often than not exacerbates the problem.

CD3: Celeste Maloy vs. Phil Lyman

Monday

This one might be worth watching.

On one side: Rep. Celeste Maloy, the incumbent. She’s a soil conservationist turned attorney turned congresswoman. She came into the 2026 cycle with nearly half a million dollars in the bank and the kind of Washington relationships that take years to build. Somehow this is her third election, but she still hasn't completed a full term in office.

On the other side: Phil Lyman, who has turned losing elections into a cottage industry. He lost the 2024 governor's race to Spencer Cox, refused to accept the results, launched a multifront legal challenge, and then pivoted to running for Congress. Apparently if you can't beat the system, you run against it forever until something gives.

The delegates at April’s state convention were almost perfectly split, with Maloy squeaking out 51%.

What Lyman will do: Lyman has one gear, and he rides it hard. He’s the disruptor, the anti-establishment truth-teller, the guy who says what the party’s activist base is thinking but what elected officials are reluctant to say out loud. Expect him to hammer Maloy on transparency for being too cozy with House leadership and on whatever he believes is evidence of institutional corruption. His worldview has gotten increasingly baroque, including his recent suggestion that Trump’s Iran policy has been “hijacked” by deep-state actors in the president’s own Cabinet. To his credit, he says these things with total sincerity. He actually believes this stuff, which could make him oddly compelling on a debate stage.

What Maloy will do: Play the competence card. She has the money, the endorsements, influential committee assignments, and the institutional knowledge. Her argument is a simple one: I’m actually doing the job. Expect her to try to make Lyman look like a chaos agent who would be more interested in investigating conspiracy theories than passing legislation. Her hurdle is making that case without sounding like she’s defending a system that a good chunk of her own primary voters already distrust.

The real problem for Maloy: The new CD3 map is brutal for her. Nearly 600,000 of her likely 2026 voters have never seen her on a ballot. Lyman, by contrast, won multiple counties now inside CD3 during the 2024 governor's race. She's not the hometown favorite she used to be.

Bottom line: Lyman is underfunded, increasingly conspiratorial, and running on vibes and grievance. He also nearly won the convention, is running in a new district that could be more favorable to him, and has absolutely nothing to lose on a debate stage. This one could get messy.

CD2: Blake Moore vs. Karianne Lisonbee

Monday

Here's your establishment-vs.-MAGA rematch, Utah-style, except in this version, the establishment guy is the fifth-ranking Republican in the entire U.S. House of Representatives who has been endorsed in previous elections by President Trump.

Blake Moore walked into the April GOP convention as one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress, touted his role in Trump's tax cuts, and received 33.7% of the delegate vote. His challenger, state Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, who had been in the race for all of about six weeks, got 61.5%. Moore survived only because he collected signatures.

Lisonbee's attack is straightforward: Moore helped launch the redistricting commission that ultimately gave Utah a Democratic-leaning congressional district for the first time in decades. In a Republican primary in 2026, that's about as damaging as accusations get. She's been calling him a traitor to Utah Republicans, and delegates ate it up.

Moore heads into the debate with $2.4 million on hand. Lisonbee has roughly $150,000—a 16-to-1 money disadvantage. That’s why she demanded five debates across the district, which Moore ignored.

What Lisonbee will do: Hit redistricting relentlessly. She has one weapon, and it's a good one. Moore's fingerprints are on the process that created the map that created a Democratic seat, and no amount of explaining the nuances of bipartisan redistricting commissions is going to land well with Republican primary voters who are furious about it. Expect her to also go after his leadership position, arguing that being in House leadership has made him part of the problem, not part of the solution.

What Moore will do: Try to make this race about competence, clout, and results. He was in the room when the big bills passed. He has relationships that translate to real outcomes for Utah. Losing him means starting over as a freshman with no influence. He'll lean on Trump's endorsement and dare Lisonbee to explain what she'd actually accomplish as a backbencher with a grudge.

Moore has been here before: He’s 0-for-3 at convention, but 3-for-3 in primaries, so he knows how to survive.

Bottom line: On paper, Moore wins easily. Last week he released internal polling showing him with a massive advantage over Lisonbee. Moore just needs to not lose the debate. Lisonbee needs to win it.

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