Rob Anderson, the embattled chairman of a divided Utah Republican Party, will not seek re-election to a second term after two years dominated by an ongoing and costly intraparty battle over the state’s election laws.
Anderson told The Tribune on Wednesday that he made the decision to step down last week, based in part on the “solid resistance” to his calls for unity after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the party’s lawsuit against the state, challenging a 2014 law, SB54. That law allows candidates to qualify for a partisan primary through either signature collection or the support of party delegates at convention.