Ofa Matagi wasn’t able to join her fellow candidates at Utah Democrats’ watch party after polls closed on election night. Instead, she was at home with family under strict doctor’s orders to rest. She was caring for a days-old, newborn baby boy, whose birth she was still recovering from. Leading up to Election Day, Matagi had been knocking door to door in House District 43 neighborhoods – which includes parts of Sandy, Midvale and Cottonwood Heights – while “heavily pregnant,” she said.
Matagi wasn’t glued to the screen while waiting for results to post. Instead, to help ease her anxiety, she decided to wait and see what kinds of texts she’d start receiving from her friends. She figured she would get one of two types of text messages: either some that said, “You did a great job, but better luck next time” or more congratulatory ones. The latter, she thought, seemed like “a long shot.” But the message she got from one of her close friends, Rep. Verona Mauga, D-Salt Lake City, told her “You’re ahead!” “I started crying,” she told Utah News Dispatch on Thursday. “It was just so surreal.”
As the dust settles from Election Day – which brought a historic blue wave that hit not just nationally, but also washed over typically ruby red Utah – Matagi’s lead over Republican incumbent Rep. Steve Eliason continues to hold by nearly 12 percentage points, according to preliminary results. Matagi, with nearly 56% of the vote to Eliason’s 44%, hadn’t yet declared victory on Thursday, noting that there are still some outstanding votes to be counted. But thanks to her double-digit margin, her race is unlikely to flip. She’s one of 13 Utah House Democrats and two unaffiliated candidates on pace to take 15 seats from House Republicans – breaking the Utah House’s GOP supermajority for the first time in more than three decades.
House Republicans are still on track to keep a simple majority, about 46 out of the chamber’s 75 seats. Matagi’s campaign, by her estimates, had one of the smallest budgets. “I did as much as I could, but I ran a very humble, shoe-string budget for this campaign,” she said, so she never expected she would have such a lead over Eliason, who had served in the Legislature for 16 years.
Matagi’s win, however, is one of several that some Democrats in power consider a bit bittersweet. A bittersweet win Eliason and some other Republicans currently trailing their Democratic challengers – including Reps. Jim Dunnigan, Clint Okerlund and Anthony Loubet – were considered more moderate members of the GOP caucus that in some ways reached across the aisle and worked in a bipartisan fashion. Eliason, for example, was known as a longtime champion for mental health and homelessness issues.
On Thursday, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, one of the state’s most high-profile Democrats, sat next to Eliason on a panel in front of a crowd of providers, state officials and others who had gathered for a Utah Office of Homeless Services’ summit in Salt Lake City. Wilson and Eliason had spent about an hour discussing ways they have been working to improve the way Utah responds to mental health crises – and the many changes that still need to happen – for nearly an hour before Eliason told the crowd he likely would not be returning to Utah’s Capitol Hill next year as a legislator.
“Unfortunately I won’t be there in an official capacity,” Eliason said, acknow
