Spencer J. Cox

Spencer J. Cox is the Governor of Utah, and was running for reelection as Governor with Deidre M. Henderson in the November 2024 Election, Utah.

2023 and 2024 have seen Spencer Cox make some positive moves, but also hide from some important questions. Prior actions generally lead us to question his honesty and principles. Until recently, we have doubted his leadership merely due to his association with former Governor Gary R. Herbert, and his choice of Deidre M. Henderson as Lieutenant Governor, but the dishonest justification for his veto of 2022's HB 11, along with the poor judgement demonstrated by what he described wanting to see come out of such legislation, has us particularly worried. Being the first Republican Governor to declare a Pride Month in Utah also sets him apart as someone who leads in all the wrong ways. Our assessment of his recent activity is that he's starting to see that Utah is waking up to the dangers that trans activists pose to their children, and will scrutinize him more in the future. His tweet regarding Texas's actions on the border is a positive move. However, serious question regarding his primary qualifications in 2024, including the sudden lack of transparency imposed on the process when people started asking questions, and the declaration by his Lieutenant Governor that such criticism should not be protected by the first amendment suggest that a Cox governorship would not be in the best interest of Utah.

2024

Spencer Cox lost the delegate vote, and then obtained a primary against Phil Lyman by gathering signatures. He won the primary. However, there are a lot of questions about how legitimate his gathered signatures are. His signature list has been kept secret in an unprecedented move, so that nobody could verify them. After the election, it was demonstrated that none of the signature verification officials had completed all of the required training when the signatures were supposedly verified. Another candidate who was verified by the same group was disqualified due to possible criminal activity that lead to many of his signatures being disqualified. Lieutenant Governor Deidre M. Henderson, who plays a central role in ensuring that signature verifiers can be trained, and who's failure to make such training available played a pivotal role in preventing training from being completed, declared that this kind of criticism of election integrity should not be first amendment protected speech. It has also been alleged that Spencer Cox offered another Mr. Lyman $1000 if he would run, to confuse voters trying to write in Phil Lyman. It appears, based the numbers released after an audit of Spencer Cox's signatures, that he did not get enough signatures to qualify for the primary, in spite of auditor claims to the contrary.

In July 2024, after the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Spencer Cox decided to endorse Trump.

Spencer Cox tweeted support for Texas's efforts to take over control of their southern border in spite of the United States Supreme Court ruling against them.

2023

Spencer Cox's 2023 Pride Month declaration was called out for lacking any reference to LGBTQ+ people, unlike his prior declarations.

Spencer Cox signed legislation banning clinics from providing abortions.

2022

Project Veritas was in Utah with an undercover tape of John Curtis's Field Director revealing some things that John Curtis's campaign explicitly desires to keep hidden. Pertinent to Spencer Cox, however, John Curtis's Field Director expressed surprise that Spencer Cox would have supported the trigger laws that Utah has in place.

Spencer Cox has expressed that he does not intend to pursue expanding abortion restrictions outside of the context of existing trigger laws which would take effect were Roe v. Wade overturned.

Spencer Cox vetoed a bill that restricted trans women from participating in women's school sports during competitions between schools, stating "rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few." (Contrary to the facts, reporting has described the bill as a flat ban on trans athletes competing in school sports. Even Spencer Cox describes the bill as such when he explains why he vetoed the bill.) Spencer Cox described that what he had wanted was for a comission to be designated which would decide whether students could participate, on an individual basis.

2021

Spencer Cox's was the only Republican Governor to declare a Pride Month for his state.

2016

He has declared that without major changes, he will not be voting for Trump, stating further that "if there were some major changes to Trump, I think there's a way many of us could support him, but he hasn't shown any inclination toward those changes or doing things differently, so I think it's a long shot that he will change". He has expressed that he is considering Gary Johnson, Evan McMullin, or a write-in.

External Resources

• "Lt. Gov. Cox speaks at vigil for Orlando: 'My heart has changed'", KSL, 14 Jun 2016