So one Utah County Republican has recorded another landside victory to replace another Utah County Republican, who also recorded his share of landslide victories, in the U.S. House of Representatives.
To folks who aren’t from around here, that may not seem like much to either celebrate or lament. But the fact is that the new boss is very much not the same as the old boss.
John Curtis, who was finishing up his second term as mayor of Provo, is refreshingly different from his four-and-a-half term predecessor, Jason Chaffetz.
Chaffetz was a too-clever-by-half media hound who seemed to take pride in the political enemies he made and never showed that he cared very much about making any legislative progress on any important issue. He quit last June, apparently disappointed that nobody really wanted him to investigate Hillary Clinton’s emails anymore, and lit out for the territory of talking-head TV.
Curtis got elected by pointing to his quiet effectiveness as the leader of Provo, someone who could and did work with many different interests and factions to get things done. He is unlikely to become a fixture on anyone’s cable gabfests.
And that’s good because, with only a year in his truncated term before he will have to face the voters of Utah’s 3rd Congressional District again, Curtis has his work cut out for him.
The hope here is that Utah’s newest congressman will shrug off some of the stumbles of his campaign — a clumsy flip-flop on the matter of building a border wall between the United States and Mexico and a bothersome uncertainty as to whether he is or is not a loyal Trumpist — and bring some of the better angels of Utah’s nature to a highly dysfunctional Congress.
Curtis’ election-night pledge, to serve the underrepresented, even those who are not, “white, Mormon and male,” was an excellent first step. It goes with his campaign promise to attempt to restore some level of civility and collegiality to Congress, to live and socialize and reason together with other representatives of both parties and all regions.
That attitude will be all that much more important in view of what else happened Tuesday. In off-off-year elections across the nation, Republicans, especially those who sought to identify with the Trump wing of the party, lost and Democrats, especially those who sold themselves as supportive of the tapestry of humanity that is America, won.
There may now be some chance for members of Congress to work together to either bolster, or craft an inclusive successor to, the Affordable Care Act, to create some fair tax reform that doesn’t explode the deficit and to deal with such wedge issues as immigration and trade in humane and thoughtful ways.
There is reason to hope that Rep. John Curtis will be part of the solution, not part of the problem.