Restoring Trust
Delivering Justice

The DA decides which criminal cases get filed, which get declined, and how open cases are resolved. The office reviewed roughly 23,000 referrals in 2024. It also serves as legal counsel to Salt Lake County government. This is not a legislative job. There are no bills to introduce and no floor votes to cast. It is an executive job running a professional office of more than 100 prosecutors, and the work is management, judgment, and follow-through.

He has been both, and that is a strength. A District Attorney who has only ever charged cases has seen one side of the file. Kent's experience as a public defender and prosecutor informs a fair, practical approach to justice.

The state audit found vague admission criteria, no tracking of whether program graduates receive new charges, and that staff prevented auditors from attending program-admission meetings for months. The audit also found requested participant data was ultimately not provided. Kent will define admission criteria around public safety and the drivers of criminal activity, track outcomes, and publish the results.

Because the District Attorney has no legislative agenda: there are no bills to introduce and no floor votes to cast. The job is running an office well. The campaign asks voters to vote for the job, not the label.

Because I saw a problem and I know how to fix it. I did not go looking for this race. I watched the news coverage and read the December 2025 legislative audits of the office where I used to work, and I recognized the problems. I know this office from the inside. I know what it should look like. I was not willing to accept that nothing could be done.

Kent served as a Salt Lake County Deputy District Attorney from 2017 to 2021, from general felonies through domestic violence to special victims and murders, and built the office's first cybercrime prosecution unit. He has also served as a public defender, clerked for a federal judge, and worked at the U.S. Department of Justice through the Attorney General's Honors Program. He is an Army combat veteran with two Iraq deployments and is now Corporate Counsel and Director of Cybersecurity at Woodbury Corporation.

Report 2025-31, released in December 2025 by the Office of the Legislative Auditor General, found that the screening division lacked accessible written policies guiding charging decisions; the office did not use performance measures to evaluate effectiveness; and approximately 48 percent of a randomly selected 50-case sample of felony declinations lacked detailed reasoning. The full public report is available from the Utah Legislative Auditor General.

Kent will implement written filing policies, document reasons for declinations and plea agreements, publish performance metrics, establish clear admission criteria for alternatives to incarceration, track outcomes, and cooperate fully with oversight bodies. These are practical management changes grounded in the state audit's recommendations.

The central issue is effectiveness and consistency. A charge without supporting evidence is a wasted case; a declined case without a documented reason is a decision that cannot be reviewed. The audit found some prosecutors carrying over 400 general felony cases at a time—more than double the load reported in some other Utah counties. Kent's approach is clear standards, disciplined case management, and public accountability.

The same way I would handle any other case, under a written standard set in advance and applied the same way every time. I have worked alongside law enforcement as a prosecutor and against the state as a defense attorney. Both experiences taught me the same thing: the credibility of an outcome depends on whether the process was decided before anyone knew who the defendant was. I will publish the protocol for officer-involved cases. Neither officers nor families should have to guess how the decision gets made.

Ballots mail to Salt Lake County voters in mid October, and Election Day is November 3, 2026. Confirm your registration and your mailing address with the Salt Lake County Clerk. If you want to do more, you can volunteer, contribute, request a yard sign, or take three minutes to send this page to someone who has never thought about the DA race. County contribution limits apply and all filings are public.