SYRACUSE—The Davis County Republican Party’s endorsed candidates made it through convention held April 18 and will advance to the primary election June 23. Some other candidates who did not win at convention will still be on the ballot because of signature gathering.

The endorsed candidates are:

Commission Seat A: Scott Fletcher

Commission Seat B: Susan Lee

Sheriff: Jon Atkin

Clerk: Jona Whitesides

House District 14: John Taylor

House District 17: Lili Bitner

There are no party-endorsed candidates in Senate District 6 or House District 16.

Utah House Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful, is running unopposed but chose to only go through signature gathering. 

“I was at the convention all day,” he said. “The convention is just a great place to be. It’s full of my friends and full of other people that are running that I want to get to know better. I always want to be there and be a part of it.”

Ward said the trouble is that the leadership in the party right now has very, very expressly said that they do not agree with gathering signatures. “They want their candidates to be convention only and they will never donate money if you have a competitor in the primary. They'll always donate it to your opponent who didn’t gather signatures. To me that’s not neutral.”

For example, at the convention a booth is $700, he said. “Fundamentally, that would be money that I would give to them and they would give to my opponent to use against me in a campaign. I want to go back and be part of the convention but I need them to be neutral in the primary and treat me fairly.”

They’ve changed the bylaws, said Ward. “They used to say ‘you have to sign that you agree with the platform.’ I agree with the platform so I signed it. But this year they said you also have to sign that you agree with the bylaws.”

The bylaws say they disagree with signatures, he said. “Well, I’m going to gather signatures. Signatures are a connection directly to the voters, not the party apparatus. We had a firm that gathered some for us but Beverly (Ward’s wife) and I plus volunteers and friends who came out very generously and helped us gathered 600 of those.”

Every one of those is in person directly at their door or at the dinner table, said Ward. “Even if they don’t know if they’ll vote for you they agree to have you on the ballot.”

Voters have the right to help choose who’s on the ballot, said Ward. “I don’t think that the caucus should be able to stop voters from having candidates on the ballot that they get to vote for.”

Of course it was a lot of hard work to gather those signatures, he said. “But those were good connections that we made with people because we did that.”

Signature gathering is legal according to the law, Ward said. “It’s actually healthy for candidates to be out talking to individual voters instead of going around them. I hope that it can get back to where it was where the party leadership supports all candidates equally in the primary election.”

In the hotly contested race for House District 16 commissioner Bob Stevenson came out on top over incumbent Trevor Lee, 55% to 45%. Lee still advances because he received at least 30% of the vote.

"I thought the convention was well organized," said Stevenson. "I'm a believer in the caucus convention system. I think it's important to go there and I also think it's important to be on the ballot."

To see the full convention results go to https://davisgop.org/.