Utah taxpayers are footing a $6,000 monthly bill for slickly produced videos that appear to be part of a campaign to promote House Speaker Mike Schultz's personal brand rather than serving as official legislative communications. The videos, which have garnered only a few hundred views online, are part of a taxpayer-funded PR operation that has paid out nearly $150,000 to a private consulting firm since 2023.
The videos raise questions about the blurred lines between public communication and personal political promotion.
Earlier this month, Speaker Schultz appeared in a polished video touting HB447, his education initiative for 2025. The video, complete with professional B-roll of students and the official House seal, carries all the trappings of government communication — but follows an unusual distribution pattern that raises eyebrows.
Rather than appearing on official legislative channels, these videos primarily surface on Schultz's personal social media accounts, with the House GOP majority's accounts serving merely to amplify the message. Since 2024, Schultz has starred in about a dozen such videos, covering everything from housing policy to holiday greetings. Many of these videos were produced by Northbound Strategy, a consulting firm that markets itself as helping clients become "thought leaders" in their fields.
Records obtained through an open records request reveal that in January 2024 alone, the Utah House of Representatives paid Northbound Strategy $6,000 specifically for "Straight talk with Speaker video production."
The firm is helmed by two former high-ranking staffers from Governor Gary Herbert's administration: Marty Carpenter, a former television journalist who was Herbert's chief spokesperson and campaign manager, and Wesley Smith, who served as the governor's federal liaison in Washington, D.C.
Carpenter and Smith both held influential positions with the Salt Lake Chamber between 2008 and 2014. In 2016, they formed 24Nine, a communications and government relations firm. Smith left 24Nine in 2018 to work for Western Governors University, but rejoined Carpenter in 2023 when they created Northbound Strategy.
In August 2021, Carpenter and 24Nine secured a contract with the House Republicans, agreeing to provide 20 hours per week of consulting services at a monthly cost of $6,000.
When Smith and Carpenter reunited to form Northbound Strategy in 2023, the $6,000 monthly payments simply switched from 24Nine to Northbound, maintaining a steady flow of taxpayer dollars.
Despite the significant public investment — $146,500 between April 2023 and January 2025 — transparency about Northbound Strategy's work for House Republicans remains elusive. When contacted by Utah Political Watch, Carpenter refused to detail exactly what taxpayers are getting for their money beyond the sparsely viewed videos.
While the original 2021 contract with 24Nine specified deliverables including "communication strategy, producing written materials including talking points, press releases" and other projects, Utah Political Watch's records request found no updated contract defining Northbound Strategy's current scope of work. Carpenter refused to provide details of any updated agreement.
Adding another layer of complexity to this taxpayer-funded operation is NorthboundUtah.com, a website that blurs the line between news outlet and PR platform. While it presents itself with the trappings of a news website, it primarily serves as a promotional vehicle for the firm's paying clients, including Speaker Schultz.
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The website is part of a broader distribution strategy that appears designed to boost Schultz's personal profile rather than serve official legislative purposes. The publicly funded videos first appear on Schultz's personal social media accounts, then are sometimes reposted by House Majority channels, finally landing on NorthboundUtah.com alongside "news stories" about other Northbound clients, including other House Republicans.
For example, Schultz's recent HB477 video was first posted to his personal X/Twitter account and Facebook page before being amplified through official channels.
When questioned about NorthboundUtah.com's appearance as a news outlet — including its self-description as a "News & media website" on Facebook and "Internet news" on LinkedIn — Carpenter offered a carefully worded response.
"The site is not a journalistic publication," he wrote in an email. "The site is used to aggregate thought leadership content." He claimed the misleading categories were chosen only because platforms lack a "thought leadership" option.
The effectiveness of this taxpayer-funded media operation remains questionable, as the content appears to reach minimal audiences. Videos on Northbound's YouTube channel get a handful of views, and the firm's social media presence is virtually non-existent—their Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok accounts have zero followers and minimal content.
When pressed about performance metrics or ROI measurements that might determine how success is measured in his arrangement with House Republicans, Carpenter declined to respond.
The Utah House already maintains a robust communications team — four out of nine GOP majority staffers have "communications" in their title, collecting over $400,000 in salary and benefits in 2024, according to the Transparent Utah website. How Northbound's work differs from or complements these existing staff remains unclear, as House Chief of Staff Abby Osborne declined to comment.
Adding to the concerns are potential conflicts of interest. While collecting taxpayer dollars for communications work, both Carpenter and Smith maintain active lobbying practices. Carpenter is currently registered to lobby for YouScience, a K-12 career assessment testing company, while Smith represents Western Governors University — both entities with business before the state.
Carpenter refused to answer questions about how his firm manages those potential conflicts.
Since its inception in 2023, Northbound Strategy has rapidly expanded its reach into public coffers across Utah while maintaining a minimal public presence and refusing to detail how that money is spent.
According to publicly available data, Northbound was paid $136,124 from state government and the University of Utah in 2023. A year later, payments from those two entities nearly tripled to $332,000. Now, with Weber State University and Sandy City joining its client roster in 2025, Northbound is on track to collect more than $200,000 in taxpayer money in just the first quarter of the year.
