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Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck On Her Retirement, The Right To Die And A Return To Advocacy

Utah Democrats
Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, D-Salt Lake, will be retiring next year after a decade in Utah politics.

State lawmaker Rebecca Chavez-Houck announced this week she won’t be running for re-election after nearly a decade in Utah politics. 

The 56-year-old Democrat has served in the Utah House since 2008 representing the district that includes most of downtown Salt Lake. We sat down with Chavez-Houck to talk about her tenure in state government, and began by asking why she’s stepping away now.

Julia joined KUER in 2016 after a year reporting at the NPR member station in Reno, Nev. During her stint, she covered battleground politics, school overcrowding, and any story that would take her to the crystal blue shores of Lake Tahoe. Her work earned her two regional Edward R. Murrow awards. Originally from the mountains of Western North Carolina, Julia graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2008 with a degree in journalism. She’s worked as both a print and radio reporter in several states and several countries — from the 2008 Beijing Olympics to Dakar, Senegal. Her curiosity about the American West led her to take a spontaneous, one-way road trip to the Great Basin, where she intends to continue preaching the gospel of community journalism, public radio and podcasting. In her spare time, you’ll find her hanging with her beagle Bodhi, taking pictures of her food and watching Patrick Swayze movies.
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