Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

OGDEN — A trio of GOP lawmakers defended the new boundaries dividing the four U.S. House districts in Utah, a sore point for some who charge that the new lines unfairly benefit the Republican Party.

“We felt like it was a compromise. We felt we kept communities of interest as best we could. Not just dropping a bomb on the map and starting over,” Utah Rep. Joel Ferry, a Republican from Brigham City, said Monday. He served on the Utah Legislative Redistricting Committee, the state body tasked with crafting a redistricting plan.

The new boundaries, signed into law last month, divide Salt Lake County, where the Democratic Party in the state is the strongest, into four parts, a piece in each of the four U.S. House districts. That’s sparked charges of gerrymandering from Democrats and others, who see creation of the boundaries as a maneuver by Republicans to help give them a lock on future U.S. House elections.

Before the change, Salt Lake County had been divvied among three U.S. House districts, with the 4th District relatively competitive between Democratic and Republican contenders, at least in the 2018 and 2020 cycles. Rep. Burgess Owens currently holds the 4th District seat.

The intent, proponents of the change have said, was to create four districts that each have urban and rural elements, thereby helping make sure, at least theoretically, that the state’s four congressmen are responsive to the state’s varied interests. Given the particularities of the state’s population cluster along the Wasatch Front, Utah Rep. Cal Musselman, a West Haven Republican, said to divide the House districts any other way would not have been possible.

Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

“In fact, it’s not near impossible. It’s impossible,” he said.

Ferry, Musselman, Utah Sen. John Johnson and Aly Escobar, who served as administrative coordinator for the Utah Independent Redistricting Commission, addressed the issue Monday at a “roundtable” discussion. It was hosted by the Weber County Republican Women and held at The Ice Sheet on the Weber State University campus.

Despite the changes in the four districts, Johnson, like Ferry, said the update keeps “communities of interest” — population clusters with similar interests — together. “You don’t see a massive shift in boundaries,” he said.

Escobar was the only one to explicitly acknowledge that the new boundaries — approved by the GOP-dominated legislature and inked into law by Gov. Spencer Cox, also a GOPer — will make it tough for Democratic candidates to win any of them. The commission she helped administer crafted alternative redistricting proposals, reviewed by state lawmakers but ultimately set aside in favor of the legislative committee’s proposals.

When the issue of gerrymandering came up, Ferry noted that voting in Utah typically splits 65% Republican to 35% Democratic, suggesting that GOP dominance is more a function of the ideology of most Utahns. Moreover, to consider political factors in drawing boundaries — the interests of either party — would have been improper, he said.

Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

“That’s when you get into gerrymandering,” Ferry said. The plan finally approved “is not gerrymandering by any definition of the term.”

Musselman further noted that creating four districts that each have an urban and rural component reflects “the symbiotic relationship” between the two in Utah. “One doesn’t survive without the other,” he said.

The 1st District, which includes Ogden and the rest of Weber County, doesn’t include Salt Lake City in its current configuration. But it will in the new one, to take effect with the 2022 election cycle. Rep. Blake Moore is the 1st District representative.

Escobar said some Salt Lake County residents had asked that the county not be divvied too much under the new congressional boundaries as the commission came up with its boundary proposals.

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