Castle Country Radio was joined by Democratic Utah Attorney General Candidate Rudy Bautista to discuss his legal experience, plans for the office and what sets him apart from other AG candidates.
Our first question for Bautista was what inspired him to run for office? He replied,” All my life I’ve been in public service. I graduated from the United States Marine Academy and served as an officer in the military.” He continued,” And over the last 15 years, I’ve just seen nonstop scandals, allegations, and more importantly the legislature ignoring what the voters want. I believe that the Attorney General has the power to stand up and not just be a puppet for the legislature, the governor and special interest groups, but to make a difference and uphold what the people want. And with that in mind, I decided to leave my private practice as a defense attorney, which has been very lucrative, and willing to help make the state better than it always has been.”
Bautista has 25 years of experience in the legal field as a defense attorney. We asked him how this experience set him apart from the other Attorney General candidates,” Other than Andy McCullough, most of the other candidates have been what we call litigators … And all of them have either been advisers or representatives of companies. I have represented individuals. I have been at the forefront of what is going on in people’s lives. I’m familiar with the struggles that people have, as my clientele has always been people and never companies. And as such, my loyalty is to people, not companies.”
Bautista also mentioned that he had received endorsements from other attorneys, prosecutors, police officers and clients.
Another aspect of Bautista’s campaign is his signing of the American Tort Reform Association’s Attorney General Transparency Code. We asked him to explain why he signed this pledge and why this is something that matters to his constituents. “ One of the things that they have is they want to make sure that the way the Attorney General’s office works is transparent and open to the public. And one of the things the pledge does is, unfortunately, there are times where a state might hire an outside law firm … And what happens is, the Attorney General, whoever the Attorney General is, pretty much gets to pick that law firm. And it’s not public, there’s no bidding system, there’s no way of having transparency.”
Because of this, Bautista vowed that if elected, he would make the process public and implement a bid system as seen across other bodies of government. “ I pledge that it will be done on a bid-basis, and it’s a public bid. So we would submit to the state system saying, hey, we need someone qualified to present your qualifications and projected costs on this lawsuit.
And I believe that first preference should be given to a Utah law firm. I don’t understand why our taxpayers’ dollars are going out of state. But the idea being there is so that way there’s checks and balances.”
Moving on, Bautista explained how he planned to uphold the constitutional rights of Utahns,” My entire legal career, I have been standing up to protect our constitutional rights. One of the things that we see in criminal law all the time is our courts in the last 50 years have been slowly breaking away from the traditions and taking our constitutional rights.” He continued,” And most people don’t think about them until it’s too late. And so I’ve already had a history of fighting them and protecting them.”
Closing out our conversation, Bautista explained why he thinks the people should vote for him as their next Attorney General. “Because I have a history of serving not only this country but the people of this state. And I have proved myself to stand up to oppression and I stand up for clients. And as attorney general, my client would be the people of this state. One of the things I want to institute is an office within the attorney general’s office whose sole responsibility is to get a heartbeat of the public and what they want … What I want to do is clean up the image of the state and make sure that our rights are upheld for all of us. And not let just a few people in the legislature who’s dominated by one political party dictate the course for all of our citizens.”
To learn more about Bautista and his campaign, you can visit his website rudy4ag.com.