First of all, I would like to thank you so much for agreeing to chat with me. I wanted to do a little introduction- I moved to Salt Lake 13 years ago and you were one of the first names I learned. It’s been so amazing to watch you transform from- I hope it's ok to say this- it’s what I’ve always called Goggle Girls- the girls on the billboards with great smiles who are ripping skiers to a Patagonia ambassador, to an Everest summiteer to now running for Senate, what an incredible arc. And this is also the first time in a long time that I’ve been excited to vote, it finally feels like there is someone who can create real change here.
Caroline:
I hope to bring more people in to get people excited to vote, to become lifelong voters, and to continue staying involved, to remain vigilant because democracy only works if the people participate. And so I, I think we can, we can try to make it fun. That's my hope.
Annie:
Absolutely. And I mean, not to mention that Utah has never had a female senator, We have not even had a Democratic senator. Change is happening! Being in real estate over the past eight years I've seen the changes; politically, and with the type of people moving here and the type of things they’re interested in this feels like the exact right time for you to come in to be like, OK, let's represent that population now, You know, 20 years ago, I don't know what it was like here, but my guess is that it wasn't quite as modern. And so, you know, it feels like the right time.
Caroline:
And even young LDS voters are increasingly voting Democratic. I think for families especially, like family issues are a really big issue here and seeing the, the threats to access to healthcare for women and things like that, it's really mobilizing a lot of people to instead of just voting Straight Republican or straight Democrat, people are really taking more time to look at the candidates, look at the issues and do them a little bit of homework. So yeah, I hope we can bring a lot more people in and get much greater voter turnout and start to sort of change the tides here in Utah and make sure that we have a government that really works and works for and represents the people of Utah.
Annie:
No doubt. So what I want to dig into today is the environment. So, I have had a handful of clients who have just straight up decided not to buy real estate in Utah because they are fearful of the future. And I feel that you know, I own properties here, my business is here, everything is invested here financially. And I'm trying to be smart about that. But if we run out of water or the air is full of arsenic and we can't breathe, then suddenly everybody's investments, everybody's life plan is totally different, and so for me, that’s like one of the biggest issues in Utah, and one of the things that I talk to people about that have those concerns that are moving to the state (Utah) is like, well, things have been changing like I heard that the church donated a bunch of water shares. That's good, right? And you know, I heard that our air quality has improved by 50% since 1995. Well, that's good. So what I want to hear from you is, you know, you've always been really politically active as long as I've sort of been following you. What changes have you seen already happening that are positive? And then obviously, what changes do you hope will happen?
Caroline:
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, we've had international news coverage about the drying of the Great Salt Lake. And make no mistake, the Salt Lake has already shrunk immensely, and the dust events are going to continue to get worse in the future. They are already happening now, like we are already seeing more dust events. It's affecting us, we're seeing arsenic on plants and vegetables and fruits in people's backyard gardens in the Salt Lake Valley. And we are also seeing the dust on our snowpack and that's causing like last year. The hydrologist from the University of Utah found that the dust on the snow caused our snowpack to melt 17 days sooner than without that. And so I know, like snow, OK, maybe not that big of a deal, but that's our water too. And I think another issue is that we've had two really big, pretty healthy snow years in the past two years. So when we were in more of a visual drought, I guess the urgency for lawmakers to take action was greater. But because we had two good winters and the lakes are filling, I think it sort of removed a little bit of the urgency. So we've seen some minor bills passed at the state and federal levels to help get more water to the Great Salt Lake, but it's not enough and it's not happening quickly enough. The projections are that we could see much greater drying of the lake in the next five years. And that's not just real estate values. I mean that it's a public health crisis and especially marginalized frontline communities on the West side closer to the lake will be disproportionately affected and the same with women and children. And so I would like to see a lot greater urgency of our lawmakers to accelerate. Not only water conservation methods, there's a lot that could be done to work with farming communities and other communities to conserve more water so more water can get to the lake, but also to address the underlying cause of this and that is the climate crisis. We need to rapidly accelerate our transition to clean renewable energy while supporting our legacy energy-producing communities in the state of Utah to make sure we're not leaving folks behind, to make sure folks in rural parts that have depended on coal and other fossil fuel and extractive industries have good union jobs. And so those would be #1 priorities for me in the United States Senate on day one.
Annie:
You're recognizing my own sort of bias and because I'm like, politicians don't care about people. This is so you know how I see it. So I go, well, they all are invested financially in this town. So, you know, can we hit them from that angle? Like if there's a dry lake bed and bad air quality, then, you know, they will make less money. So I already like recognizing my own kind of, I don't know, negative thought process on that.
Caroline:
Yeah, No, I mean, but I do want to get one thing clear and that is there are a lot of special interest groups and links between elected officials and these industries. And you know, there's over, I think about 50 billionaire families have already put over $600 million into influencing the outcome of the 2024 election. And so my front runner for the US Senate race on the Republican side. In his campaign, he has already received over $4.7 million in support from 1 super pact that's running tons of ads and that super fact is called conservative values for Utah. But the fun fact there is that it's actually mainly funded by a multi-millionaire from North Carolina. So a lot of groups are putting a lot of money in. And when you look at the spending and elections, you see a lot of influence from corporations, from special interest groups, from the fossil fuel industry. And when you look at those contributions and you look at the voting records of the people that they've supported in Congress, you see a direct correlation between the kinds of policies they are supporting and the industries they are backing. And it’s really frustrating when things like clean air and climate action have become polarized for reasons unknown to me. Clean air shouldn't be red versus blue. It shouldn't be Democrat versus Republican, we all need to care about clean air. We all need to care about our future generations, and the effects it has on miscarriage rates, asthma, and cardiovascular events. This is literally taking two years on average of two years off of every Utahn's life in the Salt Lake Valley. And I don't, I don't know how it became polarized, but we need to bring back the spirit of being in this together and, and, and ending this partisan divide and the weaponization of these issues for political gain.
Annie:
Yeah, it blows my mind in the years, and granted, I think because we've had a couple of good winters in a row, I mean I. For the winters of 2013, 14-15, where people were wearing, you know, masks, riding their bikes or walking outside, I would put my, you know, this is not science, but, you know, I would put my face like that in my shirt. And I'm like this, this is the same air that everybody here is breathing. I don't understand how this is a partisan issue. It's pretty wild to me.
Caroline:
It is really wild. Yeah. And I think it's just also like, at times a little frustrating to just see the lack, the how slow change has been because I started my political journey working for Governor Gary Herbert’s environmental advisor for Ted Wilson, who was a big environmental champion. He was the former Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City mayor. And at that time in 2010, 90% of our electricity was from coal-fired power plants. And here we are almost 15 years later and we're still 70% from coal-fired power plants. Well, we've seen these huge booms in the affordability of clean Renewable energy. So it's not that the technology, like this technology, this acceleration, the transition creates jobs. It's good for human health, it's good for the planet. And so why the delay? I attribute a lot of it to the outside spending and to the outside influences in these elections, especially at the federal level.
Annie:
I used to live on the West side. I still technically live on the West side, but I live even closer to the refineries. And as I'm showing houses, as I'm driving from South to North you can physically see the difference in air quality up there.
Caroline:
So, yeah, and we don't really have also good public health monitoring and information about when we're in an event, cause a lot of times it's like at the beginning of a front coming through and it will pick up a bunch of the dust. And so I would love to see more monitoring and public Health Communication around those test events.
Annie:
That's another one that blows my mind is I grew up in California in the 90s and we have, we were going through a drought during that time and I remember as a little kid, there was just a massive public campaign about the drought, like in, you know, first, second grade, there would be when you're brushing your teeth, turn the water off. Nobody was allowed to water their lawns. Everybody had dirty cars. There was like this just a campaign about what to do about it. And I just never see anything like that happening in Utah. Like everybody kind of getting on board, like these are some things we can do. If the politicians aren't doing it, these are some things we can do, I don't see any of that.
Caroline:
Yeah, no. And I think you speak to a really powerful point there, and that is the issue of conservation, water conservation, energy conservation. Because what I see happening, especially with housing is we see especially up in Park City, a lot of second homeowners building houses and they're just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and they're unoccupied for most of the year. And then you see down in the city of Salt Lake, you know, down in Salt Lake, people living on the streets, like the rate of people experiencing homelessness, and you can understand why, I mean, it’s so expensive to buy a house. And so I would love to also like to bring this mindset to addressing housing affordability because we're not going to get out of this mess by building things bigger and bigger by building bigger cars, bigger houses. I would love to see more federal initiatives to help bring more ADUs, you know, to give people homeowners incentives to build ADUs so that they can create housing solutions without these massive projects. And you know, it's like, it's hard to do these large, larger-scale affordable housing projects, those needs to happen because now we're short by almost $100,000 affordable housing units In Utah and it's only going to keep getting worse, and worse every year. So we really need to think outside the box. We need to think about public transit. We need to think about affordable housing, about incentivizing people to do ADUs. We need to think about bringing back more first-time home buyer credits and bigger ones too. Because in 2010, after I graduated from high school, from college. I was able to buy my first house in Cottonwood Heights using the first-time home buyers credit and that really helped to bring down the purchase price of the house.
Annie:
That’s awesome! So at this point in your candidacy, what are your primary goals? Like obviously fundraising because you're up against these guys who have millions of dollars from billionaires. So raising money, are you on the ground, like you mentioned farmers and that was something that in researching for this, you know, I looked into that I didn't really know that much about in regards to air quality and water. So are you able to like to meet with farmers and talk with them about it? Like is your campaign at this point, and forgive me for using this term, is it sort of a popularity contest or you focused more on education or you focused more on the groundwork? Like probably all of those things, but…
Caroline:
We're doing them all at once. And so it's really a unique challenge working on a campaign because yes, we have like we have, I'm doing outreach to key leaders in different industries. Like yesterday I had the opportunity to do a gun training with the law enforcement officers at the Summit County Sheriff’s office. Because I’ve never been around guns, and I know gun violence is a real issue today. And so before I, you know, to develop my policy, like I have my, I have my preconceived notions or my ideas about what I think should be done, but I think it's really important to meet with folks and to learn more about an issue and to take a deep dive. So they did a gun training and I got to shoot a handgun and, a rifle and a sniper. And it was really illustrating and also to speak with law enforcement about what issues they're seeing on the ground. So we're definitely doing that stuff. We're doing it all at once and it's like flying a plane. It's building a plane as you're flying it. It is a unique challenge and it kind of hurts my brain sometimes to have so many things going on at once. But we have an amazing team. We have about, between part-time contractors and full-time folks and interns, we have over 20 people working on the campaign, so we're working really hard to get the voter registration efforts, summer parade schedule, yard sign distribution is a real challenge because we're in a state the size of England. So we're working on that and a whole bunch of other things. But definitely, outreach to farmers to add, is high on my priority list and we will be working to get that solidified shortly.
Annie:
Have you had any experiences where you have met with somebody who maybe holds different kinds of political views than you and feels like you've been able to help them understand the issues that you find are important?
Caroline:
Yeah, Definitely had, we've had, you know, we want I, I, I welcome all the opportunities to meet with Republicans. I come from a very conservative household. And so I love debate. I love to hear other perspectives and to share mine. And I think for a lot of people right now, we're looking for change. We're looking for a different kind of leadership because we have one of the least effective Congresses in U.S. history. I mean, last year they only passed I think 34 bills, which is close to a record low. There's a lot of must-pass legislation to keep the government open. That's not getting across the finish line. And it's a real problem. It's a real problem when politicians are playing these political games that are deeply affecting the lives of Yukons and Americans. So I think the best answer is to vote them out. We can't keep electing the same kind of people and expecting a different outcome. And so for folks that are frustrated with the state of American politics today, I would really invite them in and I'd love to meet with you and chat with you.
Annie:
Yeah. Are you able to communicate a lot with people who are already in the office? Is that, again, I don't know, like when you're running, how in the door you are at that point?
Caroline:
For sure. Yeah. I was in DC a couple of weeks ago and had some great meetings with a number of different city and US senators and then locally meeting with a lot of different leaders. And so I always welcome more opportunities to chat with folks, whether whatever political party they are, I think we all need to be working together to cross party lines to address these pressing issues they see facing Uthans today.
Annie:
Well, I don’t want to keep you too long because I know you are a super busy lady, but I just can't stress enough to anybody who might be listening. The breadth of experience I think that you have is just paramount in your campaign. Like from, like I said, just kind of building yourself up to making humongous goals for yourself. That's something that I find. So I tend to set little goals along the way. And I see you just setting these huge goals and facing a lot of public backlash along the way. Like I've seen you torn up online and you know, all the things and kind of always coming back with a smiling face and taking it really strongly. I don’t know how else to say that, and so I think that that's something that's really important because it takes a really tough person to run for office, no doubt.
Caroline:
Thank you. I really appreciate that. You know, it hasn't been easy building my career as a professional skier like it is really running a small business. And so I have a lot of experience in the outdoor recreation world working with countless brands locally. So I'm excited to bring that same frugality it took to run a small business and to make it work because it is really difficult to make that career path at work as a professional athlete and so I’m really excited about the opportunity to serve Utah and to really get our government back to work on the places they need to be governed, governing to fund, to stop with the policing and regulating of our bodies and what books we read and what bathrooms we go to like none of those are in the hierarchy of issues facing Utahns today. We have much bigger things to address and so I look forward to the opportunity to keep this going. And I really thank you so much for all of your leadership and the great work you're doing in our community as well and would love to keep the conversation going.
Annie:
Yeah, thanks, Caroline. I appreciate that. I will say that Caroline's married to a real estate agent, but you have always been very supportive of my business and my work and making comments here and there, like love what you're doing and that just seems so unnecessary and so lovely and just really puts out that acceptance vibe to everyone around you. So, I’ve always really appreciated your support there.
Caroline:
Likewise, keep it going! Strong women support strong women. And so it also helps to have a strong man supporting me and who's not afraid to let me shine my brightest so I'm. We're grateful for Rob and also the flexibility that his job as a real estate agent has allowed us to pursue our biggest dreams in life, including climbing the highest mountains in the world and running for the United States Senate. It wouldn't be possible without a lot of people behind me. And so he's definitely a real critical part in making this all happen. So thank you!
Annie:
Yes, So you guys are really the king and queen of work-life balance. I'm always like, how did they? But they did that and that it's amazing.
Caroline:
So no, we don't have balance. We like when it's time, like we work really hard when it's time, and then when it's time to play or to do the other, like we try to, to give everything we do like 120%. But he also taught me how to relax and binge-watch TV and like, it's a good life skill, we just don’t post those. Lols.
Anyway, you can check out our website carolineforutah.com if you can chip in a couple of bucks, that will really help us to run a more competitive campaign here and help us spread the word. We really appreciate the opportunity to chat today. And I'll also share a link to our latest ad for Father's Day. I'm not sure when this is going to come out, but we're going to be running that out for a while. It's letters from daughters to their dads. Asking them to support a different kind of candidate touches on the Great Salt Lake, reproductive freedom affordable housing, and nations like that. So I'm, I'll share that with you and then if you could include that, that would be great.
Annie:
I'll be sure to link out everything on YouTube and Instagram and all the things and hopefully get you some more dollars coming your way. I've donated myself and will continue to.
Caroline:
Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, it's great chatting with you. Thanks so much and have a great day.
Annie:
Likewise. Thanks, Carolyn. See you. Bye. Bye.
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