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This image shows the proposed new Utah flag on top and the existing flag on the bottom.

Courtesy Utah Department of Cultural and Community Engagement

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Chad Saunders, left, and Fred Cox pose at the Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office in Salt Lake City on Monday, March 6, 2023. That's when they filed paperwork seeking permission to petition for a referendum on Senate Bill 31, which creates a new state flag.

Courtesy Fred Cox

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The foes of Utah’s proposed new state flag are moving forward with efforts to keep it from ever getting up a flagpole.

Chad Saunders of Stansbury Park and Fred Cox, who helped spearhead a campaign in 2019 to repeal a controversial tax reform package, have filed paperwork with the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office seeking permission to petition for a referendum on Senate Bill 31, the flag bill.

“We anticipate there will be quite a bit of support,” said Cox, a former member of the Utah House from West Valley City.

Saunders said the effort stems from what he senses is the strong opposition to the flag and the short shrift he thinks state officials gave to skeptics of going with the new flag. “I think people feel they are not being heard and this is their line in the sand,” he said.

Members of the Weber County Republican Party were so motivated that the organization’s Central Committee voted overwhelmingly late last month to call for opposition to S.B. 31 ahead of the Utah House vote on the measure. What’s more, Saunders said two of the eight sponsors of the application to petition for a referendum come from Weber County — Robert McEntee and James Owens.

S.B. 31, still to be signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox, would establish a tricolor banner with a beehive in the middle and a mountain silhouette as the state’s new flag. The existing flag, dark blue with the state seal in the middle, would fall to secondary status, becoming Utah’s “historical state flag.”

While not a life-or-death matter, the flag debate generated strong passions. The Utah House approved S.B. 31 in an unusually close 40-35 vote while the Utah Senate approved it by a 19-9 margin.

After filing of the paperwork on Monday, the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office will review it to make sure it complies with state law. If the flag foes get the green light, they would then be able to seek signatures on petitions to put the question of repealing S.B. 31 to voters, probably on the Nov. 7 ballot later this year, Saunders thinks.

To get the issue on the ballot, Saunders, Cox and the others involved would need to gather around 137,000 signatures from registered voters around the state, 8% of active voters as of Jan. 1. Presuming they reach that threshold — also meeting guidelines on numbers from individual Utah Senate districts — voters would be asked on the November ballot question whether S.B. 31, establishing the new flag, shall remain in effect or be repealed.

Saunders said he and his cohorts would likely collect signatures at the varied county party organizing gatherings to be held in coming weeks. The Lieutenant Governor’s Office said in a statement that they’d have 40 days to gather signatures starting from March 3, the end of the legislative session, which would give them until April 12.

In 2019, Cox helped lead efforts to petition for a recall vote on a series of tax reform measures Utah lawmakers approved late that year. The effort yielded more than enough signatures, Cox said, but lawmakers repealed the unpopular changes, precluding the need for a referendum vote.

Cox has questions with the process followed in coming up with the new flag design. In surveying public sentiment on possible replacements, he said, those who managed the effort never put the new nominees up against the existing flag, among other shortcomings.

Beyond that, Cox likes the current flag.

“There’s a lot of tradition and symbolism in our current flag and to a large extent, that goes away with what is proposed,” he said. He noted the two U.S. flag representations on the current state flag, indicative of support for the U.S. government, and the representations of sego lilies, symbolic of peace and survival.

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