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The Forward Party of Utah has a new senator. Can they hold on in 2026?77%
By Sean Higgins0%
12/17/2025, 12:42:38 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 16 faulty reasoning types, including False Dilemma, Optimism Bias, and In-Group Bias, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 45.1% saturation with 358 hits. Analysis detected 1,444 faulty-reasoning hits from 793 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 69.7% and a BS Rank of 77% (3,898 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 76.80% of the article peer group.
Now that the Forward Party of Utah has announced that Senate District 11 voters chose Emily Buss to serve out the remainder of retiring Sen. Daniel Thatcher’s term in the Legislature, it finds itself in a rare position: The third party will hold a seat in the state Senate during the next general session.
Thatcher was a longtime Republican legislator before announcing his party switch in March.
Increasingly, he found himself at odds with his GOP colleagues over LGBTQ+ issues and what he saw as legislative overreach.
He was the first sitting lawmaker to switch parties since 2016, when then-Sen. Mark Madsen left the GOP and became a Libertarian.
Thatcher later announced his resignation in October.
Buss was unavailable for an interview before publication, but shared in a statement that her victory “isn’t about me, it’s about the people I represent” and that she would fight for “common sense” solutions in office.
An Eagle Mountain resident, Buss will represent her hometown, Tooele, and part of the west side of Salt Lake County in the Senate.
Utah Forward Party Chair Michelle Quist said Buss’ ascension to office gives the party a unique opportunity to show voters that things don’t have to be politics as usual.
Quist holds that voters are “interested in looking for the candidate and what the candidate believes in, rather than the party.”
“A representative or a senator from the third party is able to collaborate, is able to be a bridge builder between the two parties,” she said.
“They're able to represent the constituents, as opposed to being wedded to party politics.”
Utah’s Legislature is under Republican supermajority control.
In the Senate, there are 22 Republican senators, 6 democratic senators and now the single member of the Forward Party.
Instead of a traditional policy platform, the Forward Party of Utah has a values platform and priorities that stem from those core values.
That, Quist said, frees up candidates and those in office to act in the interests of their constituents.
“Each representative or senator is therefore free to follow what their constituents want and free to listen to what their constituents are telling them to,” she said, “And that really is different from what we're seeing from the Utah Legislature overall.”
But for the Forward Party to retain the seat for more than a year, they will need to win again in November’s midterm elections.
If she chooses to run, Buss will be up for reelection in a district that leans Republican.
The last time Thatcher ran was in 2022, and he went unopposed.
University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank said that landscape presents a unique challenge for Buss — especially if she chooses to vote with Republicans a good amount of the time.
“What we know about how the Legislature works is that most of the real substance gets done in the Republican caucus,” he said.
“If you really wanted to have an influence as an independent, probably joining that caucus would be the way to go, but it would then raise this question of, well, why wouldn't we just vote for a Republican and not vote for you?”
But Buss will also enjoy something that Burbank said is the hardest thing for a third-party candidate to achieve: incumbency.
“They may very well say, yeah, here's an incumbent I can vote for,” he said.
“I think she's represented me well.
I'm willing to support her.
And that would be something that I think would really help to establish her party.”
Burbank also praised the party for its first-of-its-kind preference poll to choose Thatcher’s successor, which opened up the process to any voter who lived in the district.
“It encouraged people to participate in a political process in a way which is positive,” Burbank said.
“Ideally, what they should get out of that is a sense that this is a party that operates differently.”
When it comes to the party’s strategy, Quist said she will not monitor how Buss votes on each bill.
Instead, she is standing behind the party’s values-based approach, which enables Buss to act in her constituents’ interests without fear of backlash from her own party.
“It's really important that we really care about the fact that the voters don't think the Legislature is listening to them,” she said.
“We're values-driven.
We care about good government, we care about democracy, we care about open elections.
These are the things that are driving what we're doing.”
Quist and the Forward Party plan to spend 2026 focused on raising Buss’ profile and presenting her as the alternative to the Republican status quo.
“If you have yet another member of the supermajority, there's not a lot of specific, independent, individual representation for constituents in your district,” she said.
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