Spencer Cox of Utah is the latest Republican governor to fend off a challenge from a rival who sought to portray himself as the more conservative choice.
Cox, who won 59% of Tuesday’s vote against state Rep. Phil Lyman, followed on the heels of Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte’s June 11 GOP primary victory and Rep. Kelly Armstrong’s June 4 nomination for governor of North Dakota over a rival who cast the election as an outsider versus a “career politician.”
In all three states, the more familiar faces won — which shouldn’t be a surprise, said Patricia Crouse, adjunct professor of political science at the University of New Haven. “I always tell people, unless you’ve done something horribly wrong as an incumbent, you’re going to win the election,” she said in an interview.
Cox won renomination after a race that showed the depth of divisions within the state’s most active Republican Party members.
The people who attended the state party’s nominating convention went for Lyman over the incumbent by a wide margin—rewarding the candidate who gained celebrity in some circles by getting sentenced to 10 days in jail for protesting federal land management practices with an illegal 2014 ATV ride through a closed canyon. In December 2020, Trump pardoned Lyman, calling him a “man of integrity and character.”
The convention goers who snubbed Cox were a “hardcore crowd” that “needed to hear cowboy language because they were full of it” Garfield County Commission Chair Leland Pollock, said in an interview.
Pollock described standing with Cox as he was booed, and said he told fellow convention goers that Cox “works for you, whether you like it or hate it.”
He said a segment of his party will be loud about criticizing decisions with which they disagree while “quietly they’re going to vote for Cox” to reward him for easing gun restrictions and cutting taxes. Cox in 2023 signed a series of bills to finalize about $400 million in tax cuts, including a decrease in the state’s income tax rate to 4.65% from 4.85%.
In general, said Brigham Young University political science professor Quin Monson, Utah Republicans will default to candidates on the center-right section of the spectrum.
“They’re plenty conservative, but they’re just not going to nominate somebody that flirts too much with that sort of MAGA Donald Trump wing of the party, even though Utah Republicans will vote for Donald Trump,” he said.
The Utah contest featured two candidates who argued for trying to keep in check federal land management agencies and seeking to lower taxes. In the North Dakota race, Armstrong emphasized border security and abortion bans and the need to address the opioid crisis as leading his priorities. In his bid for re-election, Gianforte has emphasized tax cuts he’s signed and his decision to send some members of the Montana National Guard to Texas.
Cox and Gianforte stand out as two of just three incumbent governors on the ballot this year. The other is Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R), whose primary is Aug. 13.
In the eight other states electing governors this year, retirements or term limits have created open-seat elections. So far, the most competitive of those contests is in North Carolina, where Lt. Gov Mark Robinson (R) is competing against state Attorney General Josh Stein (D). In addition to Vermont, four states have yet to choose nominees: Missouri and Washington with Aug. 6 primaries, then Delaware and New Hampshire on Sept. 10.
Utah is typical of the dynamics observed across the US, said Daniel Hopkins, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the 2018 book “The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized.”
People motivated enough by current events to become involved in their political parties are increasingly partisan, while most citizens remain more moderate in their views, he said in an interview.
“If you go to a Philadelphia Eagles game, the people that you find there will care very, very passionately about the Eagles. But if you go elsewhere in the city during a game, you’ll run into people who actually don’t have very strong views on it,” Hopkins said.
“People who step into the political arena, as citizens or voters or viewers or donors, are very politicized,” he said. “But the population as a whole, including millions of ballot voters, is less consistent, less coherent, less ideological and less polarized.”
A longtime observer from the old “Blue Dog” wing of Congress said he hoped the trend of rejecting partisan extremes would continue.
“Voters vote for people whose names they know, whose records they’re at least slightly familiar with, and whom they trust,” said former Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), who’s now with the law firm Alston & Bird. “Maybe we’re going to move into a period of time that’s less volatile.”
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