In 1930, Utterback was chairman of the Maine Motor Vehicle Conference Committee, and he was a delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention.

Utterback was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-third United States Congress (March 4, 1933 – January 3, 1935), defeating Republican Owen Brewster by 324 votes.

[1] Fittingly for a candidate from the "wet" Bangor, Utterback made his first congressional speech in support of the repeal of Prohibition around which he had built his campaign.

Bangor's saloons had been a major target of the Maine's prohibition law (in force for 75 years), the oldest in the nation.

He continued to remain active in the automobile business as president of the Utterback Corporation truck and car dealerships.