Redistricting, Rural Utah, and Playing the Long Game on Water with Celeste Maloy

Congresswoman Celeste Maloy joins Back Channel for a candid conversation about the behind-the-scenes work that actually makes the job possible: building a congressional office from scratch, assembling a team, and learning the parts of the role you can’t understand until you’re the one doing it.

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Off Script. On Record.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Utah's congressional districts have been redrawn, renamed, and reshuffled, and that has left both incumbents and challengers rushing to introduce themselves to voters in a very short amount of time. And in a place like, say, Southern or rural Utah, being a good candidate and an effective representative isn't just about casting votes. It's about being visible, being present, and building trust in communities that face some real challenges and have some amazing opportunities in front of them. For the last five years, one member in particular of our federal delegation has lived on the run pretty much nonstop as a candidate, as a midterm replacement, and serving a full term of her own. My guest today is a member of Congress from Utah's current 2nd District. And because of recent boundary changes, she's running to represent the new third district. She has roots in rural Utah with a background in law and public lands and water issues. And I'll ask her about this: someone who's had to figure out how to serve a district that's changed right beneath her feet. Coming up on Back Channel, we go off script and on record with Congresswoman Celeste Malloy. This is the Back Channel.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Back channel.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

You didn't hear this from me. Back channel. Hey, you're not gonna quote me, are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:14

What channel is it on?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Back channel. Off script on record. This may be the episode where there's the greatest discrepancy between guest and host in hair. And that's I think what this episode will go down for.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Should I loan you some?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

You should. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I think now we have to Photoshop something of me with your hair and put it on the show right there. Uh you are always running for office. And I'm so glad that you took a minute to sit down. Uh you're in that like um uh high-energy portion of the campaign as you get down to the end of this primary season. Uh but man, it just it feels like ever since I've known you, you've been running, and that has to be just so tiring on some level.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, I did spend 40 years of my life never running for office. It's just the last three years that I've been constantly on a ballot.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Aaron Powell Is it like sleep, though? You can't bank not running for 40 years and then have that energy to use at that point. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

It'd be nice like our hair if we could just average it out and have one decent head of hair and one decent life with a few races. That'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

That'd be great. Um well I know you're busy, so I appreciate you spending some time with us, even though uh we're into that portion of the primary season. I I think because um you came into office uh uh sort of in in a in a special way, not just like, okay, all of a sudden it's it's time to run for everybody. Yeah. You came in and took over for the guy who had been your boss, um, Congressman Chris Stewart. Um that maybe uh people got less time to sort of get to know you. So let's start with a little bit just about about you. Um you grew up in rural Utah. Which part of rural Utah?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

I actually grew up in rural Nevada.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Rural Nevada?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

In a little teeny tiny town, it's called Hico, Nevada. It's about 150 miles west of Cedar City. Okay. So I was born in Cedar City, that's always been town.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

So you're born in Utah? Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

A little bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

And and it's been interesting what people find interesting about me now that I'm running for office. Um we did a poll during one of the races, and you know, you you asked these questions about yourself to see what people find interesting. And the the thing people were the most interested in is that I grew up in a single wide trailer, which I didn't know was one of the most interesting things about myself, but I did grow up in a single wide trailer. Um I went to a little tiny high school and in Nevada as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Okay. So you grew you you grew up there and went to high school there. Yep. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

And then I went to SUU as an 18-year-old, and I've just stayed.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

What made SUU the place you decided to go to school?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

So uh win by default, really. I was involved in FFA growing up, and I did soil judging. And my senior year of high school, I won the FFA soil judging contest at SUU, and that comes with a scholarship, a full ride scholarship to SUU as long as you major in agriculture. So that's how I decided where to go to school, what to major in, and how to pay for it.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

So as a non-FFA guy, yeah. Tell me tell me about soil judging. What is that all about?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Um, so they they bring in a backhoe, they dig a pit, basically, and a bunch of kids in blue corduroy jackets go down in there with clipboards, and uh you have like a score sheet, and you go in and look at how deep the soil is and how many layers it has and what the different layers are made of, and would it be good for farming, would it be good for a septic tank? I I can't even remember all of the things now that you look at, but is it well drained? Does it have clay layers? And whoever's the most accurate wins.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

So is that your favorite part of Napoleon Dynamite when he's drinking the milk and says that a the cow got into an onion patch?

SPEAKER_00 4:44

No, my favorite part was when the neighbor shoots the cow. But I did identify a lot with that movie.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

That well, that's gonna help your NRA rating and might hurt you with PETA at this point in the race. Uh okay, so you go to you go to SUU and you major in agriculture? Yes. Okay, so how does how do you go from agriculture to Congress then? Like what was were you pleased? Were you into the politics of it or like what what action?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

I I just wanted to, you know, get a job and and be able to support myself and figure out what to do with my life. When I was at SUU, I started an internship with the USDA in the Natural Resources Conservation Service. So I was working with farmers and ranchers, uh, doing a lot of the same kind of stuff that I'd learned in FFA. Uh designing irrigation systems, helping solve resource problems. And when I graduated from SUU, I got a full-time job in Beaver doing that. And I went and lived in Beaver full-time and had a good career where I was, you know, part of the federal retirement system and doing things that I liked to do and thought I would do for the rest of my life. Uh but about 10 years in, I got the itch and decided to go to law school partly because I was administering farm bill programs, but I didn't really understand why they worked the way they worked. And I wanted to know who does this policy, like who sets these policies that everybody else just has to live with. Um and I didn't really know how to figure that out, but I thought law school would probably be a good step on the way. So I went to law school at BYU and graduated and went back to Southern Utah as a deputy county attorney in Washington County doing land and water civil law work for Washington County.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

So did your strategy work out? Did you say, okay, now I understand this, or do you still read it and go, I don't know, who knows what's going on with all this stuff?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

It actually shouldn't have worked out this way, but I figured out pretty quickly who writes it because right when I got to Washington County, uh there was a BLM Bureau of Land Management plan that got released for Washington County, and I went to work on that, and I found out that the people who write this policy are mostly, you know, bureaucrats who work in federal agencies, and they are accountable to politicians. And so I didn't really want to have a lot to do with politics until I figured out that politicians are the people who can fix the things that I thought were broken.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

So you figure you get sort of this um nice boots on the ground training, a boots on the ground or even deeper in the ground when they dig a pit and you're going to look at that. Does that you represent so much of rural Utah? And we'll get into the district shifting and all of that here in a bit, but you represent so much of rural Utah. I would think that like that has to be a tremendous advantage because you're talking to people in a way that um you don't have to mold a candidate to go talk to people. You speak the language, you speak the dialect.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Yeah, and it it turned out to be an advantage. I didn't plan on ever running for office, but I spent so much time in the rural parts of the state, in the small counties, talking to farmers and ranchers and county commissioners and small town mayors that when I decided to run for office, I had those relationships, and those are hard to build. You know, it takes a lot of time to get from town to town and county to county and build those relationships. And I started off with a really good base of support in rural Utah. And I think almost everybody starts off the other way around. They have the urban connections, and then they're out in rural Utah trying to build the relationships, buying new boots, showing up with Wranglers on, you know, trying to learn how to talk to rural voters, and and I went the other way.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yeah. Everyone else is ripping the price tag off the Wranglers as they show up to the event, and you've you're trying to pick which pair is.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

I was trying to get something in my wardrobe that I could wear in urban Utah instead of just wearing jeans all the time.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

All right, so you decide you want to go work with the politicians because they can make a difference. Yeah. Uh was Chris Stewart the the one and only, or did you work with somebody else before that?

SPEAKER_00 8:31

He was the first congressman I ever met. I'm I met him when I was working at the county attorney's office when I was working on that plan. But because of that meeting, we had a congressional field hearing in St. George on that plan. And so, you know, Rob Bishop was the chair of natural resources, he brought his committee out. Jason Chaffetz was the chair of oversight and government reform, he brought his committee out. And so I worked with the whole Utah delegation pretty quickly after I got there. Uh but then there were also other members of Congress from other parts of the country that were there for that field hearing, and so suddenly I met uh several members of Congress. I went from, you know, zero to a dozen pretty quick.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Yeah. Uh what was your role when you started in the Stewart office and and what did you like about the experience of working with him?

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I was the legal counsel, was my title. Um, but I handled the natural resources portfolio as well. So my role was that I was handling the policy related to air, land, water, etc., um, and then anything that they needed a lawyer for. And my experience was really good. I walked into a very well-established office. Um it was well run, my role was clearly defined, and it created an environment where I could come in and thrive pretty quickly. Now that I have set up a new office, I realize how much groundwork they had already done that I benefited from.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah. And I don't think people who maybe haven't worked in that setting uh can appreciate how difficult that is to set up because congressional offices, you essentially have a budget and you can go build it how you want to build it and put people in charge of uh of whatever it is you think they should be in charge of, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Yeah, I think most people, if they've ever thought about it, which most people probably haven't.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Uh most of us don't sit around dreaming like, well, when I'm in Congress, I'll set my staff up this way.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

But if you ask, if you'd have asked me before I graduated from law school, how many how much staff does a member of Congress have? I'd have said they probably have one or two people to work for them. Uh it's actually more like 15 to 18. And there's no HR for the United States House of Representatives. There's no office supply store. Well, there actually kind of is, but but the House doesn't run all of those things. Each office is its own entity. You know, you're in charge of your own hiring, your own onboarding, you have to buy all the supplies. It just it's there, it's like 435 little kingdoms that all just happen to be next to each other.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

And in some way a little startup, because you show up and it's like, well, you you don't necessarily inherit what your predecessor had.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

No, in fact, coming in in a special election, you know, it was the middle of a Congress, but when Chris Stewart left, his office shut down completely. They close everything out. And so I had to walk in and start a new office from scratch. And when you come in on the regular cycle, you have a freshman class, they do orientation, you know, all the people you need to know come in and teach you what you need to know. And I'm sure even the people who come in on a regular election cycle, they don't retain everything they're told. But they are at least told, this is where you go to get this paperwork, here's where your staff get their badges so they can access the building. I didn't have that. And so we were kind of trying to piece it all together as we went. And when you come in in a special election right in the middle of Congress, uh, you run for re-election immediately. And so I filed to run for office again four weeks after I got sworn in while I was still trying to hire staff, make sure people had badges and could get into the building, figure out where we get furniture for the office. It's it's much less of a well-oiled machine than I think most members of the public would expect.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Yeah. Um so you mentioned furniture. Did they when you say they closed out his office, did they you walked into an empty building? Or you just had to figure out some new furniture and figure some stuff around.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

And and a lot of the like the walls were bare. You know, Chris Stewart took his stuff home with him, and and he's a best-selling author and a pilot, and he had cool stuff on the walls. I didn't have stuff. I had a couch and a couple of chairs, and it looked very masculine, very military, and very bare. Yeah. And we kind of had to create our own feel out of that.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Yeah. And that's tough to do because you're like you said, you're coming in, but you're filing to run right away. Yeah. So you're sort of saying, I hope that this is a place I can sort of set something up.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

But I imagine uh because I've I've you know I've run campaigns before that the the campaign element of it is it's pretty bare bones, right? Like I think I ran the 2016 gubernatorial campaign on a f on a lifetime desk. Yes. You know, it's like or lifetime table. And I was like, well, that's my desk because we're only here for you know for a year and a half or whatever. We I'm not buying I'm using money to buy TV ads, not furniture.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, no, there's a lot of that feel to it. And you know, you're trying to hire staff and you want people who know enough that they can be good at what they do, but they know that you're running for re-election, and there's always a chance you'll lose, and so you may be there for one year. And so you're you're asking people, it's probably a lot like hiring in a startup. You're saying, come take a risk with us, and if it works, it's gonna pay off. And if it doesn't, we'll we'll all laugh about it someday.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

What did you like about being a congressional staffer?

SPEAKER_00 13:31

I loved that I was getting to solve those problems that I used to sit home and be frustrated about. You know, I I think most Americans have probably had the experience at some point of yelling at the TV while they're watching the news, like, ah, who makes these decisions? Why would they do that? And as a staffer, I actually got to go into the room and try to influence those decisions and you know, advocate for the people in Utah, like this is how this decision is going to impact people. Maybe we can do it in a better way to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah. And I I think what people um often don't understand about a staffer position is you get an assignment or you or you take an assignment to go, I'm gonna be way more of an expert in this than my boss is.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

And my job is to teach my boss about this, give them both sides, and then say, here's my recommendation. Yeah. Right. And that that's that's an interesting part of the job to walk in with that kind of influence.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

It it really is, and it's almost scary at first. Like I came with a lot of experience. Most staffers are pretty young, they're in their 20s, most of them have political science degrees, and you know, they have iPhones and they're kind of running the world. It's a really heady kind of job. I came in, you know, older, having worked as an attorney, having a lot of experience uh in my field, you know, in the practical, getting my hands literally dirty hard. Um but when I walked in, all of a sudden the the pressure that was on me to get it right for my boss. Like I was the one out talking to people and gathering information and making the recommendations. At the end of the day, he decided what the policy was, he decided what bills we were running, but I had to make sure he had the right information, not just good information, because if I got it wrong, he had to go out and explain to the voters. And that's kind of a weird thing that you can't train for it.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah. How has doing that side of it helped you now that you're on the other side of it, where you have to sort of rely on people to say, all right, I need a briefing on this, I need to understand this, and I'm gonna ask really pointed questions. Yeah. I I just wonder how that's made you feel like, oh, I'm better at this because I've done that.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

So I had a friend who told me when I ran, you are going to be really hard to work for. Um and at the time I was a little irritated that he said it, and now I know that he's absolutely right. He didn't work for me too.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

You're fired as a friend. You're right.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

No, but having been a staffer, I think makes me more thorough as a member in a way that's probably really hard for my staff. So most brand new members of Congress really rely on their staff. And the staff kind of tells them, you need to do this, this is probably a good idea. And to some extent, they have to take the staff's word for it. Um, as a former staffer, I think I expect a lot more from my staff where they'll say, Well, this is just how people do it. And I say, Ah, I think we can do better than that. Or like, don't tell me that's how people do it. Like this, our constituents expect this level from us. Um, and I recognize that it probably makes me harder to work for. I try to be aware of that as I'm hiring and training people.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

So at one point, then you're working as the lead counsel for um for Congressman, then Congressman Stewart. And did you get some kind of heads up that he was he was gonna leave? Like walk me through that situation where you said, I uh one day I've got a job and I'm thinking only about that job, and then very shortly thereafter, you've got to make a decision about running, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:45

It was very shortly. So, no, I didn't see it coming. There was uh a long weekend that he was at home and made a decision, and I think planned on sort of holding on to that decision for a little while while he had conversations with, you know, the governor's office about what a special election would look like and with staff about what our futures would look like. But somebody got word of it, and so I went in, it was, you know, it was long weekend, we had Monday off. I went in Tuesday morning to work, and I got a couple of texts from friends that said, How are you doing? And I thought, what's going on? Why is everyone asking me how I'm doing this morning? I don't people don't just text me first thing in the morning to check in on my mental well-being. And so it's a good sign.

unknown 17:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Don't take offense to the show. They do now. Yeah, now they should.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Um but I thought, what what do they know that I don't know? And so I started calling people, and it it took a few calls before someone answered, and I said, What's going on? And anyway, someone told me that they'd heard my boss was resigning, and I actually said, Don't listen to people who spread rumors, like that's ridiculous. Turns out they were right and I was wrong. Um, but I told the chief of staff that I'd heard that, and he told the congressman, and and I think they were really surprised that the rumor had started, and it gave him enough of a heads up that he had a call with the staff. And I think our call wrapped up just a few minutes before the Salt Lake Tribune tweeted. So it was a very, very short timeline.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

And that was from the time that like you found that out, they said you've essentially confirmed, okay, he's leaving.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Uh walk me through the decision then to go from that to be running.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

So the congressman called, told us, you know, what was going on, and and then he got on a plane and flew to Washington, D.C. When he landed, we had a staff meeting. So it was like the rumors started in the morning. By that afternoon, the the boss is in town and we're having a staff meeting. And he said, you know, I want to make sure that we help everyone land on their feet, take care of all of you, we've got a little bit of time. There's, you know, they can't have a special election tomorrow. And he actually encouraged me, he said, I think you should run. I joked, I said, Well, where I want to be is retired. Can you help me get to retired? And he was like, No. Let's try something else. So he encouraged me to run, which at the time seemed insane. I said, I've I've never run for anything. I don't have money. I don't have a campaign, I don't have any experience, I don't have a compelling story, I'm not a best-selling author or a world record pilot. And and he agreed, he said, all those things are true, but like, why not try it? And I don't think I would have ever been brave enough to try it. I didn't even really have the desire. I had watched what his life was like. It looked difficult. I didn't have a huge desire to do it, but I also never would have had the bravery to take that kind of risk. Yeah. Except that he knew what it was like and he believed I could do it, and it gave me some hubris I probably shouldn't have had. And I really didn't think I could win. But I back to your point about having all the experience in rural Utah, I thought a lot of people are gonna want to run for this seat. An open seat is tempting. And they're gonna want to run based on you know what's going on in the urban parts of the district. And I'm worried that whoever wins won't understand all these rural issues we've been working on. And I wanted to at least be in the race to force people to talk about those issues, to make people go out and learn the issues so that they would be know how to engage in rural Utah once they were in office. And and then I won, and I had to learn all of the other issues that I didn't already know.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Yeah, which is the case for anybody, right? But you at least wanted to defend some of that home turf. Yes, so to speak. All right, so you get elected, you win, and suddenly you show up and you're like, all right, well, okay. Yeah, how do we start this thing? You were just talking about like trying to set up an office. Yeah. And setting up the office and getting the team and all that, that's a lot of the blocking and tackling that people don't see. It's sort of the behind-the-curtain stuff that really is important for the success of someone who's an elected official.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

And it's where a lot of the politics happens. You know, you've been involved in campaigns and politics. Nobody does the job by themselves, whether you're the governor or a mayor or a member of Congress. You have to put a team around you that makes you better. People who know more than you do, people who know things that you don't know, um, people who are willing to go have the hard conversations that you don't have time for. And that part is as much art as it is science, and you can't learn it until you are in the position. You just have to go do it.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

What about on the other side of that though? Like there are things that are specific to the member of Congress, right? That you get to go out onto the house into the to the well of the house floor, and suddenly there are procedural things and uh elements of that. And oh, I've got to give this speech that I may have not looked at very carefully, and I have to stand up and do it. Yeah. And I have to give a speech to essentially an empty chamber sometimes. That could be a little weird. Just tell me about what the adjustment was like to like the actual what people think of as the job of a Congresswoman.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

So I was a staffer, and I think I was a really good staffer, and I thought I had a pretty good handle on what happened in the office, but there there are all these facets of the member's life that you just don't see as a staffer. You know, I I'd never run the campaign, and I hadn't been on the House floor, and I hadn't had to get up and give all the speeches. And I joke with Chris Stewart a lot now when I see him that if I could go back and be a staffer again, I would be a much better staffer now that I know what his job's like. And I jokingly tell my staff all the time everyone should be a member of Congress for a year before they become a staffer. Because you know, I I did things like write him talking points for a speech that I thought were really great. Well, when someone hands you talking points and you have to get up and give the speech, there are things you realize, like, oh, it's actually really hard to read and talk at the same time. And when talking points are briefer and have more spaces in them, that's a lot easier. I'm just dumb technical things that you don't think of until you're the one doing it. But then, yeah, like stepping onto the house floor for the first time. I was I was standing in the speaker's lobby, I had my pin on, I was legal, and it took me a long time to step through that door. The Capitol Police actually said, ma'am, you can go in there now. And I was like, I I don't know. Give me a second. I don't know if I can go in there.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Did you have that moment though? I I would imagine, and I'm not in that position, but it suddenly it's okay. You say you got the pin, you're ready to go in. Do you take a minute just to go, holy cow? I can't believe that this how did I get here? Like, do you take a moment of reflection then?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yeah, so the night I got sworn in was the first time I ever stepped onto the House floor, and they did it between votes. So all of the members are on the floor. Um, but also all the people that I invited to come with me are sitting in the gallery. And standing in the speaker's lobby, you know, there's windows on the doors, so I could see in, I could see all the members, I could see all of my friends and family up in the gallery. And it was it was one of those moments. You know, you don't get very many moments in life that are like a Disney movie where the lighting's perfect and everybody looks glowy and happy. That was one of those moments where I'm like, how did I get here? It's it the whole process was so fast that it from like I'm a staffer with no plans of changing to I'm wearing a pin and they're gonna let me out on the house floor and I have to say something in front of all of my new colleagues. It was only a few weeks. I guess by the end it was a few months, but it happened really, really quickly. Um, and I did have to really do some soul searching. And they told me I had two minutes to speak. Like you you can't say very much in two minutes, but I thought, what am I going to say to all of these current members of Congress? I am the newest person here. Um and so I went back to my roots and I quoted the FFA Creed, and that turned out to be kind of a fun. I mean, I quoted it because of what it said. I I quoted, kind of paraphrased the line that says, I believe in the promise of better days through better ways, even as the better things we now enjoy have come to us through the struggles of former years. And and I felt like that kind of captured how I felt that day stepping onto the floor. But what I learned is every member of Congress who had ever memorized the FFA creed in high school then came and introduced themselves to me in the first week because that's one of those, you know, shared experiences that when you hear it, you're like, oh, I remember that.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

And it's an interesting thing as as an individual, like you probably remember trying to memorize that.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

And then you did when you did that, you're like, I just have to do this for FFA. I mean you were probably a high school kid or four, yeah, or junior high or whatever high school, somewhere in that in that range. And and then suddenly it's like, oh, well, that's what I'm gonna draw on in this moment when you're a bag little girl would not have thought you know, a teenage girl would not have thought about that. Not in a million years. Is that in your nature to stop and enjoy moments like that, or is that something you've had to learn as you've gone to say, I gotta pause and appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

It's something I've had to learn. I I tend to just go, go, go and not reflect as much. It's actually something that Chris Stewart taught me. Uh even before I worked for him, he would say, You should be keeping a journal. You know, there were some things we worked on together that were kind of cool, and he'd say, Are you writing this down, you should keep a journal because you'll forget it really quickly.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

It's really bold because those things become admissible.

unknown 25:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Well, he's saying as a lawyer, no, I'm not keeping a journal.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Um but I do, I'm a big believer in marking the milestones in life. If if you don't stop and celebrate every once in a while, everything feels like drudgery, even the really cool things. Like if you don't stop and think, I just walked into the Oval Office. Like I just talked to the president of the United States. If you don't take a minute and enjoy that, then it just becomes part of the striving, and and everything becomes striving, and you don't why are you trying so hard if you can't enjoy any of it?

SPEAKER_01 25:58

And there's a difference between a moment being too big for you and and instead just pausing to say, This is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

This is something I'm gonna want to remember forever and I want to soak it in.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

I listened to an audiobook once where they quoted a famous author who would always, you know, he'd have like a nice glass of lemonade or he'd see a sunset and he'd always say, if this isn't nice, what is? Yeah. And I've tried to kind of channel some of that. Like take those moments when things are just nice and say, if this isn't nice, what is?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

You were quoting the FFA creed and and you also could have quoted in there Ferris Spuer that life moves pretty fast. You know, life moves pretty fast. You gotta slow down and take it all in at some point. Uh all right, so I want to talk about your district. Okay. And you can choose which one the current one or the new one. Um's let's maybe talk about the process of that a little bit. Like you s for the most part sort of don't have any control over where the districts are. You get to make a decision on which one you're gonna run in when it all shakes out.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Uh maybe just tell me a little bit about how um challenging slash humorous that has been to go. I don't know. I guess we'll figure it out and we'll run in the one that we think is best when we get there.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Well, the humor's a little harder to come by in this situation. Tell me about the challenge. But y we're bystanders for the most part. You know, as as members of Congress, we don't get to vote on the maps. We don't really have any input on the maps, and I've tried not to. Um that it's something that the state does, and and the state legislature is accountable to the voters in the state. I think that's the way it should work. Uh but in this case, because of a lawsuit, the legislators didn't draw the map, but we didn't know for a long time how it was gonna turn out. So the legislators drew a map that, you know, went into place in 2020, and that's the map I ran on in the special. It's the map I ran for re-election on, but the whole time there was this lawsuit going on. And then a judge threw out that map and the legislature drew another map, and then we're all in a tizzy, right? These lines look different, who's gonna run where, what makes sense for each of us, and then the court threw out that map, and then we all wait again. And then then the court selected a map that was drawn by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and it looked different than anything we'd seen before, and now we're all in a tizzy again, and it it's a little bit of a roller coaster ride because you're not steering. It's it's wild, but you have no control over it. Um, there were two points at which I had a little bit of control or at least choices to make. I was part of the federal lawsuit to try to stop the map, uh, Burgess Owens and I, and a bunch of local elected officials. And so that was one point where I got to kind of try to have some input on it. Um, we were not ultimately successful, and then deciding which district to run in. Because a lot of times when states redistrict, the lines move just a little bit. And so someone will say, Oh, my district went from an R plus 14 to an R plus 10, but like the bulk of it stayed the same. These districts got really scrambled.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

And so, and and then as a House delegation, we decided we were just going to wait and see how this played out before we made any announcements or any decisions. And the public hates that. They want they want the drama, they want the answers now.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Well, the public can probably live with it. It's the media that shows up and says, I want the answer, I want the answer.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

And the political insiders. Yeah. And so, in the absence of good information, rumors flourish, right? And so I had people calling me all the time saying, I hear you're gonna run into primary with Burgess, I hear you're gonna run into primary with Mike Kennedy, I hear you're gonna do this, I hear and and it was it actually took a lot of discipline to just wait and say, we're not making any decisions yet, we're all talking to each other. And I think the media was really skeptical of that too.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

But when you have a a lifestyle because of your profession, it's go, go, go, go, go, and especially the house, you know, it's in a for most of them, it's campaigning every other year. You'll you'll get maybe you'll get to see that at some point, right? That it's every other year. Um and the job, you know, back between DC and back to Utah and talking to constituents, all these things that go into it. I would imagine that professionally that's real challenging to go, all right, we have to just be still for a minute.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Yes. No, it does not come naturally to the kind of people who, like you say, are always on the go and always making quick decisions. You know, I I make so many decisions in a day right now that I get tired sometimes. I'm like, I don't want to decide when I'm meeting, somebody else just decide for me. Put food in front of me. I'm tired of it. Um and to hold on a decision like that and to hold off all the people who wanted the information was not a very natural process. And even people in Washington, D.C., you know, our colleagues would say, okay, I know you're not telling people, but like, what did you decide? We hadn't decided yet.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Yeah. So for the district you're running in, let's let's shift to the new district. Yes. Um just give us uh maybe help me understand like where the overlap is, what are the similarities between the old district and the new one? Yeah. Geographically and on issues like what what are the similarities? Where do you go? Wow, this is a whole different ballgame right now.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Yeah, well, so in the current district, the current district two, I represent 13 counties, and I think there's four of them that I don't represent all of the county. In the new district three, there are 18 counties, unless you count the little s slice of Weber County that's in there, and then there are 19 counties. Um and I think Utah County is the only one that I don't represent all of. And I live in Cedar City, so I'm down south, and the current district is like the west part of the state. The new district is all of the south and the whole east part of the state. So still a lot of rural, still a lot of resources issues, but a lot of new counties, 12 new counties that I've never represented before, including half of Utah County.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Did you feel like you had relationships though? Because you you had worked, you know, I I don't know, obviously Congressman Stewart's district was the same one that you've that you currently have, and then the change there. But did you feel like you had relationships from like your other work? Like some of those last you know, decades.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Before I went to work for Congressman Stewart, I did public lands policy for the Utah Association of Counties. So I worked with all of the counties in the state. And in those rural areas, the county elected officials really are the, you know, in in urban areas, the mayor and the city council make a lot of the decisions, they're politically powerful. In the rural counties, it's the county commissioners, the sheriffs, um, and I knew a lot of them from that work, and that helped. Um, but your first race, and and I think anyone who's ever run for office will tell you this, the first race, all you're trying to do is get out and introduce yourself to people and get name ID. Um, I I did that the first time, then I had to run immediately again, so I was still in that same cycle of trying to help people get to know me. This would have been my first race where I'm running with the constituents that already know me, where I already have the name ID, uh, and with a new district, I had to go introduce myself to 12 new counties, including an urban area in Utah County, and you're playing the name ID game again.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Can I can we back up and talk about one thing about redistricting, though? Um the reason none of us incumbents are having a primary against anyone is because Burgess Owens decided not to run again.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

And in the middle of all the political turmoil, primaries, but just not against the government.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

No, there's no incumbent on incumbent primaries. Um and Burgess decided not to run again, which is the thing that never happens in politics. Like he looked around, I think, in a head-to-head with any of us, he would have won. And so he didn't decide not to run because he thought he would lose. He decided not to run because he thought that would be the best thing for the party, for the state, for Congress. And then the news cycle moved on really quickly, and I think people just sort of accepted his sacrifice uh without giving it as much attention as I think it probably deserves. And and even my colleagues from other states just couldn't believe that when when we had four members of Congress and suddenly we were only gonna have three Republican districts, that somebody said, I'm gonna do what I think is best for the team and remove myself from this competition. Uh and I I think it deserves a little more, you know, stopping and reflecting on things. I think that's one of those things as a state we probably should have stopped and reflected on for a little bit longer.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Yeah, some selflessness in politics that we don't often see, or at least no nobody ever gets credit for.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Yeah. Um tell me about uh I mean, I think of your current district and the one you're running for, uh second and third.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

That uh still still a lot of overlap, at least not in people, but in issues. Yeah. Is that the case that like you're talking about rural issues? Are they the same on the western side of the state as they are on the eastern state? How much overlap is there?

SPEAKER_00 34:20

I mean, they're a little bit different, obviously. Every county is unique, it uh it has its own issues, its own uh personalities, but rural issues translate fairly well between rural counties. And then oddly, Utah County and Washington County have a lot of the same issues. They're both counties that are growing really quickly and have for a long time. So they're facing housing issues and infrastructure issues and you know all the growth pressures. It's not exactly the same, but I think the time I spent in the county attorney's office in Washington County and then also representing Washington County in Congress is really helpful for getting up to speed on a lot of the Utah County issues.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Yeah. Um you only have a couple more days until the primary's behind you, one way or the other. And I I know that's a terribly stressful thing uh to think about. But let's presume uh for the sake of our conversation that you're victorious in the primary and you go on to win another um I like that. You know, another two years in Congress. What do you look at as the issues where you say, just like you did when you worked in Congressman Stewart's office, yeah, these are the ones I want to dig in on. And yeah, you've got to also represent your district for all of the big national ones that pop up. But where do you say, boy, this is where I'm really gonna dig in?

SPEAKER_00 35:29

I So there there are a couple of things that I really want to dig in on for the district that happen to be big national issues too. Federal spending and federal regulation. I think we need a lot of regulatory reform. Um we have to stop spending as much money as we are. And and I'm lucky in that I'm on the right committees for both of those. Uh it's there was some strategy involved too, but strategy doesn't always work out this well. But I'm on the Natural Resources Committee and I'm on the Appropriations Committee. So the Appropriations Committee has the purse strings, natural resources has the authorizing uh authority over land and water and minerals and issues that are really important in Utah, both urban and rural. Um, and then through some unfortunate circumstances, I am also the chair of the Congressional Western Caucus. I was vice chair to a good friend of mine, Doug L'Amalfa. He unexpectedly passed away, and then as his vice chair, I ran and became the chair. Something I thought I wanted to do down the road. Probably wouldn't have taken it on in my first full term in Congress if I'd have had my way. But I'm I'm fortunate to be sitting here on the committees I want to be on and with this caucus that I really admire and thought I wanted to lead someday, and they're focused on those issues regulatory reform and spending. And then the the more localized one is water. Western water issues are coming to a head in a lot of ways, and I've had a lot of time and background in this, and I want to kind of pave the way forward with water and make sure we have a 100-year water plan. You know, I I live on two-year election cycles, and so it lends itself in the House to thinking short-term wins. And I'm I'm trying to get a lot of people aligned to think long-term strategy on water in the West.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah. Uh it's at the very least, is it safe to say it's an exciting time to be in Congress? Like there's not a lot of dull days on that job anyway, but it's particularly not like right now.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

No, and it's exciting in all the good and bad ways. You know, there are days I think, how did I get here? How do I get to do this? Just last week I had dinner with Kevin Costner, not one-on-one.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Um but you can leave that detail out when you tell people the story, though. No one's gonna remember that.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

He was a a witness at a natural resources committee hearing, and I was sitting there the night before having dinner with someone I've seen on movies since I was a kid. And those are kind of crazy moments, and then you know, there are the days you think you're flying home and you have plans, and it turns out we're gonna vote on Friday and Saturday, and you have to cancel all of your plans, and everybody's mad, and you know, the people who are in Congress and had to stay are mad, the people at home you canceled plans on are mad, and you think, why am I working so hard for a job that no sane person would ever want to do?

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Yeah, yeah, that's the case with just about anybody who runs for any office lands, and even more so uh in the house. Okay, we're running a little bit short on time, so I want to just end with the lightning round. You ready for the lightning round? These are you know fun questions.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

I've been campaigning, I'm used to this.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

All right, these guys lightning round. Okay, so favorite food, what are you ordering when nobody's watching?

SPEAKER_00 38:20

Uh honestly, my favorite food is cottage cheese, and I know that's weird, but I I have to eat in like a few bites at a time as I'm running between things, and it's like the easiest, you know, protein, easily digestible. As long as you have it on hand, it's easy.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Sounds like you're on like a non-stop track of girl dinner, girl dinner, girl dinner as you go along. Yes. Some some quick bite, right? Uh all right. What's your favorite sport or or hobby activity when you're not when you finally get a break from work?

SPEAKER_00 38:44

I don't know. If that ever happens, I will let you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

Being in Congress, that's your hobby and your work.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Maybe that would be I would like to take that up at a competitive level.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Like to give it a like to give it a try. I will say this if you uh win the primary, I think you should take the maybe the next day you've got to do some media stuff. But the day after that, take the day off and just sleep for like 20 hours. We'll be voting. Yeah, oh that's right. Go to work. Okay, fine. Uh all right. Um if you were not in the uh in in politics, yeah, what is the one job you, one profession you would love to try?

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Yeah, well, I did practice law for a little while and I really loved that. I'd probably go back to that.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

You enjoyed being a lawyer.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Because sometimes with lawyers you hear like, oh, I I'm glad I went to law school, but I don't like being a lawyer.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Yeah. No, I was fortunate in that I practiced, I did public lands law and water law, things that I was really excited about. And I did never do the big corporate thing where you're billing in six-minute increments and Do you really think you like when I think of that type of law, I think of it as like it's a lot of reading, studying.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

That's so that's on the opposite end of the spectrum of what your life is like now. Is that why it sounds enticing to you too?

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Maybe, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

You know, when the the social side of my brain could probably use a little bit of a rest, the deep focus side of my brain could probably use a little more time.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Okay, so you would be a lawyer. What's one profession you would never like to try?

SPEAKER_00 40:01

You know, I've always I worked uh at a truck stop in high school, like serving food and and serving people, and I always thought I would have a hard time being a waitress.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

But you kinda so you kind of did it for a while, just that's the one you can't do.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Yeah. It's it's a lot of social interaction, which I do like. Um, but the the detail and I don't know. I just always thought that was a really hard job. I try to be a good tipper because I think I would have a hard time in that profession.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Uh and you gotta tip big because otherwise you'll end up somewhere in some gossip pages that you didn't. So uh all right. Uh I you're a very busy person, so this may be a challenging question for you.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

But uh book, podcast, TV show, movie, give us a recommendation.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

So I've been talking about this all day, so it could just be proximity, but I really like the History That Doesn't Suck podcast.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

And Professor Jackson just released a new book uh about the United States called Ben There Done That. And basically it's about politics, which is part of the reason I like it, but it's saying all these things that we think are so terrible right now, they've all happened before. The Republic has held through all of these other tragedies. And so that's that's my today's obsession, what I've been recommending to everybody.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

We'll take that recommendation. Okay, last one. Uh go back and talk to FFA aged 14-year-old Celeste. Uh, what's the best piece of advice you give her?

SPEAKER_00 41:19

So, my sister, who is also my landlady and we went to law school together, uh, we talk about this a lot. Because we grew up in this small town where we we sort of saw maybe only one path ahead of us, and neither one of us has really taken that path. And I I say all the time, like, what would I tell myself? Because 14-year-old me memorizing the FFA creed couldn't have even pictured most of the things I've done since then. So I think if I could give myself one piece of advice, it would just be like, be brave enough to take risks. Like life isn't gonna go the way you think it's going to go because you're gonna try things you don't even know are options right now. So just be brave enough to take risks. It all turns out fine. Stop obsessing over what's gonna happen. It happens the way it happens, and it's gonna be kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

That's as long as I dare take you off the campaign trail because you've got to get back out there and run. Thank you. Uh good luck in the uh the upcoming primary. By the time this drops, you'll be about four days away. Okay. And uh, we look forward to hearing good news for you.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Okay. Very special thanks to Congresswoman Celeste Malloy for making time for our conversation. She's in the final couple of days in this primary campaign, and so that's a very hectic time for her. I want to remind you that Back Channel is a northbound strategy production. You can subscribe to the audio version of our show wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Pretty much everywhere as at Back Channel Utah. We'll be back next week with another episode.