Mark Nafziger wasn’t expecting to win his race.
The Cache County Democrat was running against Republican Sandi Goodlander — the chair of the all-Republican Cache County Council — for her seat representing the 3rd District of Logan.
To fuel his doubts of victory, Cache County voters haven’t put a Democrat on the County Council since 2006, when they reelected Brian Chambers for a second term.
But, as The Herald Journal reported at the time, he left after 2010, taking with him the sliver of bipartisanship the council had maintained for his eight-year tenure.
On election night, however, Nafziger’s doubts were proven wrong. Unofficial results show him winning.
Ditto Allison Goulais, a Democrat who ran against Republican incumbent JoAnn Bennett to represent Logan’s 2nd District.
Unofficial results show that Nafziger captured 57.7% of the vote compared to Goodlander’s 42.3%.
Goulais, meanwhile, won with 58.5% of the vote, while Bennett received 41.5%.
The Democrats will join the council in January, bringing the previously all-red, seven-member council to a 5-2 split across party lines.
Nafziger thinks this year might mark the moment when being a Democrat in Cache County stops being a political liability, and perhaps even becomes an advantage.
Shifting landscape
Along with the blue wave that saw Democratic nominees elected in many hot races throughout the nation, Cache Democrats Chair Shannon Rhodes pointed to a few factors she thinks contributed to the pair’s victories.
The first, she said, is that young adults lean progressive, and Utah State University is growing in both size and diversity.
“I saw them a little more excited than previous midterm elections,” she said. “Just talking with students and engaging with them, they seemed way more ready to do something this year.”
The second factor, she said, was the effort Cache Democrats had put into campaigns.
“We’ve been doing fundraisers, raising money, but we’ve kind of just been letting it grow,” she said. “This year, we took that money and we put it into a huge field organization plan in a coordinated campaign with all of the other northern counties in our state.”
This, she said, included paid canvassers and phone bankers, as well as volunteers who were willing to spread candidates’ messages.
“I think that made a huge difference,” she said.
To further help, she said, Goulais and Nafziger were competing in what the party thought were the two most winnable seats based on how people voted during the 2024 presidential election.
‘Quality candidates’
For her part, Goulais said this election wasn’t her first rodeo. She ran for the same seat two years ago against longtime incumbent Republican Barbara Tidwell, and lost with 42.3% of the vote.
“It’s such a foreign world if you’ve never done it,” she said. “You can get misled a lot.”
But the race was close enough that she said it opened her eyes to the number of people who didn’t feel represented by the council.
This time, going against Bennett (who joined the council in January after Tidwell resigned), Goulais felt she had stronger support from her party, and focused where her efforts would have the most effect.
Goulais’ campaign also found an ally across political lines.
In a letter to the editor sent to The Herald Journal, Republican Cache County Executive George Daines broke with his party to endorse Goulais over Bennett.
Given that the letter was published toward the end of October, however, Goulais doubts it had an impact on the election’s outcome. Rhodes agreed, and pointed out that Daines also endorsed Goodlander against Nafziger and failed to sway that race.
Along with assistance from the Democratic Party, Nafziger handed some of the credit for his win over to his daughter, Alanna Nafziger, who he said consulted him on his campaign using the experience she gained running against and ultimately losing to Logan Mayor Mark Anderson last year.
(As a sidenote, she beat the mayor in this year’s election when the two once again competed, this time for a seat on the Cache Water District Board.)
Nafziger also said he spent a considerable amount of time speaking with voters, and found that his stance against data centers resonated with everyone he spoke with on the issue.
“It’s kind of like all my reasons for running wrapped into one: destruction of open spaces, people not listening a lot of times to their constituents, and, here in Utah, they’ve almost always been steamrolling people’s opposition,” he said. “Whether it’s Republicans or Democrats or independents, people don’t like big data centers, and they don’t want them in their areas where they’re living.”
Rhodes said she hopes Nafziger and Goulais’ victories indicate a shift within Cache County that council seats are more winnable for Democrats.
Already, she said, the county Democratic Party is searching for candidates who want to run when incumbents’ terms end in 2028.
“The reality is we had really good-quality candidates, and they outworked the Republicans,” she said. “The Republicans, they’re great at putting up yard signs, but our people were actually boots on the ground, knocking doors, calling voters, talking to people.”
