Inside the Primary: Senator Dan McCay on Re-Election, Policy, and the Road Ahead

Utah politics has a way of turning big principles into very practical questions. How do lawmakers make policy that is not only principled, but also workable? How does a candidate keep faith with principles while still navigating what voters see, hear, and respond to? And what does it really take to earn reelection when a primary challenger decides to get in the race?

Senator Dan McCay addresses those questions directly, speaking from the reality of legislative service, the discipline required to hold a line on principles, and the belief that the state functions best when citizens argue in public instead of shutting down debate.

PoliticIt Radio – Hold the Line – A Song for Dan McCay

The Senate mindset: accountability spread over time

One of the most noticeable differences between the House and the Senate, McCay says, comes down to a simple structural point: terms.

In the House, members face elections on a two-year cycle. In the Senate, the term is four years, which changes the pattern of accountability and the rhythms of public pressure. The founders set this design intentionally so that the different chambers would be accountable in different ways.

McCay explains that in many ways the Senate is supposed to slow down knee-jerk reactions. When only half the Senate is up for election every two years, it can reduce the sense that policy must respond immediately to the latest wave of voter sentiment. The goal, in theory, is to push lawmakers toward solutions that are:

• Administrable, meaning they can actually be implemented
• Process-driven, not just reaction-driven
• Institutionally sound, so the “food fight” turns into something that can actually function

That difference in time and pressure matters because the job is not just to argue. It is to get to outcomes that hold up when the work begins.

Re-election in a primary: “ambition and friendship is a terrible mixture”

Running again is its own kind of test, and McCay describes the peculiar challenge of facing a primary opponent. Even with years of legislative work and relationships on both sides of the aisle, he says it can be difficult to understand the motive behind someone choosing to run directly against him.

McCay’s most direct line is that he understands ambition, but ambition combined with friendship can make politics feel especially disorienting. He mentions that one of his opponents had been a friend, at least for a time, until the decision was made to seek the seat.

He also frames it as stepping-stone ambition for higher office, suggesting that the challenger’s future goals may be part of the calculus. McCay does not treat this as inherently illegitimate. In his view, it is part of American politics, and it is ultimately the people’s job to decide who serves.

That leads to a key theme: the seat belongs to the voters, not the person currently holding it.

McCay emphasizes that service is what justifies the job. Politics may get a bad reputation online for self-enrichment, but he points out that legislative service is only one form of service among many. A person can serve through church work, community support, homeless kitchens, and countless other roles. A legislative seat is simply another opportunity to offer time, effort, and principles.

And for him, service also has a hard side people do not always appreciate: time commitment. Moving from the House to the Senate brought a change in pace, scheduling, and responsibilities that requires discipline, not just ambition.

From House to Senate: waiting, timing, and the realities of “filing”

McCay recounts how his Senate path formed. He describes watching and waiting for Senator Howard Stevenson to retire, and how he treated the transition with respect.

He tells a story from the 2018 session that captures something subtle about legislative culture: when members are not just writing policy but also timing their careers. Stevenson joked about retirement timing, implying McCay should not assume he would be stepping down immediately. McCay says he planned to keep focusing on his policy work in the House until Stevenson announced his retirement.

Then the practical calendar hit. McCay notes that the filing deadline was tied to a specific time window: the filing deadline was at 8:00 a.m. the next morning after the session. He describes spending the night close to the end of the session in anticipation of that deadline.

He also contrasts two conditions: filing after the session versus filing before the session. McCay says his experience was the first time he dealt with a filing deadline that occurred before the legislative session. In his opinion, it was not particularly helpful for the body, implying that the timing added friction to a process that should be focused.

After reelection was secured in 2018, McCay says he took time to soul-search and decide whether to run again. He did not make the decision immediately. He mentions arriving at the choice later in the year, around November, which he suspects may have affected public perceptions, since voters and party leaders were left wondering whether he would run.

In a political system that runs on signals, not answering quickly can become its own message.

Campaign season: meeting delegates and leaning into the caucus process

Once the decision to run is made, McCay describes campaign work as grounded and relational. Right now, he says, his routine centers on meeting with delegates and talking with them about what concerns them.

One of the most interesting parts of his approach is that he truly likes the caucus convention process. Many candidates talk about “stacking the caucuses,” building a network of friends and supporters who can secure the nomination. McCay says he has never approached it that way.

He views the process as fundamentally neighbor-based. If the role is supposed to be earned on caucus night, then election should reflect neighbors deciding who can do the job. In that framing, it should not be a machine powered primarily by pre-arranged alliances.

After caucus night, the campaign continues by meeting new people. McCay describes meeting dozens of new individuals and trying to earn support through listening, discussion, and showing up.

Policy becomes personal: the contractor and workers comp conversation

Campaign conversations are not abstract for McCay. They often become grounded in specific workplace issues that connect to state policy decisions.

He shares an example from a delegate he has been speaking with: a contractor explaining the difficulty of being a state contractor, especially with respect to how employees are treated compared to typical workers comp coverage.

As he tells it, the contractor discusses how general contractor relationships involve complex categories. These include how employees are handled under state contracts, and how that affects workers comp coverage and related protections.

For McCay, these are exactly the kinds of issues that make policymaking “super fascinating.” The state is not just setting rules in a vacuum. Law affects who bears risk, how people are protected, and what it costs to do the work of building projects.

In his view, the job is to listen carefully, then decide which policy changes are needed and which directions make improvements possible.

Popular vs. principled: why lawmakers struggle to close the gap

McCay’s political philosophy is about more than slogans. He describes a framework built around a present condition versus a goal state.

When lawmakers move toward principle, he says, it often means choosing policies that are less popular right now. Smaller government and less spending, for example, can conflict with how people feel about where things stand. Transparency measures might sound straightforward in theory, but in practice can be harder to pursue when public attention is focused elsewhere.

He also points to one of the deepest obstacles: policy decisions that move toward principle can require nuance that does not fit modern attention spans. He argues that lawmakers now need to compress complex thinking into short bursts because social media engagement often rewards snippets.

McCay contrasts that reality with long-form debate. He invokes the Federalist Papers as a symbol of nuance and sustained argument, suggesting the level of deliberation required for that kind of debate would be nearly impossible today given the constraints of contemporary media.

In his view, this compression makes it harder to achieve “better principle.” Even constitutional conventions and other settings that demand careful discussion are vulnerable when the surrounding culture cannot sustain the kind of debate those processes require.

Principle is not just argued, it must be shown to work

So how does a society move back toward principle if the public sphere cannot easily support nuance?

McCay’s answer is practical: people have to see how principles work. The debate cannot only be theoretical. It has to be grounded in results.

He uses an example involving an initiative process and reapportionment style politics. In his telling, the problem was not only the policy content. It was the way questions were framed to voters.

He argues that if a ballot initiative had asked voters plainly whether they would give up say over map-drawing to an unelected body, they likely would not have supported it. But he says the actual language and questions were more nuanced, long, and did not fully capture how power would shift.

He estimates that only a small fraction of voters read the statutory language closely, and that even fewer understood how disputes might end up being decided by the chief justice of the Utah Supreme Court if there was disagreement between the unelected body and the legislature.

He also references a prior warning attributed to Senator Ralph Oerlin, describing the initiative as a “one-way street” to lengthy litigation where a judge would pick the maps. McCay says that is what occurred.

His broader point is not simply that initiatives are bad. It is that the public must understand power dynamics. When the system becomes a balance-of-powers fight, people learn the real consequences of losing control over outcomes.

In his view, Utah is more capable of having a serious conversation now than it was three years earlier because the results have become visible and public.

Known bias vs. unknown bias: keep the fight in public

McCay takes a strong stance about power and accountability. He does not claim that eliminating bias is possible. Instead, he argues that removing one kind of bias usually just substitutes another.

He describes it as a preference for “known bias” over “unknown bias,” but his deeper argument is about the need for public accountability and public debate.

He suggests that restoring principle requires long conversations in which citizens fully understand what is being asked of them. Once those conversations happen, it becomes more realistic to pursue principled reforms.

Contention is not always a failure. It can be a design feature.

Perhaps the most counterintuitive idea McCay shares is that contentious fights can be good for a republic.

He extends this beyond initiatives to national issues such as immigration policy. His claim is that many government failures trace back to policies that failed to meet the underlying principle. When principle is not followed, people start creating exceptions to remain popular. Over time, that leads to deeper division.

He then argues that the solution is not to stop fighting entirely, but to fight in the right place. In the American system, he says, institutions are built so that arguments and disputes happen in the halls of the capital to prevent conflict from spilling out on the streets.

When the system works, elected officials and citizens can talk about principle, learn it themselves, and respect the institutional design that allows disagreement to be managed.

McCay calls the balance of powers a “miracle of thought,” highlighting that the long survival of republic-style democracies likely comes from learning from earlier failures. He credits that institutional wisdom for how the system holds up over time.

Why McCay’s pitch is about principled policymaking and tax fairness

By the end of the conversation, McCay frames his reelection case in terms of effectiveness as a fighter for principle and good policy.

He points to his record and emphasizes the absence of lobbyist-driven agendas. Instead, he describes his work as focused on making the legislative process more principled, transparent, and responsive.

One area he says he understands especially well is tax policy. McCay argues that tax responsibilities matter because they shape how the state finances essential functions and because tax choices often reflect whether lawmakers are pursuing popularity rather than sound policy.

He warns that pursuing popular tax outcomes can hurt taxpayers in the long run.

His specific tax argument centers on income tax. He calls income tax the “worst tax” among the taxes Utah pays and gives reasons grounded in two ideas:

• Double tax: after paying income tax, subsequent taxes can apply again, he argues.
• Privacy and disclosure: paying income tax requires disclosing detailed information to the government.

From that perspective, he sets a mission: to keep pushing for the income tax rate to be below 4%. He says this is the fight he wants to continue and hopes voters will join him in pursuing.

What it means to “return to principle” in everyday policymaking

McCay’s overarching message weaves through every topic discussed in the conversation: principle is not a slogan. It is a process.

That process includes disciplined debate, honest framing, accountability through elections, and policies that work in the real world. It also includes the willingness to admit that moving toward principle is harder than managing the present because popular positions often do not align with long-term structure and institutional health.

When citizens understand how power works, when elections keep accountability active, and when disagreements stay public and principled, the republic gains strength. And, in McCay’s view, that strength is part of what has allowed Utah and the United States to endure as long-surviving republic democracies.

 

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