​Longtime Sen. Dan Thatcher is leaving the Utah GOP and is joining a third party to “break the deadlock” in politics.  Read More  Breaking News

Utah Sen. Daniel Thatcher is leaving the Republican Party, frustrated with the change in tone and tactics he has seen since he first entered the Senate in 2011.

The West Valley City Republican, frequently a thorn in the side of GOP leaders, said he is done with the party and is joining the Utah Forward Party, making him the first third-party lawmaker in the Legislature since then-Sen. Mark Madsen left the GOP to become a Libertarian in 2016 in the last few months of his tenure.

“The fact of the matter is, only the two major parties are going to win,” Thatcher said in an interview, “and I think the only way to break the deadlock is to have a force that is neither.”

Thatcher said he’s grown increasingly frustrated with the Republican’s unwillingness to listen to constituents and bills that limit individual freedoms.”

“We used to reason together. We used to listen to the people who would be impacted by our bills and try to find a way to solve policy problems without creating bigger problems and we just don’t do that anymore,” Thatcher said in an interview. “The respect is gone. The human dignity is gone.”

There was not one single tipping point, Thatcher told The Salt Lake Tribune, but the culmination of recent legislation targeting ballot initiatives, public employee unions, LGBTQ Utahns and immigration.

“There is a growing disconnect between the public we are supposed to represent and your representatives,” he said. “You’re not imagining it. We’re not listening to you.”

Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said it is good for the Senate to have “different ideas.”

“That’s obviously his decision. Wish him well and hope he does well,” Adams said.

Thatcher had decided to switch parties Thursday afternoon. But about an hour before making his decision public, Thatcher and Adams clashed on the Senate floor when Adams refused to recognize Thatcher so he could explain his vote on a bill after Thatcher referred to another senator by name.

“Senator Thatcher, I’m not going to recognize you. You can go ahead and vote,” Adams said.

Thatcher persisted, saying he wanted to speak, and Adams cut him off: “Senator, we’re not going to allow another senator to be called out on the Senate floor. We talk about decorum. You used another senator’s name and went after him. I’m not going to recognize you, so you can either vote or you can sit down.”

This kind of party hopping is rare, but not unprecedented.

Before Madsen left the GOP in 2016, Eric Hutchings, appointed in 2001 to fill a Democratic House seat in Kearns, joined the Republican Party after the legislative session less than a year later. He served in the House until he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Ashlee Matthews.

And after losing her bid for reelection as a Democrat in 2012, Rep. Christine Watkins of Price changed parties, and, in the 2016 election, defeated Democratic incumbent Rep. Brad King.

Thatcher has a reputation as a renegade Republican, frequently breaking with the party on big votes.

Last August, Thatcher was one of two Republicans who voted against amending the Utah Constitution to let legislators repeal citizen-passed ballot initiatives, saying it would “give us the biggest black eye we could have as a Legislature.”

This week, he broke with Republicans and voted against bills that would facilitate the deportation of legal migrants who commit misdemeanors and another banning pride flags from government property, which Thatcher said defies traditional GOP principles of local control.

“One would presume that the elected officials in Salt Lake City have a pulse on what their people want,” he said. “But rather than allow them to represent themselves and their desires as a unique community, we have to come in as the state and say, ‘By God, we believe in liberty so much that you can’tliberty unless we tell you to.’”

Another bill he said that fed his frustration this year was a law banning cities and counties from collective bargaining with police, firefighter and teacher unions. Public labor groups have since announced that they plan to run a referendum to let voters decide in November 2026 whether the anti-union bill should be repealed.

“I have never seen such absolute contempt for the people that make Utah go as I saw on that bill,” Thatcher said. “And, frankly, the public should rise up and should overthrow that.”

Thatcher has frequently challenged the Republican leadership in the Senate.

In 2022, he argued against a bill that banned transgender girls from competing in high school sports — a law that has been blocked by the courts from taking effect.

In 2019, he voted against a major tax overhaul that would have slashed income taxes and raised the sales tax on food. His no vote left the bill one vote shy of a margin that would have prevented a referendum.

That enabled opponents of the tax plan to gather signatures. When they gathered enough signatures to put a repeal of the tax package on the ballot, Republican leaders relented and repealed the entire package.

Last year, Thatcher ran unsuccessfully for the Salt Lake County Council, narrowly losing the Republican primary.

A month before the start of the session, Thatcher lost his chairmanship of a committee that oversees election issues, as well as being reassigned to a new office and assigned to a seat on the floor among the Senate Democrats.

Ultimately, Thatcher said, it became too much. “I can’t be part of this anymore,” he said Friday.