John Sittner, the founder of Ancestry.com and civic activist, will be an independent candidate for U.S. House this year in Utah’s 2nd district. The 2nd district includes western Utah and most of Salt Lake City. It is usually a safe district for the Republican nominee. See this story.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
A strong independent campaign could throw this seat in play, the Democratic candidate got 33.9 percent and the Constitution party candidate 4.5% in the district in 2016, and in 2014 the Democratic candidate got 32.55 and a scattering of Third party independents together got ~6%. To win, Sittner would likely need to peel off more than 50% of Congressman Stewart’s votes, assuming that large amounts of Democrats don’t defect to Sittner. I haven’t been able to find out much about Sittner’s political positions, so its hard to gauge where his vote base would come from.
Independent and minor party candidates receive a whole lot more votes when they do not threaten the outcome in a lopsided race. However, if it appears Sittner might actually cause the election of a Democrat, then Republican voters will circle the wagons and vote defensively for Stewart. RCV is the only viable option for Sittner to get elected as an independent – he should be pushing to change Utah election law to use RCV before he wastes a bunch of his money.
If Sittner can pull significant numbers of votes from democrats, he might be able to win. But again, there’s practically no information available on his issue positions so its hard to tell if he’d be able to do that.