Kathleen Riebe
For U.S. House Utah District 2
Kathleen is a candidate running as the Democratic Party nominee for U.S. House Utah District 2. The Democratic party advanced from the special Democratic convention on June 28, 2023 and there will not be a primary election for the Democrats for this seat.
Meet Kathleen
According to her website…
Kathleen has worked in Utah public schools for over twenty years, and is a working mother proud to raise her family in our great state. Kathleen grew up in a family steeped in the values and daily mechanisms of public service, with many law enforcement officers and firefighters. She followed her grandfather, dad, and brother – who served her community in police uniform – into public service and became a teacher. Kathleen stepped in front of a class for the first time on September 11, 2001. Thinking of the first responder friends and family in active service that day, the arc of her teaching career was formed in those moments, and commitment to her calling strengthened.
As her teaching career progressed, Kathleen’s experience as an educator focused her attention on issues children and the broader communities around her school were facing. Job losses, economic insecurity, difficulty accessing and affording health care, divisive culture wars, government overreach – everything is magnified and put into sharper relief in the classroom. Supporting her students as they struggled to navigate those issues inspired Kathleen to look for new ways to serve. In 2016, she was elected to the Utah State Board of Education (USBE) to make sure Utah’s education policy incorporated the perspective of an active teacher (and pragmatic Democrat).
Kathleen served on the Utah State School Board for two years on the finance committee, working to bring more transparency to the spending in our schools. In 2018, she was elected to the Utah Senate. Throughout her tenure, Kathleen has demonstrated an ability to find solutions to hard problems while building consensus across party lines. She brings her experience as a teacher and the memory of personal struggles as a student to her work as a voice for her community and a fighter on behalf of families in Utah.
Kathleen’s proudest of an over two-decade career that began at Pleasant Green in Magna, where she taught 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. Today, she is an educational technology specialist at Robert Frost and Olene Walker Elementary School.
- Utah State Senator (2018-present)
- Senate Education Committee
- Senate Transportation, Public Utilities, Energy & Technology Committee
- Senate Government Operations & Political Subdivisions Committee
- Utah State School Board District 10 (2016-2018)
- Co-Chair, Finance Committee
- Financial Literacy Committee
- Under Age Drinking Committee