Republican women say they experienced a toxic environment in the Salt Lake County GOP
Gov. Spencer Cox condemns County GOP Chairman Scott Miller’s emailed criticism of the women coming forward with allegations.
(Steve Griffin | Tribune file photo) David Robinson, then a Republican candidate for Salt Lake County mayor, talks with the Salt Lake Tribune editorial board in 2017. Robinson, now an unofficial communication director for the county Republican Party, is accused by more than a half dozen women of harassment, name-calling, body shaming and other inappropriate behavior.
By Leia Larsen
| March 27, 2021, 6:50 p.m.
| Updated: March 28, 2021, 4:13 p.m.
[Update: Salt Lake County GOP chairman resigns amid criticism]
A few weeks before the 2020 election, Salt Lake County Council candidate Laurie Stringham created a campaign video for donors.
Stringham was proud of the minute-long production, made with her shoestring budget, she said. It poked fun at what she viewed as the county’s excessive spending, with a slap at the opposing party.
“Support Laurie Stringham for Salt Lake County Council, so when Mayor [Jenny] Wilson says ‘more, more, more,’ we can say ‘no, no, no,’” Stringham says in the recording.
Hours after the video went out on Sept. 15, Stringham said, she was driving her teenage son to a meet a friend when she got a call from Dave Robinson, the county Republican Party’s unofficial communication director.
“You sound like you’re having an orgasm!” Stringham said he yelled at her over her car’s speakerphone. She said he repeated her “more, more, more” catchphrase with obscene grunting sounds.
“He tells me if I want to ‘wh--- myself out,’ that is my choice,” Stringham said.
But what rattled Stringham most, she said, were the threats she said Robinson made.
“‘I will make sure you never get elected! I will ruin you! And I will make sure the party never works with you! Get your sh-- together!’” Stringham recounted Robinson saying. “Then he hung up on me. The call lasted just over two minutes, but scared the hell out of me.”
Stringham’s story is just one example of a toxic, bullying culture that existed over the past campaign season for the county’s Republican women, according to interviews with several high-ranking members of the party as well as dozens of emails and text messages from the past six months that were shared with The Salt Lake Tribune.
The women said they experienced body-shaming and scrutiny of their appearance by Robinson, who is gay. He called men and women, but mostly women, degrading nicknames, they said, and refused to stop when asked. Some women said he withheld important campaign resources unless they wrote opinion pieces about his pet issues.
“He uses demeaning, derogatory and sexual terms for females, period. But he also does it for men, too. It’s just that he, in my experience, is more aggressive toward women,” said Erin Preston, a former candidate for county recorder. “Some of his comments get pretty graphic and potentially damaging to good people, both men and women.”
Women interviewed for this story said they raised their concerns with party leadership, including Salt Lake County Republican Party Chair Scott Miller. But they said as far as they know, nothing was done.
“It doesn’t feel like anyone in leadership acknowledges how hard it hits,” Preston said. “When I go to county officials and say, ‘This is what he’s saying, I’m not comfortable,’ the standard response is ‘Oh, that’s just Dave.’”
Miller was dismissive about the allegations in an interview with The Tribune. “So apparently you’re interested in the internal squabbling of our party,” Miller said. “It’s squabbling — that’s what it is.”
Miller is now running for the state Republican chair in the wake of current chair Derek Brown’s recent announcement that he would not seek a second term. The Tribune questioned him and Robinson in a 2½-hour interview on Thursday.
In response, Miller sent out a scathing rebuke on the county party’s official email late Friday naming all of the women coming forward and questioning the true motivation behind what he described as “these salacious accusations.”
“Are these persons and possibly their special interest backers attempting to embarrass and cancel me and our volunteers,” Miller asked in part. “Are most of the accusers sore losers who failed to win their respective races? Is this an attempt to disrupt my efforts to become the Utah GOP Chairman?”
And suggesting it was a case of cancel culture run amok, Miller wrote, “I will not be CANCELLED.”
The email drew intense backlash on Saturday. Gov. Spencer Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson issued a news release condemning the county party email.
“We are deeply offended by the recent reprehensible communications to Salt Lake County delegates. Let us be clear: This type of behavior should never happen and when it does we will not tolerate it, ignore it, or explain it away. It is unacceptable. The Republican Party needs women in our policymaking and discussions. Sincere apologies are owed to the women who have been victimized and we admire their courage and strength in coming forward. That is not an easy thing to do.”
Salt Lake County Republican representatives issued a statement calling for Miller’s resignation.
“The allegations from multiple women should have been taken seriously and handled swiftly,” reads the statement. “The County Party Chair did the opposite. In addition, he maligned each of these women in an email to Republicans throughout the state and county. Such behavior by the County Party Chair is absolutely unacceptable, and he should resign.”
The statement says its 15 signees are grateful to the women who came forward and shared their experiences.
Brown, the state GOP chairman, also issued a news release calling the allegations “appalling.”
He said the email Miller sent out to Republicans “read as an attempt to shield both he and Robinson from forthcoming allegations of bullying, intimidation, and harassment that they knew would soon be made public” in the Tribune article published Saturday afternoon.
“Ironically, his statement proceeded to bully, intimidate, and harass individual women, by name, not only substantiating their allegations, but perhaps providing a public example of what they may have experienced privately.”
Brown called on the county party’s executive committee “to immediately meet and address these allegations in a way that ensures this never happens again.”
Earlier on Saturday afternoon, Miller sent out another county party email with a starkly different tone and message than the previous one.
“I applaud these women for coming forward and I have encouraged any accusers to come forward. I take these allegations seriously. I want to be very clear, I do not and will not tolerate sexual harassment, sexual assault, etc.”
He said he is proposing a new harassment policy for the county party be enacted immediately to provide a clear path for an investigation, protection of those bringing forward allegations and a fair process for resolution.
Coming forward
The current chorus of allegations against Robinson and Miller’s defense of him had their roots in that September phone call from Robinson to Stringham that left her rattled.
She called Miller after Robinson hung up, she said. “I started sobbing into the phone and asked Scott if he was really not going to work with me anymore,” Stringham said. She said Miller assured her Robinson didn’t have the kind of power he threatened.
“He then explained that Dave gets like this sometimes. It is just how Dave is,” she said.
Miller told her she needed “to have thick skin when it comes to these things,” she said. “Sure what he said was inappropriate,” Stringham recalled Miller saying, “but you will need to continue working with Dave if you want to win your race.”
In an interview, Miller confirmed that Stringham told him Robinson called her a wh---, but denied hearing about threats. He said because Stringham continued working with him on the campaign, he considered the matter resolved.
Robinson said he was quoting criticisms other people had shared with him about the video when he called Stringham.
“I said the only way — what was it? — something about the only way that’s a good sound is from a wh--- on State Street, something like that,” he said in an interview.
He said he also complained about the grammar and the writing in an email accompanying the video, telling Stringham it “looked like it was written by a fourth grader.”
Three other Republican women confirmed Stringham shared her story with them soon after the call. One was Abby Evans, who previously volunteered and worked for Stringham’s campaign, and now serves as her policy adviser on the County Council.
“She immediately drove to my house” after the calls with Robinson and Miller, Evans said. “She was shaking, she was upset, she was visibly distraught.”
Name-calling and body-shaming
Like Stringham, Preston, the former Republican candidate for recorder, is a single mom who was grateful to have the support of the county party in her campaign, at least at first, she said. But she soon became suspicious of Robinson’s motives.
“The first time we met to go over my campaign, he walks up and says ‘nice t--s, nice a--, are those new?’” Preston recalled. She said she also personally heard Robinson call women in the party “slut,” “fatty” and “sloppy seconds.”
Preston said she is accustomed to crude language in her job as an attorney and initially tried to ignore Robinson’s remarks.
“But the treatment that came after,” she said, “I certainly felt was demeaning and abusive at some points.”
Robinson discouraged Preston from reaching out to her own contacts in local media, text messages shared with The Tribune show, often using disparaging nicknames for reporters and columnists, most of them women.
He helped Preston set up a campaign website, but would not provide her access, which Miller and Robinson confirmed. In August, she emailed Robinson and asked him to remove language that mocked her opponent’s appearance and claimed that “there are some who view her as a ‘Barbie doll,’” Preston said.
Preston said Robinson was “trying to control the message” of her campaign. He wrote opinion pieces in her name about gay discrimination from homeowners’ associations, which she refused to have published, she said. Preston learned Robinson had attached himself to an HOA lawsuit where, in a counterclaim, he alleged he was personally being harassed for being gay. A judge dismissed the claim earlier this month.
“He kept trying to push his homeowner’s association case into any press message about my campaign — always without my permission,” Preston said.
He also pushed Preston to focus on issues involving Big and Little Cottonwood canyons as part of her campaign, she said, but she didn’t see a connection to the recorder’s office that she felt would be worthwhile.
Robinson previously worked as a consultant for landowners there. “It seemed like he had a personal stake, but we never knew. None of us really know what he does for work,” Preston said. “Everything he does is cloaked in secrecy.”
Robinson’s role at the Salt Lake County Republican Party is unpaid.
Preston shared numerous emails and text messages she said she sent to party leadership in September and October outlining her concerns.
“I need Dave Robinson away from my campaign and out of my life,” she texted vice chair Scott Rosenbush on Sept. 24.
On Oct. 2, she texted the chair and vice chair that she had received no help from Robinson but “constant criticism ... and a whole lot of toxic conversations that have wasted my time and emotional energy.”
She added that even after firing Robinson, she still had no control over her campaign website, leading her to fear retaliation.
Rosenbush occasionally replied with advice, text messages shared with The Tribune show, but Robinson’s harassing behavior continued, Preston said, even after she told him to stop contacting her. She said she never received a response from Miller.
Miller told The Tribune he reviewed Preston’s claims and decided there was nothing to pursue. “Every email that we read that was submitted to us is what goes on in a normal campaign,” he said.
Robinson agreed to stop contacting Preston for the rest of her campaign, Miller added, so he assumed there was no further issue.
Asked whether he made inappropriate comments about women’s bodies, Robinson said he criticizes his own appearance in disparaging ways. He also brought up his family background in ranching.
“Keep in mind, I come from a very, very, very high level of judging horses and livestock and being very critical. OK, I have a critical eye,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that I’m degrading an individual.”
Gov. Spencer Cox condemns County GOP Chairman Scott Miller’s emailed criticism of the women coming forward with allegations.
(Steve Griffin | Tribune file photo) David Robinson, then a Republican candidate for Salt Lake County mayor, talks with the Salt Lake Tribune editorial board in 2017. Robinson, now an unofficial communication director for the county Republican Party, is accused by more than a half dozen women of harassment, name-calling, body shaming and other inappropriate behavior.
By Leia Larsen
| March 27, 2021, 6:50 p.m.
| Updated: March 28, 2021, 4:13 p.m.
[Update: Salt Lake County GOP chairman resigns amid criticism]
A few weeks before the 2020 election, Salt Lake County Council candidate Laurie Stringham created a campaign video for donors.
Stringham was proud of the minute-long production, made with her shoestring budget, she said. It poked fun at what she viewed as the county’s excessive spending, with a slap at the opposing party.
“Support Laurie Stringham for Salt Lake County Council, so when Mayor [Jenny] Wilson says ‘more, more, more,’ we can say ‘no, no, no,’” Stringham says in the recording.
Hours after the video went out on Sept. 15, Stringham said, she was driving her teenage son to a meet a friend when she got a call from Dave Robinson, the county Republican Party’s unofficial communication director.
“You sound like you’re having an orgasm!” Stringham said he yelled at her over her car’s speakerphone. She said he repeated her “more, more, more” catchphrase with obscene grunting sounds.
“He tells me if I want to ‘wh--- myself out,’ that is my choice,” Stringham said.
But what rattled Stringham most, she said, were the threats she said Robinson made.
“‘I will make sure you never get elected! I will ruin you! And I will make sure the party never works with you! Get your sh-- together!’” Stringham recounted Robinson saying. “Then he hung up on me. The call lasted just over two minutes, but scared the hell out of me.”
Stringham’s story is just one example of a toxic, bullying culture that existed over the past campaign season for the county’s Republican women, according to interviews with several high-ranking members of the party as well as dozens of emails and text messages from the past six months that were shared with The Salt Lake Tribune.
The women said they experienced body-shaming and scrutiny of their appearance by Robinson, who is gay. He called men and women, but mostly women, degrading nicknames, they said, and refused to stop when asked. Some women said he withheld important campaign resources unless they wrote opinion pieces about his pet issues.
“He uses demeaning, derogatory and sexual terms for females, period. But he also does it for men, too. It’s just that he, in my experience, is more aggressive toward women,” said Erin Preston, a former candidate for county recorder. “Some of his comments get pretty graphic and potentially damaging to good people, both men and women.”
Women interviewed for this story said they raised their concerns with party leadership, including Salt Lake County Republican Party Chair Scott Miller. But they said as far as they know, nothing was done.
“It doesn’t feel like anyone in leadership acknowledges how hard it hits,” Preston said. “When I go to county officials and say, ‘This is what he’s saying, I’m not comfortable,’ the standard response is ‘Oh, that’s just Dave.’”
Miller was dismissive about the allegations in an interview with The Tribune. “So apparently you’re interested in the internal squabbling of our party,” Miller said. “It’s squabbling — that’s what it is.”
Miller is now running for the state Republican chair in the wake of current chair Derek Brown’s recent announcement that he would not seek a second term. The Tribune questioned him and Robinson in a 2½-hour interview on Thursday.
In response, Miller sent out a scathing rebuke on the county party’s official email late Friday naming all of the women coming forward and questioning the true motivation behind what he described as “these salacious accusations.”
“Are these persons and possibly their special interest backers attempting to embarrass and cancel me and our volunteers,” Miller asked in part. “Are most of the accusers sore losers who failed to win their respective races? Is this an attempt to disrupt my efforts to become the Utah GOP Chairman?”
And suggesting it was a case of cancel culture run amok, Miller wrote, “I will not be CANCELLED.”
The email drew intense backlash on Saturday. Gov. Spencer Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson issued a news release condemning the county party email.
“We are deeply offended by the recent reprehensible communications to Salt Lake County delegates. Let us be clear: This type of behavior should never happen and when it does we will not tolerate it, ignore it, or explain it away. It is unacceptable. The Republican Party needs women in our policymaking and discussions. Sincere apologies are owed to the women who have been victimized and we admire their courage and strength in coming forward. That is not an easy thing to do.”
Salt Lake County Republican representatives issued a statement calling for Miller’s resignation.
“The allegations from multiple women should have been taken seriously and handled swiftly,” reads the statement. “The County Party Chair did the opposite. In addition, he maligned each of these women in an email to Republicans throughout the state and county. Such behavior by the County Party Chair is absolutely unacceptable, and he should resign.”
The statement says its 15 signees are grateful to the women who came forward and shared their experiences.
Brown, the state GOP chairman, also issued a news release calling the allegations “appalling.”
He said the email Miller sent out to Republicans “read as an attempt to shield both he and Robinson from forthcoming allegations of bullying, intimidation, and harassment that they knew would soon be made public” in the Tribune article published Saturday afternoon.
“Ironically, his statement proceeded to bully, intimidate, and harass individual women, by name, not only substantiating their allegations, but perhaps providing a public example of what they may have experienced privately.”
Brown called on the county party’s executive committee “to immediately meet and address these allegations in a way that ensures this never happens again.”
Earlier on Saturday afternoon, Miller sent out another county party email with a starkly different tone and message than the previous one.
“I applaud these women for coming forward and I have encouraged any accusers to come forward. I take these allegations seriously. I want to be very clear, I do not and will not tolerate sexual harassment, sexual assault, etc.”
He said he is proposing a new harassment policy for the county party be enacted immediately to provide a clear path for an investigation, protection of those bringing forward allegations and a fair process for resolution.
Coming forward
The current chorus of allegations against Robinson and Miller’s defense of him had their roots in that September phone call from Robinson to Stringham that left her rattled.
She called Miller after Robinson hung up, she said. “I started sobbing into the phone and asked Scott if he was really not going to work with me anymore,” Stringham said. She said Miller assured her Robinson didn’t have the kind of power he threatened.
“He then explained that Dave gets like this sometimes. It is just how Dave is,” she said.
Miller told her she needed “to have thick skin when it comes to these things,” she said. “Sure what he said was inappropriate,” Stringham recalled Miller saying, “but you will need to continue working with Dave if you want to win your race.”
In an interview, Miller confirmed that Stringham told him Robinson called her a wh---, but denied hearing about threats. He said because Stringham continued working with him on the campaign, he considered the matter resolved.
Robinson said he was quoting criticisms other people had shared with him about the video when he called Stringham.
“I said the only way — what was it? — something about the only way that’s a good sound is from a wh--- on State Street, something like that,” he said in an interview.
He said he also complained about the grammar and the writing in an email accompanying the video, telling Stringham it “looked like it was written by a fourth grader.”
Three other Republican women confirmed Stringham shared her story with them soon after the call. One was Abby Evans, who previously volunteered and worked for Stringham’s campaign, and now serves as her policy adviser on the County Council.
“She immediately drove to my house” after the calls with Robinson and Miller, Evans said. “She was shaking, she was upset, she was visibly distraught.”
Name-calling and body-shaming
Like Stringham, Preston, the former Republican candidate for recorder, is a single mom who was grateful to have the support of the county party in her campaign, at least at first, she said. But she soon became suspicious of Robinson’s motives.
“The first time we met to go over my campaign, he walks up and says ‘nice t--s, nice a--, are those new?’” Preston recalled. She said she also personally heard Robinson call women in the party “slut,” “fatty” and “sloppy seconds.”
Preston said she is accustomed to crude language in her job as an attorney and initially tried to ignore Robinson’s remarks.
“But the treatment that came after,” she said, “I certainly felt was demeaning and abusive at some points.”
Robinson discouraged Preston from reaching out to her own contacts in local media, text messages shared with The Tribune show, often using disparaging nicknames for reporters and columnists, most of them women.
He helped Preston set up a campaign website, but would not provide her access, which Miller and Robinson confirmed. In August, she emailed Robinson and asked him to remove language that mocked her opponent’s appearance and claimed that “there are some who view her as a ‘Barbie doll,’” Preston said.
Preston said Robinson was “trying to control the message” of her campaign. He wrote opinion pieces in her name about gay discrimination from homeowners’ associations, which she refused to have published, she said. Preston learned Robinson had attached himself to an HOA lawsuit where, in a counterclaim, he alleged he was personally being harassed for being gay. A judge dismissed the claim earlier this month.
“He kept trying to push his homeowner’s association case into any press message about my campaign — always without my permission,” Preston said.
He also pushed Preston to focus on issues involving Big and Little Cottonwood canyons as part of her campaign, she said, but she didn’t see a connection to the recorder’s office that she felt would be worthwhile.
Robinson previously worked as a consultant for landowners there. “It seemed like he had a personal stake, but we never knew. None of us really know what he does for work,” Preston said. “Everything he does is cloaked in secrecy.”
Robinson’s role at the Salt Lake County Republican Party is unpaid.
Preston shared numerous emails and text messages she said she sent to party leadership in September and October outlining her concerns.
“I need Dave Robinson away from my campaign and out of my life,” she texted vice chair Scott Rosenbush on Sept. 24.
On Oct. 2, she texted the chair and vice chair that she had received no help from Robinson but “constant criticism ... and a whole lot of toxic conversations that have wasted my time and emotional energy.”
She added that even after firing Robinson, she still had no control over her campaign website, leading her to fear retaliation.
Rosenbush occasionally replied with advice, text messages shared with The Tribune show, but Robinson’s harassing behavior continued, Preston said, even after she told him to stop contacting her. She said she never received a response from Miller.
Miller told The Tribune he reviewed Preston’s claims and decided there was nothing to pursue. “Every email that we read that was submitted to us is what goes on in a normal campaign,” he said.
Robinson agreed to stop contacting Preston for the rest of her campaign, Miller added, so he assumed there was no further issue.
Asked whether he made inappropriate comments about women’s bodies, Robinson said he criticizes his own appearance in disparaging ways. He also brought up his family background in ranching.
“Keep in mind, I come from a very, very, very high level of judging horses and livestock and being very critical. OK, I have a critical eye,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that I’m degrading an individual.”