The crowd at a City Park rally on Saturday listened and cheered as critics of President Trump ticked off a litany of grievances they have with the nation’s leader.

Demonstrators expressed dismay with Trump’s agenda at the outset of his second term, and the speakers, drafted from the ranks of Democrats and left-leaning advocates, condemned the president.

The final featured speaker of the event, though, delivered a broadside against Trump with some of the most pointed words of the rally. Caroline Gleich, a Democrat from the Snyderville Basin who unsuccessfully sought a seat in the Senate in 2024, spoke for seven minutes as she tore into the administration. She covered topics that have wide interest in the Park City area and at the forefront of the national discussion. Gleich at moments picked apart certain aspects of the president’s agenda and at other times called for action.

“We’re here, not because we actually really want to be here, but because of a moral obligation. How many would rather be skiing today? Let’s be honest. How many would rather be running, biking, doing anything, cleaning our garage? We are here because our country is in crisis. And it is up to us to keep showing up and speaking up,” she said.

The crowd, estimated at 200, repeatedly applauded as Gleich spoke. The event was held on the same day as numerous others across the country. Gleich and the other speakers seemed emboldened even as Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Her remarks sometimes resembled a political stump speech, even as she spoke more than five months after being trounced on Election Day by now Sen. John Curtis, who previously represented much of Summit and Wasatch counties as U.S. representative. She said books and pride flags have been banned as she also contended public lands have been put on the market.

“What we’re witnessing today — the erosion of our democratic institutions, the gutting of science and environmental protection, the political purges — it’s not just a bad policy agenda, it’s authoritarianism plain and simple,” she said.

Gleich, a ski mountaineer and advocate for the environment, said the administration’s policies “are already hurting Utah families and many more are going to suffer” as he weakens environmental programs and public health agencies. She said the country is “deeply vulnerable to future pandemics” after the president “hollowed out” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

“He’s fired public servants and replaced them with political loyalists. And once these agencies are gone, once they’re stripped to the bone, we may never be able to rebuild them,” she said.

She briefly addressed foreign policy, saying Trump is a “national embarrassment” who is “straining our international alliances and shaming the ideals we claim to stand for.” She also said Trump is “silencing scientists, criminalizing dissent and dismantling the very machinery of democracy.”

“So what do we do? We don’t wait for someone to save us. We save each other,” she said.

Gleich rattled off a series of issues and how people could respond to the administration. They included:

• “Because when Trump guts the CDC, we become the public health response, distributing supplies, checking on our seniors, sharing trusted information.”
• “If he dismantles the EPA, it is up to our community to protect our air, water and land with local policies, grassroots resistance and hands-on stewardship.”
• “If he fires scientists, it’s up to us to amplify them.”
• “If he silences teachers, we teach truth in our communities.”
• “If he strips away labor protections, we organize unions and we strike together.”
• “If he dismantles democracy, we become the grassroots government of care, justice and love. Because when the safety net disappears, it’s up to our community to become the safety net.”

Gleich also spoke of a desire for Democrats to ensure the party has candidates in all campaigns in the heavily Republican state.

“We run for office and we make sure we take the power back. We contest every single seat up and down the ballot in every county in Utah. We do not let any Republican run for any seat unopposed,” she said.

Gleich said people “may be scared, but we do the hard thing anyway, because the alternative is so much scarier.”

“Park City, I believe in you. I believe in us. And I believe that, together, we can fight authoritarianism and we can win,” she said.

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Caroline Gleich is attempting to reach a political summit amid a career in professional skiing and mountaineering.

The Snyderville Basin resident and Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by the retiring Republican Mitt Romney is vying for a spot in the upper chamber of Congress in a heavily GOP state.

Gleich, 38, is a small businessperson with her work related to her athletic endeavors, such as product testing and social media. She is competing for the Senate seat against John Curtis, a Republican congressman. Democrats typically struggle in statewide elections in Utah like a U.S. Senate seat.

Her experience at the federal level includes supporting in an activist role issues like infrastructure, Bears Ears National Monument and clean power. She has also testified in Congress about protecting public lands and the impacts of climate change on mountain communities.

“Our state and country are headed in the wrong direction. I don’t think we can wait for the right leaders,” she said in an interview, noting the average age of senators is older than the average age of people in Utah and members of the Senate are wealthier than the typical person.

Gleich said she wants to “help correct course” in the Senate. She described the bid for office as one of the “strongest U.S. Senate Democratic (campaigns) in Utah history,” as measured by fundraising, and said poll numbers are higher than Democratic Senate candidates in recent decades.

The candidate said affordability “is a huge challenge” in the U.S. and a plank in her platform seeks to address the issue. She said she would support raising the federal minimum wage to at least $15 per hour, more than double the $7.25 per hour of today. Gleich said she would back the use of antitrust laws to break up monopolies, pointing to the airline and meatpacking industries, as part of the affordability plank.

Housing is another issue she sees as being related to affordability. Gleich said she supports an expansion of federal tax credits for first-time home buyers. She also wants the federal government to study homelessness and what leads to people losing their places to live.

Gleich described the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 as an “act of terror.” She said the remaining hostages must be returned and humanitarian aid is needed. Gleich said she wants the U.S. to continue to aid Israel as well as Ukraine in its war against Russia. She added the U.S. needs to ensure military aid is not used in violation of international codes of war.

Other planks in her platform include expanding paid parental leave, funding universal pre-kindergarten education and federal assistance in paying for school lunches.

Gleich outlined what she considers to be “common sense gun reform.” She described support for universal background checks for gun buyers, red-flag laws, a ban on assault-style weapons and requirements for the safe storage of guns.

She also brings an environmental plank to the contest, describing the environment and climate as being pillars of the campaign.

Gleich wants subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry ultimately ended. She wants to “make polluters pay for the public health consequences of their pollution.”

She wants the nation to “accelerate” the move to clean energy, describing air quality, health and economic benefits of doing so.

The post Park City-area Democrat seeks political peak in U.S. Senate seat appeared first on Park Record.

Park City-area voters in November will have the option of choosing someone who lives close to them in the 3rd Congressional District election.

As well as in the U.S. Senate contest.

In a rare political achievement, people who live in Park City or in nearby unincorporated Summit County last weekend captured the Democratic nominations in two federal contests.

Caroline Gleich, a ski mountaineer and environmental activist, will carry the Democratic banner into the Senate campaign while Glenn Wright, a former Summit County councilor and longtime figure in local and state Democratic circles, is the nominee in the 3rd Congressional District. Gleich lives in Silver Summit, while Wright is a Prospector resident.

Gleich received 795 votes at the state Democratic convention, more than 10 times the total of the second-place finisher, to win the Senate nomination. Wright was uncontested and won the congressional nomination by acclamation.

The population of Park City and surrounding Summit County represents just a small portion of a congressional district while Senate seats are decided by the statewide results. Park City and the Snyderville Basin, though, have enjoyed an outsized role in state Democratic politics for years with the Park City area being one of the state’s most reliably Democratic strongholds.

There have been a series of Democratic congressional candidates hailing from the area, including a previous campaign by Wright. The Park City-area Democrats in each case, however, were routed by Republicans in heavily GOP districts. The Democrats won support in the Park City area but failed to gain traction elsewhere in the lopsided losses. It would be a political surprise if either Gleich or Wright are competitive on Election Day, and it would be a monumental upset if either of them win.

The presence of Gleich and Wright on the November ballot, though, suddenly makes Election Day even more notable to voters in Park City and the rest of Summit County in a year when there is expected to be widespread interest with the White House at the top of the ticket. The Senate election to succeed the retiring Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican, is also drawing broad attention.

It seems almost certain the two Democrats will press issues that are consequential to the everyday political discourse of Park City and Summit County but perhaps not as integral to the debates elsewhere in the congressional district or the state. Both of them will likely make the broad topic of environmentalism a key platform plank, as an example.

In each case, the Democratic candidate will need to appeal to masses of voters outside of Park City and Summit County to make the contests competitive. As a congressional candidate in 2022, Wright was unable to sway voters outside of Summit County, leading to a pummeling on Election Day that year by the Republican incumbent, John Curtis.

Rory Swensen, the chair of the Summit County Democratic Party, acknowledged in an interview the campaign could be difficult for Gleich and Wright. In 2024, though, Democrats may have an opportunity as they campaign with positive messages, he said.

“It’s a tough election for Democrats at the state level,” he said, adding, “It’s always tough.”

Both of them have a chance to win, though, if they can attract independent voters and discouraged Republicans, Swensen said. He said voters would like the two to present platforms that include environmentalism, land protection and fiscal responsibility. The platforms will “represent the values that Summit County holds dear,” he said, adding that “we can swing some votes their way and be competitive.”

Swensen also said the presence of Gleich and Wright on the ballot could draw Democrats in Summit County to the polls in November. If that occurs, he said, there could be impacts on down-ballot contests, such as the one in District 4 of the state House of Representatives. That district includes a large tract of Summit County and is currently held by a Republican, Kera Birkeland.

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