Utah Primary Preview: A New Map, a Blue Seat, and a Four-Way Fight for UT-01
- Utah votes Tuesday, June 23, under a brand-new congressional map. A court threw out the old lines, and the redraw turned the new 1st District, built around Salt Lake County, into a Democratic-leaning seat that Kamala Harris would have carried by 24 points.
- That makes UT-01 the marquee race. Four Democrats are running, and former Rep. Ben McAdams, a moderate and the last Democrat Utah sent to Congress, is the front-runner, around 75% on the prediction markets.
- His main challenger is progressive state Sen. Nate Blouin, near 25%, with tax attorney Michael Farrell and convention winner Liban Mohamed also in the field. In a seat this blue, the June 23 Democratic winner will be the heavy favorite to flip it in November.
- The new map cut Republican seats from four to three and pushed Rep. Burgess Owens into retirement, shuffling Reps. Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy and Mike Kennedy into the three remaining red districts.
- Two GOP incumbents face real primaries: Moore meets convention-backed challenger Karianne Lisonbee in the 2nd District, and Maloy faces Phil Lyman in the 3rd. Both incumbents are favored.
SALT LAKE CITY - Utah will hold its primary on Tuesday, June 23, and for once the map itself is the story. There is no governor or U.S. Senate race in the state this year, so the ballot tops out at the four U.S. House seats, the same kind of races behind the national House of Representatives odds. What makes them worth watching is that they will be run on brand-new district lines, and one of those districts has flipped from red to blue.
The New Map
The change traces to a long anti-gerrymandering fight. In November 2025, a state judge threw out the congressional map Utah had used since 2021, ruling the process that produced it unconstitutional, and ordered a new one drawn by the plaintiffs. The redraw reduced Utah's Republican-leaning districts from four to three and created a Democratic-leaning seat, the new 1st District, anchored in the urban core of Salt Lake County. By one common measure, Kamala Harris would have carried the new 1st by about 24 points in 2024.
That single change reshaped the whole delegation. Rep. Burgess Owens announced his retirement once it was clear the map left only three red seats. The other three Republican incumbents shifted districts: Rep. Blake Moore will run in the new 2nd, Rep. Celeste Maloy in the new 3rd, and Rep. Mike Kennedy in the new 4th. National Democrats, who have not won a Utah House seat since 2018, now see the 1st as a real pickup opportunity.
UT-01: The Marquee Race
The new 1st drew a crowded Democratic field, and four candidates will be on the June 23 ballot. The front-runner is Ben McAdams, a former Salt Lake County mayor who represented an earlier version of a Utah seat from 2019 to 2021 and remains the last Democrat the state sent to Congress. He leads in money and name recognition and is running as a pragmatic moderate.
His chief rival is state Sen. Nate Blouin, who is running to McAdams' left and pitching himself as the progressive built to win. Also on the ballot are tax attorney Michael Farrell and Liban Mohamed, a newcomer who actually won the party's April convention on delegate votes even as McAdams led the broader race. The contest has become a clear test between the party's older, moderate wing and its younger progressives. Because the seat now leans so heavily Democratic, the June 23 winner will be the strong favorite to flip it in November and break Utah's all-Republican delegation.
The Red Districts
The three remaining Republican seats are safe in November, so their primaries are the real contests, and two of them are live.
In the 2nd District, across northern Utah, Moore faces Karianne Lisonbee, a state representative who beat him among delegates at the April convention. Moore qualified for the ballot by gathering signatures, so the two will meet on June 23, with the incumbent's fundraising and a Trump endorsement working in his favor. In the 3rd District, spanning eastern and southern Utah, Maloy draws a challenge from Phil Lyman, the former state lawmaker and 2024 gubernatorial candidate known for fighting the party establishment. Maloy, too, is favored. The 4th District, across central and western Utah, will not hold a contested Republican primary at all: Kennedy locked up the nomination at the April convention with nearly 79% of the delegate vote, and no challenger qualified by signature, so he advances unopposed within his party.
The Odds Board
For a betting audience, Utah comes down to one genuinely open race and a set of incumbent holds. In the UT-01 Democratic primary, the markets make McAdams the clear favorite, around 75%, with Blouin his nearest pursuer near 25%, though Mohamed's convention win briefly pushed McAdams' price down. On the Republican side, the markets and the fundamentals favor the incumbents, with Maloy near 74% over Lyman and Moore ahead of Lisonbee. For readers tracking election odds in Utah, the live money is in the 1st, both for the primary and for whether the seat actually turns blue in the fall. Keep in mind these are market prices, the traders' odds of each result, not vote shares.
The Bottom Line
Utah's June 23 primary will not pick a governor or a senator, because neither is on the ballot. What it will do is far more consequential than a normal Utah primary, thanks to a new map that handed Democrats their best congressional opening in years.
Watch the 1st District above all. If McAdams holds his 75% lead, the most likely outcome is that Utah sends a Democrat back to Congress for the first time since the last decade. For the latest election odds, June 23 is the date that counts, with the general election to follow on Nov. 3.
