New here? Chris McConnehey is the Republican candidate for Utah House District 38 (West Jordan), an open seat left by retiring incumbent Cheryl Acton. He first appeared in this project as a side note in the Checks & Balances PAC case file — that PAC gave him $4,000, the same PAC funding primary challengers against two legislators behind a 2026 judicial-power overhaul. But McConnehey has no opponent relationship to either of those legislators and no connection to that fight. He's here purely because he shares a funder. His own campaign's real story — who actually funded him, and how — is documented for the first time on this page.
1. What Is This Race?
McConnehey lost the April 2026 Republican convention badly to Gloria Vindas, 29% to 71% of delegates — a wide enough margin that under Utah's old convention-only nomination system, his campaign would have ended there. Instead, under the signature-gathering path created by SB54 (2014), he advanced to the June primary and won it convincingly, 62.4% to 37.6%. He now faces unaffiliated candidate Sergio Sotelo in November. Utah News Dispatch grouped HD-38 with HD-44 (the Teuscher/Stephenson race documented in this project's Checks & Balances PAC file) as one of several "contentious" 2026 primaries featuring AI-generated attack ads — a genuinely high-intensity race, not a sleepy open seat.
This same underperform-at-convention, win-the-primary shape shows up across this entire project. Kelly Smith, Scott Stephenson, and Jake Hunsaker all show the identical pattern in their own files. McConnehey is a fourth, independent data point — and unlike the other three, his race has no connection at all to the "judicial independence" cause that originally funded Smith and Stephenson, suggesting the pattern may be about which candidates the signature-gathering system structurally favors, not about any one political cause.
This puts McConnehey alongside Jake Sawyer (100% institutional) and Jim Alvey (86.0%) as one of the most institutionally-funded candidates documented anywhere in this project — a genuinely lopsided ratio, not a marginal lean.
2. His Real Funder: CMV PAC
Checks & Balances PAC gave McConnehey $4,000 — the connection that pulled him into this project in the first place. But that's not close to his largest source of money. CMV PAC (Count My Vote) gave him $12,750 across two in-kind payments — more than triple what Checks & Balances PAC gave him, and 24.9% of everything he raised.
CMV PAC's own case file in this project documents it as a large, systematic distributor — a standardized $5,625 "signature gathering" package paid to at least a dozen Republican candidates statewide in a single January 2026 batch, several of whom already have their own case files in this project (Jim Dunnigan, Raymond Ward, Erik Craythorne, Sam Barlow, Jake Hunsaker). McConnehey's first CMV PAC payment is the exact standard rate; the second, larger payment four months later brings his total well above what most other recipients got.
3. The Signature-Gathering Network
McConnehey's campaign paid "Gathering, Inc" $2,700 for signature gathering (4/23/26) — the same service CMV PAC's own in-kind payment covers. Confirmed via the company's own Utah Division of Corporations filing: its officers are Casey Hill (co-founder of Lincoln Hill Partners and a registered Election Hive lobbyist, already extensively documented elsewhere in this project) and Spencer Stokes (President of Stokes Strategies, a lobbying firm) — both listed at the same Salt Lake City address. McConnehey's campaign is a direct, paying customer of a network already documented in this project's Casey Hill/Derek Brown case file, not just a beneficiary of a PAC that happens to fund similar candidates.
Spencer Stokes' co-ownership connects to a second McConnehey funder through a different route. Stokes previously co-founded "Utah Term Limits" in 2020 with Dan Hemmert — a PAC that, as the Salt Lake Tribune reported, was created one day after a disclosure deadline, so its donors were not reported before that primary. Hemmert is separately confirmed on this page as Treasurer of All In For Utah PAC, which itself gave McConnehey $5,643.55 in-kind (see Section 4). Two people who worked together on that PAC now each connect to a different McConnehey funding source.
A statewide search of 2026 Gathering Inc expenditures turned up a much bigger operation than one HD-38 candidate. Its largest identified 2026 client, at $76,682 across six payments, is filed under "Adams, J." Senate President Stuart Adams' full legal name is Jabez Stuart Adams, formally styled "J. Stuart Adams" in every official context — an exact match to this filing format. Worth noting the real-world outcome: Adams lost his own June 2026 Republican primary to Stephanie Hollist, 43%-35%, despite this spending — a data point for the same "money buys ballot access, not necessarily victory" pattern already visible elsewhere on this page and across this project. Other 2026 Gathering Inc clients include payments filed under "Sloan, Chris," "Wurth, Dakota," "Stephenson, Jon," and an entity called "Utahns for Representative Government" — a name close enough to "Utahns for Responsive Government" (an unresearched donor elsewhere in this project) to be worth checking, though not yet confirmed as the same group.
4. Establishment Backing
Beyond the PAC money, McConnehey's donor list reads like a small tour of Utah's Republican establishment and its adjacent money networks — several names already extensively documented elsewhere in this project.
| Donor | Amount | Why It's Notable |
|---|---|---|
| Gregory Hughes | $1,000 | Former Utah House Speaker (2015–2019), personal gift |
| Raymond Ward | $1,500 | Sitting State Representative, two separate gifts |
| Karen Peterson | $500 + $1,000 | Personal gift, then her own PAC the next cycle — a confirmed repeatable pattern also used with Luke Searle |
| All In For Utah PAC | $5,643.55 | In-kind, four payments; Chair Owen Fuller runs Gov. Cox's "Disagree Better" initiative; Treasurer Dan Hemmert is the new MIDA Executive Director |
| Utah Doers | $3,750 | Shares an address with All In For Utah PAC — both built by the same incorporator, GOP campaign-finance attorney Matthew T. Sanderson |
| Governing Group | $5,730 | Cash + in-kind combined, three payments |
| Utah Chamber PAC | $5,000 | Already has its own dedicated case file in this project |
| Bonnie Beesley | $1,000 | Possible match to a $10,000 donor of the same name in the same PAC filing where Gail Miller gave $100,000 — not yet confirmed |
| Adam Gardiner | $1,000 | New name from his full raw DEX export — not otherwise identified |
Scott Anderson connects two of this project's largest funding stories through a single $10,000 check. All In For Utah PAC's one named donor is A. Scott Anderson — the same retired Zions Bank CEO already confirmed giving $50,000 to CMV PAC. The same person is a major funder behind both of McConnehey's two biggest institutional supporters, through two entirely separate vehicles.
Standard trade-association giving rounds out the rest of the donor list: Utah Apartment Association PAC $1,000, Utah Association of Realtors PAC $1,500, Home Builders Association of Utah PAC $500, Utah Property Rights Coalition $500, Holland and Hart $250, Parsons Behle & Latimer $200, Utah Bankers Association State PAC $2,000, Utah AFL-CIO $300 — the last labor-PAC gift in an otherwise business-and-establishment-heavy donor list. One more individual gift, $200 from Erin Rider, is also not otherwise identified.
His own campaign site's endorsement list
McConnehey's endorsers, from his own campaign site, back up the financial picture above with a public roster of political relationships: Chad Lamb, Zach Jacob, Dave Newton, Lorin Palmer, Dr. David Pack, Jim Bird, and Rob Bennett (current and former West Jordan/Herriman local officials), plus three names that connect directly to money already documented on this page or elsewhere in this project — Wayne Harper (Utah State Senator), Jim Dunnigan (Utah State Representative, also a $700 donor — see Transaction Explorer), and Annette Harris (West Jordan City Council, also a $100 donor). Also endorsing: Aimee Winder Newton (Salt Lake County Council Chair), Dirk Burton (West Jordan Mayor), Niki George (Jordan School Board President).
This resolves, at least partially, an open question from this project's UINPAC file. UINPAC (a Democratic-aligned PAC) separately lists an "Annette Harris" as a political-support recipient, and it was an open question whether she's the same person as McConnehey's $100 donor of the same name. His own site identifies his Annette Harris as a sitting West Jordan City Council member personally endorsing his Republican campaign — a poor fit for a Democratic PAC's recipient, though city council seats are often officially nonpartisan, so this isn't a certain rule-out without an address comparison.
5. Transaction Explorer
Every transaction currently on file for this campaign, Convention period through September 2026. Search by name, or filter by type.
| Date | Type | Name | Amount | Purpose | Notes |
|---|
6. Worth Asking
- McConnehey lost his own party's convention by a wide margin, then won comfortably once the money-fueled signature-gathering path put him on the primary ballot. Is that the system working as designed — giving primary voters more say than a smaller pool of convention delegates — or is it a way for money to manufacture a win the party's most engaged members didn't want?
- The same handful of names — Scott Anderson, Dan Hemmert, Casey Hill's network, Matthew Sanderson's entities — keep reappearing across completely separate races and PACs in this project. Is that evidence of a genuinely small number of people who fund and staff most competitive Utah Republican campaigns, regardless of district? If so, what does "constituent service" mean to a legislator whose viability depended on a repeat cast of statewide funders rather than local voters?
7. Research Status
Resolved since first publication:
- "Annette Harris" ($100, 9/4/26) is a sitting West Jordan City Council member, per McConnehey's own campaign site's endorsement list — see Section 4. Likely not the same person as a UINPAC political-support recipient of the same name, though not fully closed without an address comparison.
- "Gathering, Inc" is confirmed, via its own Utah Division of Corporations filing, to be officered by Casey Hill and Spencer Stokes — see Section 3.
- "Adams, J" — Gathering Inc's largest identified 2026 client at $76,682 — is Senate President Stuart Adams, whose full legal name (Jabez Stuart Adams) is formally styled "J. Stuart Adams" everywhere else. He lost his own June 2026 primary despite this spending — see Section 3.
Still being checked — not yet confirmed one way or the other:
- Whether "Utahns for Representative Government" (a $7,500 Gathering Inc client) is the same entity as, a variant of, or unrelated to "Utahns for Responsive Government," an unresearched donor elsewhere in this project.
- Whether "Bonnie Beesley" ($1,000 donor here) is the same Bonnie Jean Beesley who gave $10,000 to Education First PAC in the same filing where Gail Miller gave $100,000 — a promising lead, not yet address-confirmed.
- Karen Peterson's $500 personal gift here hasn't been individually address-matched to her HD-13 filing, though the personal-then-PAC pattern is already confirmed real via her identical structure with Luke Searle.
- "UCUPAC" ($1,000, 4/10/26) — possibly Utah Credit Union PAC, not confirmed.
Sources
- Utah State Elections Office, CFIS campaign finance disclosures — McConnehey's Convention, Primary, and later-period reports
- Utah News Dispatch — coverage of contentious 2026 primaries featuring AI-generated attack ads
- Ballotpedia — HD-38 2026 race results and candidate information
- Cross-referenced against this project's own CMV PAC, Checks & Balances PAC, Casey Hill/Derek Brown, and Luke Searle case files
