Doing Away with Utah’s State Flag

By O. Krauss, January 23, 2023

Why is there a push for getting rid of Utah’s state flag of 1903? Who is behind this push? Is this an organic movement of the people who suddenly got tired of the flag that has graced public buildings and flagpoles around Utah for over a century?

To answer these questions, we must dig a little bit. The name that has been in the news the most has been former Representative Steve Handy, for what is now district 16 in Layton. In September of 2018 he called the flag “boring” “old-fashioned”, and “not inclusive enough”.

It’s true that he is entitled to his opinion, but does he speak for the rest of Utah?

Apparently, he felt strongly enough to craft legislation for a commission to study replacing the flag with a new design. In December of the same year, he added a few more words to how he felt about the flag by saying “It really is a mess. They’ve thrown everything in there but the kitchen sink.” In the same Salt Lake Tribune article, Handy explains how he was convinced by two of his constituents to scrap Utah’s flag. One is Chance Hammock, a realtor from Layton, who is a self-described “armchair amateur vexillologist”, and the other is Joseph Shelton, the co-director of the Utah Flag Group, and physics student at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo. Shelton, another armchair amateur vexillologist, was inspired to design a new flag for Utah after he and his companion would design flags on their mission.

So, what is a vexillologist?

They are people who study the history, symbolism, and usage of flags. Shelton and Hammock consider Utah’s flag to be an SOB, or a “Seal on a Bedsheet”, a term used by other vexillologists to describe state flags that don’t meet their “principles of good flag design”.

How about the Utah Flag Group – what kind of organization is it? They are a special interest group just like Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a special interest group, except much less representative of Utah’s constituents. The group has a private Facebook page with 143 followers as of January 2023.

Hammock approached representative Handy in the summer of 2018 and presented the idea of a new Utah flag. He convinced him that it’s difficult to pick out the state’s flag from a list of other state flags and that “Utah’s flag looks like 30 other state flags”. He encouraged Handy to consider the flags of Colorado and Arizona as examples of sound flags. Hammock was a congressional staffer for one time Arizona Senator Jeff Flake from 2009 to 2014 after graduating BYU-Idaho. Why is this background important?

Even though he worked for a senator from Arizona all those years, Hammock actually lived in Virginia, where he resided until the end of 2015. It wasn’t until 2017 that he relocated to Layton, within Handy’s district. So, the question must be asked, why is someone not from Utah trying to redesign Utah’s flag? Is he truly speaking for the people that have lived here their whole lives, content with the state flag? One might ask, is he really a Utahn?

Both Hammock and Shelton worked with Handy in crafting HB219, which would create the State Flag Review Commission, and it was brought before the state legislature in early 2019. It passed the house but not the senate. This is where things get interesting – the same legislative session had another bill proposed for axing Utah’s flag, HB292, this one sponsored by Representative Keven Stratton, from District 58 in Orem. This bill would have outright replaced the current flag with a design created by Jonathan Martin, a filmmaker and owner of Bohemian Industries, a horror film production company in Provo. His father Richard Martin heads an organization called “The Organization for a New Utah Flag” (TONUF), and the group’s website claims that their new design is favored over the current flag by 90% of the public through a survey they conducted. Upon deeper inspection of the survey, it turns out that not only were the majority (57%) of the 202 respondents not Utah residents, but 90 (45%) never even lived in the state.  On top of that, the survey was open to both national and international respondents. Needless to say, HB292 failed to even get out of committee. Also worth mentioning is that Jonathan is a transplant from Texas, having moved to Utah with his family around 2000.

While on the topic of surveys, a 2023 Legislative Survey was sent out to actual Utahns in December of 2022 seeking input on a variety of issues and topics, including changing the state flag. Why haven’t the results of this survey been released to show how much support there is (or lacking) for a new Utah flag?

So why would Keven Stratton sponsor a bill that was almost certainly doomed to fail? It turns out that Richard Martin (head of TONUF) ran as a candidate for governor in 2010. He is also the owner of Richard T Martin & Co., a legal services company in Provo. Besides the name recognition he already had, he has also been lobbying state lawmakers since 2018 to create and promote a new design, even spending $20,000 on those efforts. It all paid off in 2021 when senator Daniel McCay ran SB48 through the legislature, with Steve Handy as floor sponsor. The bill not only designated the Jonathan Martin design as the flag for Utah’s 125^th statehood anniversary, but also created the State Flag Task Force, tasked with coming up with a new flag, or revising the current one.

After approval from the governor in March of 2021, the task force began studying the “problem” of Utah’s flag, with an initial budget allowance of $13,800. The legislation created six subcommittees to guide the redesign and with public input. There were no less than 90 people assigned to these committees, not one being elected by the people of Utah. True to form, both Hammock and Shelton were placed on two of the committees. By the end of the process, there were about 5700 entries submitted for consideration. In November of 2022, the task force wrapped up its study and made a recommendation, based on final public comment to the 20 semifinalists. The final design is being voted on during the 2023 legislative session via SB31, with the original 1903 flag to become the flag of the Governor’s office. This task force, combined with the committees, project team, and hired public relations firm has, according to Senate sponsor Dan McCay, inexplicably ballooned costs to somewhere near half a million dollars.

While incorporating public comment is a noble thing, the entire flag redesign effort was initiated by a special interest group that makes up terms like SOB for state flags they don’t like (including Utah’s) and try to drum up criticism for it where there isn’t any. Does the fact that the flags of some other states are more commercialized necessitate the need for a redesign of Utah’s flag? At least 3 of the 4 instigators are from outside the state, and at best can be classified as recent transplants. Are the people of Utah really discontent with their state flag, or are there ulterior motives by just a few?

This is another indication that some Utah “legislators” are not creating these bills but are lending themselves to loud special interest groups whose interest neither represents the people nor the politicians who they use as their promoters.

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