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SALT LAKE CITY — In 2016, when Donald Trump first ran for president, Utah was known as Trump's most resistant red state. When the former president returns to Utah for a fundraiser Saturday, event organizers want that to be a distant memory.
The group of big-money donors and political elites that ushers Trump into a private hangar near the Salt Lake City airport Saturday will include both day-one Trump supporters and recent MAGA converts. Some, like John Schnatter — the founder of pizza conglomerate Papa John's, who owns a Park City home — have donated to Trump since his first campaign. Others — like Salt Lake City businessman Scott Keller — were avid supporters and big financial backers of Trump opponents in the 2024 presidential primary.
Now, as Trump makes his first visit to Utah since 2017, his most loyal supporters want to show that the state has changed.
"I believe policy over personality," said Keller, one of the largest benefactors behind Mike Pence's 2024 presidential bid and a co-host for Saturday's fundraiser. "We have to ask ourselves, 'Do we love the country more than we may dislike the personality of Trump?'"
Much of the top political brass from Utah and other Western states will be represented at the event Saturday. Expected attendees include Matt Whitaker, the former acting U.S. attorney general; Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general; and radio personality Glenn Beck, who will act as the event's emcee and introduce Trump.
Utah politicians expected to be there include Senate President Stuart Adams, House Speaker Mike Schultz, Attorney General Sean Reyes and U.S. Rep. Burgess Owens. Sen. Mike Lee told the Deseret News he is "most likely stuck in D.C. this weekend." Congress reconvened Monday after its late summer recess.
In recent days, fundraiser organizers dropped the entry price point from $3,300 to $1,000 in an effort to shore up attendance. Other entry levels include "VIP attendee" for $10,000; a photo with Trump for $35,000; "co-host" for $150,000; or "host committee" for $500,000 per person.
The event is being organized by George Glass, the former U.S. ambassador to Portugal; and Marlon Bateman, a State Department official during the Trump administration. Both are Utah residents.
Bateman helped organize Trump's visit to Arlington National Cemetery last month, where Trump — and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox — were criticized for using imagery of their visit in campaign advertising, a violation of federal law. But the visit was key in building a relationship between Cox and Trump, one attendee said: Cox, a longtime Trump critic, endorsed Trump a month earlier, and the Arlington visit was their first in-person meeting since. Trump praised Cox at Arlington, the attendee said, saying the Utah governor is now on his "A-list."
Cox did not respond to the Deseret News' inquiry about whether he will attend Saturday's fundraiser.
At present, the fundraiser's hosting committee includes Schnatter and Beck, alongside a group of Utah businesspeople: Keller, John Miller and Doug Quezada. The event will be held in Miller's airplane hangar.
As recently as late August, it appeared the fundraiser wouldn't happen. Originally scheduled for June 27, plans were scrapped when Trump accepted an invitation to debate President Joe Biden on the same night. After rescheduling for a late August date, organizers were notified that Trump wouldn't make the trip, due to "changes" in his schedule. Trump would appear at a town hall in Wisconsin with ex-Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
The reason for canceling the fundraiser's second date is unknown. But organizers claim there were other reasons for the change: a new-look Trump campaign wanted to refocus attention on swing states, and spending time in Utah — which it deemed a safe Republican state — seemed wasteful. The best way to make a final, post-Labor Day push against the newly energized Democratic campaign, they reasoned, was to focus on battleground states.
A cohort of individuals leading the Utah fundraiser — headed by Glass and Bateman, but aided by Beck and other prominent Utahns — pushed the Trump campaign and the RNC to consider slipping the Utah fundraiser onto the schedule whenever Trump made his next trip to the Western battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada. That trip, as it were, fell in mid-September: after the Philadelphia debate Tuesday, Trump rallied in Tucson Thursday and Las Vegas Friday, and the Utah fundraiser was penciled in for Saturday.
"We proudly stand by President Trump in his efforts to keep America great and free," Quezada, one of the fundraiser co-hosts, said.
Some of the top attendees acknowledge that Trump was not their first choice to be the Republican nominee, but they back him. "In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, former secretary of defense, 'When you go to war, you go to war with the soldiers you got, not the ones you wished you had,'" said Keller, one of the co-hosts. "Trump is the soldier we've got."
