Utah’s Republican Governor Goes to War With His Own Base

For a governor of a deep-red state — with two Republican senators, GOP control of all five statewide offices, bicameral Republican supermajorities, and an all-Republican congressional delegation — Utah’s Spencer Cox has maintained a remarkable liberal streak. Cox’s allergic aversion to conservatism on key issues has won him accolades from progressive activist groups and left-wing media. (“The Red-State Governor Who’s Not Afraid to Be ‘Woke’,” beams a 2022 Time headline.) But it has invited an understandable frustration from at least a segment of Utah’s Republican base. That came to a head this weekend, when Cox lost to his primary challenger by a two-to-one margin among delegates at the Utah GOP convention — and was booed by attendees when he took the stage to speak.

Cox’s response to this icy reception was to float the possibility that his audience might just be bigots: “Maybe you hate that I don’t hate enough,” he told the crowd. It was a fitting testament to the tone that has put the first-term governor in hot water with Utah’s conservative grassroots — a self-serving faux-moralism that transfers blame for his faults onto his critics. While it invariably pads Cox’s reputation with progressive elites who believe that every Republican voter keeps a copy of Mein Kampf on his or her bed stand, the practical effect of Cox’s jab undermines its pretense. To suggest that one’s critics are hateful while simultaneously flattering oneself for being too charitable and empathetic amounts to a kind of smug, self-congratulatory egotism masquerading as bleeding-heart selflessness.

The truth is that there are any number of legitimate reasons for conservatives to resent Cox, none of which have much of anything to do with “hate.” As governor, Cox vetoed a ban on boys in girls’ sports, and — as lieutenant governor — he tearfully apologized to LGBT activists for his “past homophobia,” as Vox reported at the time. (In 2019, Cox — in tears once again — also apologized to LGBT activists for failing to neuter a proposed ban on “conversion therapy.”) He has endorsed writing sexual orientation and “gender identity” into federal civil rights law and counter-signaled conservative anti-transgender efforts elsewhere, although he was eventually harangued into signing a bill banning sex-change drugs and surgeries for minors last year, after threatening to kill a similar measure in 2021. In a 2022 discussion on “equity and inclusion,” Cox went so far as to introduce himself with his “preferred pronouns” — “he, him and his,” for reference — and briefly displayed said pronouns on his official Instagram page, before they mysteriously disappeared after a backlash.

Nor is Cox’s liberalism confined to LGBT issues. As I noted back in 2022:

On January 4, 2021 — three days after he took office — Cox signed the “Utah Compact on Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion,” which argued that … “unraveling centuries of internalized and systemic racism requires bold anti-racist actions and policies right now.” It was the first document that he signed as governor. Around the same time, Cox released a 500-day policy blueprint, dubbed the “One Utah Roadmap,” which promised a “statewide health equity plan charged to evaluate systemic changes that address health disparities.” The blueprint included a section on “equality and opportunity” that called for improving “life outcomes for people with historically and systemically less access to opportunity, including women, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ individuals.”

In its own words, that “One Utah Roadmap” blueprint sought to address “the unique inequities and varied experiences found within Black, Indigenous, Latino/x, Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, and multiracial communities” by acknowledging “the intersectional identities of our community members.” Cox went on to appoint Utah’s first “Senior Advisor on Equity and Opportunity,” whose “mission is to promote an inclusive climate for Utah’s growing diverse community” by “facilitat[ing] dialogues … on complex topics of inclusion and racial justice, working to create equitable access in services and resources for historically disenfranchised communities.” Cox’s October 2021 progress report on his office’s “equity” efforts boasted of its implementation of the Utah state government’s very own DEI-style training program, taking staffers “through twenty-one days of core concepts on equity, equality, race, inclusion, [and] the intersectional Utah story.” (Cox eventually signed an anti-DEI bill in January of this year — accompanied by a long, meandering Substack post that all but apologized for doing so.)

Cox has even defended explicit anti-white racial discrimination — a particularly brazen move in a state that is roughly 90 percent white. “I don’t think it’s racist,” Cox remarked of a Utah Jazz scholarship program that excluded white children. “In fact, I think it’s in response to, unfortunately, some very difficult and racist injustices that have happened in our community for a very long time.… [I]t’s an awesome program and it’s something that we should be celebrating.”

A number of red-state governors and legislatures have let their voters down, at various junctures, over the past few years. But it’s difficult to think of someone who has embraced the radical edge of the progressive revolution with the same enthusiasm as has Spencer Cox. In spite of the hostilities at this weekend’s convention, the governor may very well win reelection; he still enjoys the support of just over 80 percent of Utah Republican voters. But his comments this weekend, and his substantive record, should make Beehive State voters think twice before they head to the polls.

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