Julie Monahan arrived on a Zoom call in a prim, green blouse, her hair smoothed to perfection, a touch of color on lips already forming a smile reflected in crinkled eyes.No, we wouldn’t be recording video, but she said she’d tossed on something green “just in case.” Green and blue are her campaign colors — for the environment but also, she said, the green is a nod to her half-Irish heritage.Her campaign for Utah House representative for District 59 is her first-ever political campaign, but she said she’s no stranger to government.During her three-decade career with IBM, or International Business Machines, Monahan said most of her accounts were with governments, her first account being the state of Utah.“I consulted with federal, state and local governments,” she said. “In hindsight, I have been preparing my whole career for this job. I mean, not on purpose. I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t intending to run, but if you look at what I did through my career, it really fits in really nicely with being a state legislator.”She believes she’s equipped, but actually the main reason she ran for this role was to give people a choice on the ballot.“If I hadn’t stepped up to do it, then my opponent would have run unopposed, and whether one person liked Mike or a zillion people liked Mike, he was going to win. And I don’t think that’s really great for a thriving democracy,” she said. “I have come to learn through the course of the campaign that that’s true for 40% of the races in Utah and almost 50% of the races in the country.”So, as the Democrat candidate against incumbent Republican Mike Kohler, Monahan hopes to bring a diversity of thought to the Utah Legislature. With differences of opinion or ideas, she said representatives can better work toward compromise and avoid unintended consequences.“There’s all kinds of studies that have been done about how important diverse teams are and how they really do drive better outcomes. It’s no different for the legislature,” Monahan said. “With different ideas, we will make better policies.”District 59 is a swath of land covering Heber City, Midway, historic Park City and much of the surrounding rural communities. It’s quite an intimidating demographic, but Monahan said she’s more than capable, though she laments the consequences of gerrymandering. For one, Park City High School classrooms could have kids who live in three different districts, she said with a shake of her head.“You want districts to look like their communities. You don’t want to fracture communities. It’s not good for democracy. It’s not good for the people that live there,” she said. “In a world where we didn’t have gerrymandering, you would very likely, at this point, have Summit County with their own representative.”Alas, here we are, Monahan said, so as representative she will work to elevate the voices of all the communities of District 59, ensuring that policies work as best as possible for all groups. An important component to that is flexibility at the state level, she said.“For most of the communities, affordable housing is an issue, but how we solve it needs to be tailored to those communities in the way that they want to solve it. Park City has a different idea than Midway has, probably, as does Heber,” she said.Responsible growth is one of her pillars, which is intricately tied in with her strong stance for preservation.“I talk about preservation and conserving our natural beauty so we protect what we have,” she said. “There might be some differences in how, but I think overall, people agree that we should preserve, because that’s what drew people here, or the people that were born here, that’s what they love, and that’s what is impossible to replace if we lose it.”As with the Heber Valley Corridor or bypass project, Monahan said she’d be most against the road cutting through the North Fields, part of the beloved landscape. And on that topic, a headache of back-and-forth indecision between the city and Utah Department of Transportation is a classic example of not thinking ahead.“We’re just always behind the problem. So how do we get ahead of the problem? It’s got to be better planning overall,” she said. “I think sometimes we have it kind of backwards. We’re building all this stuff, but we don’t know how they’re going to get from here to there.”Her goal as representative would be to account for projections as much as possible to work proactively on issues for the community, especially as developments like Deer Valley Resort East Village and the return of the Winter Olympics in 2034 will continue to bring more people to the Wasatch Back. Monahan also said that environmental issues, especially in protecting the Great Salt Lake, are paramount in her campaign. While academic literature differs on whether Utah is the second-, third- or fourth-driest state in the county, the fact remains that water is a major concern.“95% of our water comes from snowpack. And that snowpack is threatened by climate change. And also as as the climate warms, we’re also going to see more evaporation, and we’re going to be even drier,” Monahan said. “I think that we have to conserve on all aspects, whether it’s residential, agricultural, industrial. … When we think about water and how we’re going to conserve, everything has to be on the table.”She said alfalfa crops are a major concern, as it uses a disproportionate amount of the state’s water, but that she also hopes to find solutions on common ground for all District 59 constituents.“I love this state. I came here in 1979, and I want to see us make decisions that are going to position us well for the future — not just for my generation, but for generations to come,” she said.Monahan encouraged her constituents to make sure to vote for the state legislators when filling out ballots this election season. “As a legislator, we have a lot of impact on the quality of their lives. So it’s just as important as the top of the ticket. You’ve got to look at who’s going to represent you,” she said.Learn more about Monahan on her website, julie4utah.com.The post Democratic candidate for Utah House District 59 gives voters a choice appeared first on Park Record.