Native Vote 2026
Primary opposition
How unpopular are data centers? In Utah, Republican voters fired politicians pushing the controversial proposal for a massive data center in Box Elder Country.
“Republican voters ousted Utah’s most powerful lawmaker, state Senate President J. Stuart Adams, Tuesday after a series of controversies and mounting criticism for his role as one of the key decision-makers advancing a proposal to build a controversial data center in Box Elder County.
“Two other key GOP lawmakers — Sen. Daniel McCay and Rep. Trevor Lee — were voted out as well.”
To read more articles by Mark Trahant, go to: Marktrahant.substack.com
In addition two county commissioners in Box Elder County lost.
“The two members of the Box Elder County Commission who faced challengers in Tuesday’s Republican primary election were ousted from their positions by voters.
“Boyd Bingham and Lee Perry had been heavily criticized recently after voting to approve the massive Stratos Project data center project in an unincorporated area in their county.”
It’s important to note that in Utah, Republican primary elections are “closed” to only party members. And to vote, citizens had to register by last April 1. Meaning that only the most dedicated Republicans were able to vote in this primary.
What it means to be a Democrat or a Republican
Another headline from yesterday’s primary is the success of candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller who also ran for mayor last year before endorsing Mamdani, won his race comfortably, defeating the Democratic representative Dan Goldman.
“Another Mamdani ally, Claire Valdez, a state lawmaker and former union organizer, defeated Antonio Reynoso, the preferred successor of retiring Democratic Representative Nydia Velázquez in New York’s seventh district, encompassing parts of Brooklyn and Queens. And in a stunning upset, the public defense investigator Darializa Avila Chevalier toppled Representative Adriano Espaillat, the powerful five-term incumbent who chairs the Congressional Hispanic caucus, in the state’s diverse 13th congressional district, which covers Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.”
“What a glorious time to be a New Yorker,” Lander declared at this election night party in Brooklyn, where he was joined by the mayor. Mamdani then appeared at a watch party for Valdez, where he told a jubilant crowd: “The old politics that got us into this crisis is not the politics that’s going to get us out of this crisis.”
“It was a clean sweep for Mamdani, who waded into the House primaries earlier this year, spending his political capital to boost three leftwing allies – a gamble that would test his popularity and his influence. With his slate of candidates all but certain to be elected to Congress in November, Mamdani has left his stamp on the state’s congressional delegation and expanded his ascendant progressive movement.”
On one hand this is frustration with the Democratic Party establishment. Many voters see party leaders as ineffective in its opposition to the Trump administration.
I think something else is going on, a generational change in leadership in both parties.
There are philosophical differences, too. Democratic Socialists articulate a vision that includes more public works, better health care, and higher corporate taxes (as well as higher taxes on wealthy people). Another key plank, one that showed up in yesterday’s vote, is distrust for policies supporting the right-wing government of Israel.
One of the New York congressional candidates, Darializa Avila Chevalier, put it this way: “Today, we make it clear: The politics of the past ends today.”
Then again, it’s worth noting that in Utah, a traditional Democrat defeated those from the left.
“Ben McAdams, a former Utah congressman who has sought to shed his reputation as a moderate, won the Democratic primary Tuesday in a redrawn U.S. House district that Democrats are strongly favored to win this fall.
“His victory over three progressive candidates disappointed voters who wanted to push the Democratic Party further to the left in a race that illustrated the ideological clash playing out in Democratic primaries across the country this year. His opponents included a state senator and a former employee of TikTok and Meta who had insisted McAdams is too conservative to represent a left-leaning district. Some had urged other candidates to drop out of the primary to give a progressive a greater chance of winning.”
The Republican’s internal debate is about what kind of party it will it be after Trump? (And what kind of party will it be after it abandoned long-held conservative ideas such as free markets, small government, and constitutional norms?) Former Vice President Mike Pence is a voice for the old Republican party. He has a new book out and wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal blasting Trump’s Iran Memorandum of Understanding, saying the war effort is unfinished. This includes doubling-down on support for the current government of Israel. “For the first time in many years, the momentum is with the U.S. and our ally Israel,” Pence wrote in the Journal. “Recall that our brave men and women in uniform, in coordination with our Israeli allies, established air superiority over Iran. Yet the memorandum of understanding fails to capitalize on that opportunity.”
Sawtooth Moutain range
This fish story doesn’t work
The return of Chinook Salmon to Idaho this year is beyond disappointing. The best guess was about 3,6000 fish would return to the Sawtooth hatchery. Now it’s looking like about half that. And the numbers are not much better on the Middle Fork.
Still I am headed up to Yankee Fork (where there won’t likely be many fish) and then South Fork to camp with my brothers. Because I have lived away for so many years, this is my first trip to the rivers in a long time.
Why fish when there are so few? For me, a Sherman Alexie poem answers that question. From his book, “The man who loves salmon.”
The short poem is called Communion:
we worship
the salmon
because we
eat salmon
When I look back at my career, especially when I was in Seattle, salmon recovery was at the top of my list of topics.
I wrote this more than twenty years ago about a brochure for Salmon Falls Creek in northern Nevada.
“How nice. Salmon streams full of trout and walleye (record size, too). The one thing missing is salmon.
“We should start printing another generation of brochures. We can use them to tell our children about a salmon creek and what was and could have been.”
That’s why we keep at this recovery business. Over the past fifty years we have some successful restoration efforts — and a lot more setbacks. But we need the salmon to lead us out of the mess that surround our lives.
