Brad Wilson, former Utah house speaker and current candidate for the U.S. Senate, sat down with The Review in an exclusive interview to discuss his candidacy and his vision for the U.S. Senate.
Wilson began his campaign back in a September announcement, becoming the first candidate to join the race after Senator Mitt Romney announced he would not seek reelection. Since then, Brad Wilson is one of 11 candidates who is seeking the office Romney will leave vacant in January.
“Something really important was happening in this state,” Wilson told The Review. “[My family and I] made a decision to be a part of it, which was to run for the United States Senate… I felt like I was really uniquely qualified to do that because not just of my business experience, which Washington surely needs, but also because I have this really unique and deep understanding of Utah.”
Before entering the race, Brad Wilson was Utah’s Speaker of the House and had been serving in that capacity since 2019. Before that, he was the majority leader in the Utah House and representative in the 15th district.
“You get involved in all the issues of the state,” Wilson stated about his service. He related this to how his experience equips him to get legislation passed. Wilson told The Review that it is one of his skills.
“It’s why I got elected Speaker early in my tenure,” Wilson asserted in his ability to pass legislation. “I think it is also why we were able to do hard things in Utah that in some ways people thought we couldn’t do. Because we had good people, and we worked hard, and we trusted each other, we were able to make those things happen.”
Experience was a dominant theme throughout The Review’s interview with Wilson. Following his previous statement, Wilson elaborated, “When I think about this senate race, one of the things that is very different about me is I have been through the fire. I am tested and I am trusted to do this kind of work, and no one else who has jumped into this race really has that resume of doing the heavy lifting.”
Among several topics discussed was the federal budget. Wilson says that Washington DC “needs to be more like Utah.” If elected, he would pursue a policy of spending cuts along with supporting a balanced budget amendment. He points also to the major welfare programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare that “we need to get under the hood of.”
“It’s really clear that the federal government has very limited responsibilities,” Wilson began. “Yet they are doing a whole bunch of things that are the responsibility of the states. We need to push that authority … back to the states and back to the people in this country.”
Like other candidates, block grants are the tool of choice for Wilson to try and reform these programs to shift the burden to the states. He argues that states would be better equipped to administer these programs if they were constructed this way: “I am 100% convinced if you did that, that you could immediately see massive savings in Medicaid, and you would also see better outcomes in coverage.”
During the conclusion of The Review’s interview, Wilson made an appeal to UVU student voters on why he should be the Republican nominee for Utah’s senate seat.
“When you listen to what we all say, … there is not a lot of daylight between us on the big issues around spending, immigration, or how we are getting our economy back on track, or national defense,” Wilson asserted. “There is just too much on the line, in my opinion, to send someone back that we don’t really know if they are good at this work… there [are] a lot of things I’m not good at … but I am good at being a lawmaker.”
Wilson, among his other challengers, stares down the barrel of a state convention that is set to take place on April 27. This is where over 4000 state GOP delegates will choose a candidate to run for Utah’s senate seat. Regardless of the winner, there will also be a primary in June, as three candidates — Wilson, John Curtis, and Jason Walton — have filed enough signatures to force a primary.
For more information about Brad Wilson and his campaign, visit his website. For more information about the Republican candidates for Senate, visit the Utah GOP website. For more information about voting and checking your registration, visit vote.utah.gov.
