New here? UINPAC is the Utah Investment Network PAC — a Democratic-aligned money-moving committee whose giving connects directly to at least four competitive 2026 Utah House races. It first surfaced in this reporting as a data-entry typo ("UNIPAC") in a separate, Republican-aligned PAC's own donor records — the two are otherwise unrelated, but the coincidence of near-identical names is how this PAC's own footprint first came into view.
1. What Is This PAC?
UINPAC's own Statement of Organization confirms it as "also known as Utah Investment Network PAC," created June 23, 2020, registered at 225 S 200 E, Suite 350, Salt Lake City.
Katie Wright
Listed at the PAC's own 225 S 200 E Suite 350 address.
Kayti Sullivan
Same address as Wright.
Utah Donor Collaborative
A real, registered 501(c)(4) (EIN 88-2424825), self-described mission "to build an inclusive coalition to achieve a politically balanced Utah." Paired with a separate 501(c)(3) foundation for civic-engagement programming — an ordinary nonprofit c3/c4 structure, not opaque on its own.
2. A Shared Address, and One Person in Three Roles
UINPAC's registered address, 225 S 200 E Suite 350, is also the headquarters of Blueprint Public Affairs — a political fundraising firm (founded 2015) that self-describes as working "with independent, Democratic, and progressive organizations in Utah and throughout the United States." This is the most likely operational engine behind both UINPAC and Utah Donor Collaborative — a Democratic-aligned counterpart to what Morgan May Public Affairs is for CMV PAC, or what Election Hive is for Republican campaigns.
Matt Lyon connects three separate roles at once. He is a Partner at Blueprint Public Affairs (sharing UINPAC's office address), the CEO of FundHero (UINPAC's own recurring payment processor across multiple years of its raw records), and a personal $5 individual donor to UINPAC directly. The same person sits inside the firm, runs the payment infrastructure, and donates — a tightly integrated structure worth naming plainly, though this kind of overlap is common for small political-consulting-run PACs generally, not necessarily improper on its own.
3. The Races It Funds — Confirmed as Real, Competitive Contests
UtahPolitics.news' own reporting (Bryan Schott, 9/11/26) independently confirms that four of UINPAC's candidate recipients are in genuinely competitive 2026 races, each with specific, quantified Republican PAC spending on the other side.
Angela Choberka (D, HD-9)
A rematch: Choberka lost this seat to Republican Jake Sawyer in 2024, 58.3%–36.8%. In 2026, Sawyer's own itemized filing shows $21,250 raised over an 11-day window, entirely from corporations and PACs, including $15,000 combined from the Utah House Republican Election Committee and Speaker Mike Schultz's leadership PAC. Choberka's own itemized filing over a comparable window shows $13,637.25 raised, 90.8% of it from 79 individual donors. Already documented in this project's own HD-9 case file.
Rosemary Lesser (D, HD-10)
A physician and Air Force veteran seeking a comeback: Lesser held this seat from January 2021 (appointed after her predecessor's death) through 2024, then lost narrowly to Republican Jill Koford, 50.98%–49.02% — about 300 votes, in one of that cycle's most expensive races ($290,000+ combined). Her 2026 opponent, Jim Alvey, has received $42,000 combined from the Utah House Republican Election Committee, House Speaker Leadership PAC, and the Weber County GOP — 86% of his fundraising. Lesser entered June with $40,000+ cash on hand and raised another $56,000 since.
Liz Oates (D, HD-27)
Challenging Republican incumbent Anthony Loubet, an attorney first elected in 2022. Loubet received $20,000 combined from the same two Republican PACs. Oates's own full donor record — Year End 2025 through her latest itemized report — shows $59,865.29 raised total, fully reconciled: $24,400 (40.8%) from PACs and party committees, $35,465.29 (59.2%) from 189 distinct individual donors averaging $134.85 each, including several sitting and former Utah Democratic legislators giving personally. Loubet's own itemized report for the same window shows $35,752.91 raised, also fully reconciled: $29,951 (83.8%) from 10 PACs and corporate donors, $5,801.91 (16.2%) from just 12 individuals. Both sides are charted below.
Celeste Johnson (D, HD-59)
Running to succeed retiring Rep. Mike Kohler. Republican Luke Searle — who won his own primary by just 627 votes — received $15,000 combined from the same two Republican PACs. Johnson slightly outraised him since mid-June.
Individual donors vs. PAC money — how the two sides actually compare
PAC support isn't inherently a red flag on its own — the real question is what share of a campaign's money comes from PACs versus individual people. Here's what's actually confirmed for each race, and what isn't.
Sawyer's side of this is now confirmed two ways — UtahPolitics.news' own reporting, and his own itemized CFIS filing, which reconciles to the penny: House Speaker Leadership PAC $10,000, Utah House Republican Election Committee $5,000, Weber County Republican Party $3,000, plus six smaller corporate and trade-association checks (Home Builders Association of Utah, Google, Maverik Group, 1800 Contacts, Strata Networks, Association of Utah Nurse Practitioners). Not one individual name appears anywhere in the report. Choberka's own itemized filing, reconciled the same way, runs slightly different from the original "100% individual, $12,500 from 110 donors" figure cited from secondhand reporting — her real number is 90.8% individual, with three small institutional checks worth noting rather than omitting. Still about as stark a contrast as this kind of comparison gets, just not a perfect 100/100 split.
Johnson's split is a real, sourced figure from her own campaign filings, but rounder than Searle's — his numbers are itemized to the penny across 35 individual transactions; hers are drawn from campaign-level totals rather than a full line-by-line reconciliation. No PAC in Johnson's donor list overlaps with any PAC funding Searle.
Unlike the other three races on this page, Lesser's chart isn't fully reconciled to the penny — the remaining ~21% "not yet itemized" slice is confined to her earliest reporting period, before a later, fully-itemized report closed most of the gap. Both Alvey's numbers and Lesser's confirmed portions reconcile exactly against each candidate's own reported totals. Before the 8/12/26 PAC infusion, Alvey's campaign was $3,615 — entirely individual donors, not one PAC dollar.
Lesser vs. Alvey is sharper looked at as a count, not just a dollar share. Lesser raised more than double Alvey's total — $117,855.67 across hundreds of individual transactions, dozens of distinct local donors giving small and recurring amounts, plus real institutional support of her own (unions, the state party's leadership arm, professional associations). Alvey's $48,860 year-to-date total includes $42,000 from just three institutional sources — $35,000 of it landing in two transactions on a single day, 8/12/26 (UHREC and House Speaker Leadership PAC), with a further $7,000 from the Weber County GOP two weeks later. Three transactions did more for his campaign than everything else, spread across the rest of the entire cycle, combined.
Both numbers cover an almost identical roughly three-month window (mid-June to early September 2026) and reconcile exactly against each candidate's own reported totals for that period — a genuine apples-to-apples comparison, not two different slices of time. Oates built her total from 189 separate people. Loubet built his from 12, with the two Republican leadership PACs alone accounting for more than half of everything he raised.
Two of these four — Choberka and Lesser — are repeat candidates seeking rematches against the exact opponents who beat them in 2024. Oates and Johnson are each in their first run for these particular seats.
A recurring donor overlap worth naming: Jane Marquardt, Arthur "Art" Lipson, and Rochelle Kaplan all appear as donors to both UINPAC and Checks & Balances PAC — two separately-run, Democratic-aligned committees drawing from an overlapping small circle of individual donors.
4. Transaction Explorer
Every transaction found in UINPAC's records, 2020–2026. Search by name, or filter by type and flagged entries.
| Date | Type | Name | Amount | Purpose | Notes |
|---|
5. Worth Asking
Every race on this page shows some version of the same shape. Choberka raised $13,637.25, 90.8% of it from 79 individual people, while Sawyer raised $21,250 entirely from corporations and PACs. Oates built her campaign from 189 individual donors; Loubet built his from 12. Searle got the bulk of his money from four PACs; Alvey got the bulk of his from three institutional sources, most of it landing in two transactions on a single day. None of these candidates were chosen by a small group of donors in any formal sense — voters still cast the deciding ballots. But the money that determines who can afford to run a competitive race, staff it, and advertise in it is arriving, in race after race, from a small number of PACs and corporations with an ongoing relationship to whoever is already in office — not from a broad public writing small checks. If the field a voter chooses from has already been shaped that heavily before a single vote is cast, is the public still the one picking the winners, or mostly ratifying a choice institutional money already narrowed?
Twelve people gave Anthony Loubet more sway over his own campaign than 189 people gave Liz Oates. If a race can be decided by which side attracts a handful of institutional checks rather than a broad base of individual support, whose interests does the winner actually answer to once in office — the electorate that shows up in November, or the PACs that wrote the checks months earlier?
The same professional operators keep appearing on opposite sides of the aisle. Will Terry administers a PAC funding conservative primary challengers and a PAC on the opposite end of the spectrum. Matt Lyon runs the payment infrastructure behind a Democratic-aligned PAC while partnering in the firm that operates it. Is that evidence of real, competing political movements — or a small circle of consultants who do well regardless of which side wins?
6. Research Status
Resolved since first publication:
- "DRAIN THE SWAMP PAC" ($5,700) is also known as RESTORE TRUST PAC (Washington, UT, created 5/14/26). Its Manager, Will Terry, is the SAME Will Terry already documented as Checks & Balances PAC's own paid administrator — a professional PAC consultant working across at least two committees in this network, not a coincidental name match.
Still being checked — not yet confirmed one way or the other:
- Whether "Annette Harris," a UINPAC political-support recipient, is the same Annette Harris who separately gave $100 to Chris McConnehey's Republican campaign — addresses not yet compared.
- "Kendra for Utah" and Stephanie Pitcher haven't yet been cross-checked against other candidate files in this project.
Sources
- Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office, disclosures.utah.gov — UINPAC Statement of Organization and full raw itemized contribution/expenditure exports, 2020-2026
- ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Charity Navigator, Cause IQ — Utah Donor Collaborative (EIN 88-2424825) and Utah Donor Collaborative Foundation (EIN 99-4951495)
- Blueprint Public Affairs' own site and LinkedIn — firm description and address confirmation
- UtahPolitics.news (Bryan Schott), "These are the Utah House and Senate races both parties are targeting in November," Sept. 11, 2026
- Cross-referenced from this project's existing research: [[checks-and-balances-pac]], [[cmv-pac]], [[chris-mcconnehey-hd38]], [[luke-searle-hd59]]
