A stalwart Republican from Park Meadows is seeking the GOP nomination in the special election planned later this year in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, unexpectedly adding a local aspect to a contest in a district that covers a wide swath of the state but does not reach anywhere close to Park City.

Bruce Hough has long been one of the leading Republican figures in Park City and surrounding Summit County, and has held leadership posts in the state and national parties. He is pursuing two routes to the nomination by compiling signatures in an effort to ensure his name is on a primary ballot and competing in the upcoming state Republican convention.

Hough is a former chair of the state Republican Party, serving in that role in the 1990s, and was a Republican National Committeeman for years. Hough in the committeeman role attended a series of the party’s nominating conventions as a voting delegate. He resigned as a national committeeman as he started the congressional bid. He was also a member of the city council in South Jordan decades ago.

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Hough said the U.S. is “exceptional” as he pointed to the nation’s founding documents.

“Opportunity still abounds,” he said about the country.

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Hough, though, worries about the dependence on foreign energy sources, said the federal debt is unsustainable and described the federal deficit as “out of control.”

“We have to slow the ship of government way down,” he said.

If he is elected as a member of Congress, Hough said, he would draft legislation to prohibit regulatory agencies from spending monies above a certain level unless appropriated by Congress. Hough said Congress has abrogated its responsibility in that regard.

Had he been a member of Congress during the recent standoff about the debt ceiling, Hough said, he would have supported the agreement reached between congressional Republicans and President Biden. Hough argued the Republicans, led by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, brought the president to the negotiating table as the agreement was reached.

“Politics is a game of inches,” he said.

Hough also supports a range of Republican principles such as securing the nation’s borders, energy independence, the defense of the Second Amendment’s protections of gun rights and a strong military. He said the U.S. must be “prepared on the China front” and it is a “very dangerous world out there.”

Summit County is split between the 1st Congressional District and the 3rd Congressional District. The 2nd Congressional District that Hough wants to win covers a large tract of Utah, including lengthy portions of the state’s western and southern borders and the stretch of the Interstate 15 corridor in the south. It also includes parts of Salt Lake City and the west side of the Salt Lake Valley.

The Park City area has produced three major-party congressional nominees in the last 11 years, each of them Democrats. They were all routed in heavily Republican districts.