Utah's only third-party lawmaker trails in bid for full term
by Daniel Woodruff ksl · KSL.comEstimated read time: 4-5 minutes
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Sen. Emily Buss, F-Eagle Mountain, trails Republican candidate Brooks Benson by 512 votes in Utah's District 11 race.
- Benson believes it's impossible to lose with remaining ballots, but hasn't declared victory.
- Buss also remains optimistic, highlighting her unexpected progress in a heavily Republican district.
SALT LAKE CITY — The lone third-party member of the Utah Legislature trails her Republican challenger by 512 votes, according to the latest election results.
Sen. Emily Buss, F-Eagle Mountain, had 49.19% of the vote in the Senate District 11 race as of late Saturday, compared to GOP candidate Brooks Benson who had 50.81%.
Benson, a gym owner who has also worked in business consulting, told KSL he believes it is "mathematically and statistically impossible" for him to lose with the number of outstanding ballots yet to be processed, although he has not declared victory.
But Buss, who took office in December 2025, isn't conceding defeat yet and is "not ruling anything out."
"It's not over until the ballot counting and curing process is complete," she said.
Senate District 11 covers parts of Salt Lake, Tooele and Utah counties. Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman said only provisional and a "small handful" of overseas ballots still need to be processed, along with some that need to be cured, such as when a signature doesn't match.
Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson said his office had nearly 5,000 provisional and overseas ballots still to process as of late Saturday.
The Tooele County clerk could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday on the status of any unprocessed ballots.
Legislative shakeup
If the results hold and Buss loses her seat, there will be no third-party lawmakers in the Legislature next session. But there will be two unaffiliated members.
Sergio Sotelo won election to House District 38 in Salt Lake County, according to projections by the Associated Press, while Patrick Belmont won the House District 3 race in Cache County.
It marks the first time in modern Utah political history that any independent candidate has won a general election race.
Those victories came amid significant losses for the Republican Party across the country and in Utah legislative races. As of late Saturday, 14 Republican incumbents in the Utah House and Senate have either lost reelection or are on the verge of losing, while 4 additional GOP-held seats have flipped or are at risk of flipping to Democrats or other candidates.
Assuming the results hold, Republicans will lose their supermajority in the House of Representatives for the first time in decades, although they will maintain it in the Senate.
If he maintains his lead, Benson will be the only Republican this election cycle to flip a Utah legislative seat not currently held by his party.
Getting started
Even though remaining ballots are still being processed, Benson is already acting as a senator-elect. He took part in Senate majority leadership elections on Friday evening, during which Sen. Evan Vickers, R-Cedar City, was elected Senate president.
Vickers replaces Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, who lost his reelection bid earlier this year. Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, who was widely viewed as the frontrunner to succeed Adams, was also defeated, making room for Vickers to ascend to the top spot.
Benson told KSL he supported Vickers, who ran unopposed for Senate president.
"I think he wants to make sure that corruption is not a thing in the state of Utah," Benson said, "and that we have ethics reform and that we are listening very carefully to what's going on in this election cycle."
Benson, who lives in Eagle Mountain, said as a senator he wants to focus on roads for that fast-growing part of the state. He also promised that even though he is a Republican, he will not be beholden to a political party.
"I do feel like very constituent wants that," Benson said. "They want people to do the right thing, not necessarily what their party wants."
Buss remains optimistic
After winning election to the Legislature to replace former Sen. Daniel Thatcher — a longtime lawmaker who had switched from the Republican Party to the Forward Party – Buss took part in the 2026 legislative session. She was the primary sponsor of several bills, although none of them passed.
After the session ended, Buss ran for a full four-year term of her own.
"I went into this race as the underdog," Buss wrote in a text message to KSL. "Very few people expected me to get this far, running in a district Trump won by R+36, where nearly 49% of registered voters are Republicans. My opponent was widely expected to win by a landslide."
For a time, as election results trickled in this week, Buss led the race. But Benson eventually pulled ahead, and he currently leads by a few hundred votes.
Buss criticized outside money spent against her during the campaign, and she expressed concerns about problems with election administration in Utah County, including the fact that the clerk's office "incorrectly mailed notices to thousands of first-time voters, unnecessarily complicating their voting process."
Still, while Buss awaits final results over the next few weeks, she expressed satisfaction with the race she ran.
"Regardless of the final outcome," Buss said, "I think what we've accomplished is pretty remarkable."
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.