SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy narrowly won the Republican primary in Utah's 2nd Congressional District on Tuesday after the state Supreme Court rejected her challenger's lawsuit that asked justices to count a batch of ballots with late postmarks after Maloy defeated him in a recount by fewer than 200 votes.
After hearing oral arguments last week, the Utah Supreme Court shot down Colby Jenkins' last-ditch effort to recover enough disqualified ballots to overtake his opponent. The panel determined that Jenkins failed to identify any instance where election officials did not comply with state law, Chief Justice Matthew Durrant wrote in a court order Tuesday. He said Jenkins' lawyers also did not inform the court in their petition that they would be challenging the constitutionality of the state law requiring mailed ballots to be postmarked before Election Day.
“His petition falls well short of establishing that he is entitled to the relief he seeks," Durrant wrote.
Maloy, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, led by 176 votes after a recount in early August, which makes her the Republican nominee now that Jenkins has exhausted all avenues to challenge the results. She is seeking her first full term in Congress after winning a special election last fall.
“I know it was a really close race, and I know that means a lot of people didn't vote for me, so I just want to speak to the people who didn't support me and say, ‘I’m going to keep working for you.'” Maloy said in a video statement Tuesday after the court decision. “I'm going to work hard for Utah and for the people of the 2nd District, regardless of where they fell in this primary.”
Maloy's lead after Election Day was narrow enough to put the race within recount territory, which in Utah is when the difference in votes for each candidate is equal to or less than 0.25% of the total number of votes cast.
Jenkins formally requested the recount but followed it up immediately with his legal challenge contesting the certification of results over more than a thousand late ballots. His complaints revolved around a batch of ballots routed through Las Vegas, where some mail from southern Utah is processed.
He called Tuesday “a sad day for democracy” and criticized the state for “outsourcing” elections to other entities such as the U.S. Postal Service.
“I have contacted Congresswoman Maloy to officially congratulate her on her victory,” Jenkins said in a statement. “We remain committed to ensuring that every citizen's right to vote is protected.”
Maloy's primary victory notches Trump his only win of this election cycle in Utah, a rare Republican stronghold that has not fully embraced his grip on the GOP.
A Trump-backed U.S. Senate candidate lost to the more moderate U.S. Rep. John Curtis in the race for Sen. Mitt Romney’s open seat. Many others who aligned themselves with the former president, in Utah and beyond, have lost primaries this year, dealing a blow to Trump’s reputation as a Republican kingmaker.
Maloy is favored to win in November over Democratic nominee Nathaniel Woodward, a family law attorney. The 2nd District, which groups liberal Salt Lake City with conservative St. George and includes many rural western Utah towns, has not been represented by a Democrat since 2013.
The congresswoman rebounded from a loss at this year’s state GOP convention, which typically favors the farthest-right candidates, to ultimately defeat Jenkins at the ballot box. Jenkins, a retired U.S. Army officer and telecommunications specialist, got the nod from delegates after earning the support of Utah’s right-wing U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, but he did not win by a wide enough margin to bypass the primary.
The dueling endorsements from state and national leaders of the party’s far-right faction made for a closer than expected contest that could not be called until nearly two months after Election Day.
Maloy, who lives just north of Zion National Park in Cedar City, began her career at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, working to conserve natural resources, improve water quality and manage nutrients in the farmlands of southwest Utah. As an attorney, she specialized in public land issues involving soil and water and land ownership. In her brief congressional tenure, she has served on subcommittees focusing on water resources and rural development.
Utah congressional candidate Colby Jenkins speaks to reporters at the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, after the Utah Supreme Court heard oral arguments in his case concerning late ballots. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum)
What's in a name change, after all?
The water bordered by the Southern United States, Mexico and Cuba will be critical to shipping lanes and vacationers whether it’s called the Gulf of Mexico, as it has been for four centuries, or the Gulf of America, as President Donald Trump ordered this week. North America’s highest mountain peak will still loom above Alaska whether it’s called Mt. Denali, as ordered by former President Barack Obama in 2015, or changed back to Mt. McKinley as Trump also decreed.
But Trump's territorial assertions, in line with his “America First” worldview, sparked a round of rethinking by mapmakers and teachers, snark on social media and sarcasm by at least one other world leader. And though Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put the Trumpian “Gulf of America” on an official document and some other gulf-adjacent states were considering doing the same, it was not clear how many others would follow Trump's lead.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum joked that if Trump went ahead with the renaming, her country would rename North America “Mexican America.” On Tuesday, she toned it down: “For us and for the entire world it will continue to be called the Gulf of Mexico.”
Map lines are inherently political. After all, they're representations of the places that are important to human beings — and those priorities can be delicate and contentious, even more so in a globalized world.
There’s no agreed-upon scheme to name boundaries and features across the Earth.
“Denali” is the mountain's preferred name for Alaska Natives, while “McKinley" is a tribute to President William McKinley, designated in the late 19th century by a gold prospector. China sees Taiwan as its own territory, and the countries surrounding what the United States calls the South China Sea have multiple names for the same body of water.
The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although usage of “Gulf” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The government of Iran — formerly Persia — threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company’s decision not to label the body of water at all on its maps. Many Arab countries don’t recognize Israel and instead call it Palestine. And in many official releases, Israel calls the occupied West Bank by its biblical name, “Judea and Samaria.”
Americans and Mexicans diverge on what to call another key body of water, the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Americans call it the Rio Grande; Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.
Trump's executive order — titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness” — concludes thusly: “It is in the national interest to promote the extraordinary heritage of our Nation and ensure future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of our American heroes. The naming of our national treasures, including breathtaking natural wonders and historic works of art, should honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past.”
But what to call the gulf with the 3,700-mile coastline?
“It is, I suppose, an internationally recognized sea, but (to be honest), a situation like this has never come up before so I need to confirm the appropriate convention,” said Peter Bellerby, who said he was talking over the issue with the cartographers at his London company, Bellerby & Co. Globemakers. “If, for instance, he wanted to change the Atlantic Ocean to the American Ocean, we would probably just ignore it."
As of Wednesday night, map applications for Google and Apple still called the mountain and the gulf by their old names. Spokespersons for those platforms did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
A spokesperson for National Geographic, one of the most prominent map makers in the U.S., said this week that the company does not comment on individual cases and referred questions to a statement on its web site, which reads in part that it "strives to be apolitical, to consult multiple authoritative sources, and to make independent decisions based on extensive research.” National Geographic also has a policy of including explanatory notes for place names in dispute, citing as an example a body of water between Japan and the Korean peninsula, referred to as the Sea of Japan by the Japanese and the East Sea by Koreans.
In discussion on social media, one thread noted that the Sears Tower in Chicago was renamed the Willis Tower in 2009, though it's still commonly known by its original moniker. Pennsylvania's capital, Harrisburg, renamed its Market Street to Martin Luther King Boulevard and then switched back to Market Street several years later — with loud complaints both times. In 2017, New York's Tappan Zee Bridge was renamed for the late Gov. Mario Cuomo to great controversy. The new name appears on maps, but “no one calls it that,” noted another user.
“Are we going to start teaching this as the name of the body of water?” asked one Reddit poster on Tuesday.
“I guess you can tell students that SOME PEOPLE want to rename this body of water the Gulf of America, but everyone else in the world calls it the Gulf of Mexico,” came one answer. “Cover all your bases — they know the reality-based name, but also the wannabe name as well.”
Wrote another user: “I'll call it the Gulf of America when I'm forced to call the Tappan Zee the Mario Cuomo Bridge, which is to say never.”
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
FILE - Peter Bellerby, the founder of Bellerby & Co. Globemakers, holds a globe at a studio in London, Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
FILE - A boat is seen on the Susitna River near Talkeetna, Alaska, on Sunday, June 13, 2021, with Denali in the background. Denali, the tallest mountain on the North American continent, is located about 60 miles northwest of Talkeetna. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)
FILE - The water in the Gulf of Mexico appears bluer than usual off of East Beach, Saturday, June 24, 2023, in Galveston, Texas. (Jill Karnicki/Houston Chronicle via AP, File)