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Brammer and Smith vie for Utah Senate District 21 seat
Rob Shelton | Lehi Free Press
Two Republicans are competing for the right to represent Senate District 21, and voters will get their first real say April 18 at the Utah County Republican Convention — where delegates will choose between Cedar Hills City Council member Kelly Smith and incumbent Sen. Brady Brammer of Highland.
The seat covers a fast-growing stretch of northern Utah County, including American Fork, Lehi, and surrounding communities. Former candidate Seth Stewart, who had originally filed to run for the seat, withdrew to pursue a federal congressional office, clearing the field for a two-person contest.
Both candidates sat down to be interviewed earlier this month. Their answers covered everything from roads and water to school district funding and the future of Utah Lake, and the contrasts between them are sharp enough to matter.
Background and motivation
Smith makes the case that the school district needs something different, not just results, but a different kind of relationship between legislators and the cities they represent.
“I’ve noticed some places where I feel like we could improve on collaborating and cooperating a little more,” Smith said. She’s halfway through her second term on the Cedar Hills City Council and argues her experience at the local level gives her a perspective that Brammer simply hasn’t brought to the table. “I think this race needed a really competitive race to talk about the issues.”
Brammer isn’t running from his record, he’s running on it.
“A lot of people run from their records. I embrace my record,” he said. Brammer, an attorney with a master’s in public administration, has served six years in the Utah House before moving to the Senate to fill the remainder of former Sen. Mike Kennedy’s term when Kennedy won a congressional seat. Brammer rattled off a list of accomplishments: tax cuts every one of the last six years, $1.5 billion in new road funding he helped secure for the county, and what he describes as major improvements to Utah Lake.
Water and infrastructure
Utah’s legislative auditor has ranked water needs and infrastructure as the state’s top two vulnerabilities — and both candidates know it. Lehi and American Fork alone are absorbing tens of thousands of new residents, and the pressure on existing systems isn’t letting up.
Smith framed the issue around coordination. She wants the state to come to cities first, ask what they need and then invest accordingly — rather than hand down mandates and leave cities scrambling to catch up. “We’re chasing the infrastructure,” she said. “We’ve got to be able to give them water.”
Brammer pointed to Utah’s strong foundation of reservoirs and water banking programs, and said current cities are well-managed enough to have a longer runway than many assume. But he also called for reducing the water footprint per residential unit. “Point two eight is more than enough,” he said, referring to acre-feet per new unit — well below the current standard in many developments.
Roads and east-west relief
Ask any resident in American Fork or Lehi about traffic, and you’ll hear about the same problem: getting east to west is a nightmare, and the Pony Express Parkway extension that’s supposed to help is still years away from meaningful completion.
Smith acknowledged that some projects are in the pipeline — the vineyard connector into American Fork among them — but said each new road creates the next set of problems. Her pitch is for a united, coordinated push from local legislators and city leaders to direct state resources toward the growth where it’s actually happening. “If the growth is going to be here,” she said, “then the state has to help us manage that growth better.”
Brammer said voters should give that frustration some time horizon. “What’s happening today is what was typically done five years ago,” he said. He claims some credit for helping secure $1.5 billion in road funding that begins hitting the county around 2028 and 2029, and pointed to flex-lane work already underway on the road to Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain as a near-term band-aid.
Housing and local control
The state’s high-density housing mandates ignited a political firestorm in Lehi’s municipal elections last year. Both candidates have reservations about the state’s approach — but for somewhat different reasons.
Smith called for more creative financing and incentive tools. She pointed to rural housing loans her own children used years ago to buy into Eagle Mountain when it was still considered remote. Those options are drying up, she said, even as the housing problem worsens. She also pushed back on the governor’s framing that cities just aren’t building enough. “We’ve got the supply that we need,” she said. “But we’ve got to be able to get people where they go.”
Brammer said there’s no such thing as a truly affordable new home. The real solution, he argued, is pushing infrastructure ahead of growth — building roads and utilities toward where development will be, not reacting after the fact. “Our biggest housing wins have been Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs and Herriman, but our biggest infrastructure problems… are those same three cities,” he noted.
On the broader question of state authority versus local control, both candidates said the answer starts with communication — though they described the current state of that relationship differently. Smith said the collaboration has been uneven and that she’d push for legislators to work more like partners with cities rather than handing down solutions from the Capitol. Brammer said he’s on text threads with his mayors and meets with city councils before and after every legislative session.
Aspen Peak School District
The launch of the Aspen Peak School District — splitting from Alpine School District to serve American Fork, Lehi, Highland and surrounding areas — is the biggest educational change this area has seen in decades.
Smith wants legislators who actually understand education from the inside. She argued that large budget numbers create an illusion of investment that doesn’t always translate to classroom reality. “We need to make sure that we get funding without mandates,” she said, “so that the district can push that to the programs that they know are most meaningful to their parents and students.”
Brammer said the early signs are positive. The new board has hired a superintendent and business manager, and he called the hires solid. Still, he tried and failed this session to get state money for the one-time costs associated with the split. “I’d like to see some one-time costs based on a per pupil” formula supported by the state, he said. He believes this split was handled better than past district divorces, pointing to the dispute resolution processes built into the process from the beginning.
Energy and Utah Lake
Texas Instruments’ $11 billion chip fabrication expansion in Lehi, combined with Silicon Slopes’ appetite for data centers, is putting new pressure on the state’s energy grid. Both candidates want Utah to be an energy leader — though they don’t agree on how cautiously to proceed.
Smith took a measured line. She said she wants to keep all options on the table but warned against moving so fast to attract data centers that residents pay the price in higher utility bills or reduced water supply. “We should be very transparent about what that drag will be,” she said.
Brammer’s answer was considerably more specific. “We want to be the leader in energy exports,” he said, running through a list that included nuclear, geothermal, coal and natural gas. He noted Utah recently received a nuclear facility on a military installation and is pursuing regulatory authority for modular nuclear reactors. “We’re the number one state in America on geothermal,” he added.
On Utah Lake, the two candidates offered competing versions of history. Smith, who served on the Utah Lake Commission before it was disbanded, said Brammer — then a representative — deliberately selected only cities that aligned with his vision for the lake and codified that list in statute, making it impossible for another legislator to simply add American Fork back without a formal amendment. “I strongly disagree with that,” she said.
Brammer told a different story. He said American Fork was left off the Utah Lake Authority Board initially because the city was vocally opposed to the authority’s formation, and that the path back to a seat runs through the Council of Governments, where mayors can lobby for a change without any legislative action required. “They just need to talk to other mayors,” he said.
Education funding gap
State Board of Education member Cindy Davis told attendees at a recent Pancakes and Politics forum in American Fork that Utah County has more students per taxpayer than any other region in the state, leaving local students with less per-pupil funding despite equalization formulas.
Smith called Davis’s assessment accurate and said it’s one reason the school district split happened in the first place — people wanted better, closer representation of their schools. She said more investment needs to flow to districts with genuine flexibility on how to spend it.
Brammer accepted the premise partially. He acknowledged the property tax dynamic but said about two-thirds of school funding comes from the state’s income tax fund, which is distributed based on enrollment — not property values. “The most valuable thing to a school district right now is a student,” he said, noting that education funding has doubled statewide since 2015, while inflation over the same period ran about 38%.
What’s at stake on April 18
Utah County Republican delegates will choose between these two candidates at the April 18 convention. Smith argued the competition itself is valuable — something increasingly rare in Utah legislative races.
“A lot of our legislators are running unopposed,” she said. “I don’t think that gets us to good policy.” She urged voters to get involved and push past their comfort zones. “We need to go out of our comfort zone a little bit if we want to see different things happening in our community.”
Brammer made a straightforward closing argument: he knows the job, he knows the people and he’s already delivering. “I know all of our mayors. I know the city council members. I work with them,” he said. “This is one where it’s a collaborative effort, and I’m one part of an important group of people that are trying to make our area better.”
