Three hurdles Utah governor’s Democratic challenger will need to overcome to pose a threat – Washington Examiner

Utah is a red state where Republican voters outnumber Democrats by over a 3-to-1 margin. The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won the state was in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson secured a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. Utah’s last Democratic governor was Scott Milne Matheson Jr., who served until 1985. 

During a recent interview with the Deseret News, King, who has served as a Democratic lawmaker in the state since 2010, said he sees cracks in the Republican coalition that could galvanize a surprise victory over Cox this November. 

“How do you win the election? Well, one of the ways is we appeal to folks who are disillusioned and disenchanted with today’s Republican Party,” King said.

Overcoming Republican majorities

King thinks he has a shot at drawing a large number of independent voters in the state into his camp. There are 482,145 registered unaffiliated voters in Utah, double the number of 232,466 registered Democrats.

However, the number of unaffiliated voters, though significant, has been trending down in the state in recent years. The voting bloc made up 509,374 registered voters in Utah in 2020, signaling that the move toward political independence, though solid, might not be as vibrant as King needs to make up for Utah’s solid Republican majority.

King is also working to win over disgruntled Republicans who supported former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley over former President Donald Trump during the state’s presidential primary. After she lost the primary election to Trump, King’s campaign told Haley voters, ”Consider this a formal invitation to join us in this movement. You will be welcomed with open arms.”

Intraparty turmoil among Republicans in the state has given King another golden opportunity to speak to voters tired of partisan bickering among their own. 

The Utah GOP has been embroiled in multiple conflicts this year. Colby Jenkins mounted a challenge to Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-UT) and shocked the establishment by coming within inches of toppling the incumbent Republican. A recount and lawsuit to the state’s highest court ended in a razor-thin loss for Jenkins. He was 176 votes short of winning his primary, and Jenkins’s concerns over state election laws that allowed over a thousand ballots to be disqualified from being counted led him to declare the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling “undermines fundamental voting rights and sets a troubling precedent for future elections.” 

Meanwhile, a gubernatorial challenge against Cox from a Republican colleague has set off shock waves within the state’s GOP. Rep. Phil Lyman (R-UT) won over 60% of delegate support during the GOP’s state nominating convention earlier this year. While Cox became his party’s gubernatorial nominee by winning the state’s primary, Lyman alleged party rules garnered him the win and launched a lawsuit against Cox in the Utah Supreme Court. Since losing his battle in court, the representative has gone to make a bid against Cox that is unaffiliated with the GOP and has been condemned by party leaders. 

King has been strategic in building bridges with the Lyman camp, taking help wherever he can get it to win in a Republican-dominated state. 

“I’ve never talked less about political party than I have in this election,” King said after Lyman suggested Republicans would be better off voting for the Democrat than supporting another Cox term. “We are building a coalition of pragmatists in this campaign.”

The two even teamed up last week in a joint campaign ad to tell voters there is one thing they agree on: “Spencer Cox should not be our next governor,” the pair said in unison.

The partnership ruffled feathers in the state’s establishment GOP, which warned, “We condemn Phil Lyman’s endorsement and promotion of Brian King, which will only benefit Democrat candidates whose extreme policies are out of step with Utahns.” 

“Not-so-clever clickbait videos attempting to divide Republicans against each other only serve to remind us what is at stake,” Utah GOP Chairman Rob Axson continued in a post to X. “Utahns must not fall for it.”

Although King has seized on the GOP bickering, it is unlikely to fuel the momentum he needs to blow over Cox, who enjoys high favorability ratings among Utahns. The incumbent governor won the election by nearly 33 percentage points in 2020. Cox now enjoys the trappings of power that he can use to his advantage. He has had four years to build rapport with voters and donor support, while his high-profile status as governor gives him automatic access to the press. 

Even King admitted he faces a “David versus Goliath kind of a situation.”

Matching centrist rhetoric with centrist policies

Moreover, King has indicated he is not willing to compromise on leftist positions many Utah conservatives might find distasteful, even if they are dissatisfied with the status quo of Republican politics. 

King’s rhetoric is centrist. “Political balance is incredibly important,” he said. “If you have one party controlling both the executive and the legislative branches for 40 years … you’re going to not have the best results in terms of policies and priorities and a vision that takes into account all the perspectives and all the diversity of the state of Utah.”

His talking points are important in a state that prides itself on centrist politics.

Although Utah is firmly within the GOP’s grasp, top Republicans in the state are centrist-leaning. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) has remained fiercely critical of former President Donald Trump, the most high-profile Republican in the nation. Meanwhile, Cox has maintained a bipartisan rhetoric and, as chairman of the National Governors Association, launched a “Disagree Better” campaign aimed at reducing polarization in politics. Cox also declined to endorse Trump’s bid for reelection until late July.

But though King’s words convey the bipartisan mood Utahns might support, his policy positions could push his chances of booting Cox out of office further out of reach. The Democrat supports a legal right to abortion up to the point of viability, or around 24 weeks, when the baby is able to survive outside the womb.

Recent surveys indicate a majority or near majority of Utahns hold a more centrist position on the matter. 

Nearly half of Utahns said abortion should only be legal in cases of rape, incest, and threats to mothers’ health in 2022. Over 50% of Utah registered voters favored a ban on elective abortions and endorsed allowing them only under limited circumstances in another survey. 

King’s unwillingness to shift to the center on issues such as abortion could cost him votes in a state that bleeds red. 

Reaching the Mormon voting bloc

King has made his Mormon faith a pillar of his campaign for governor, a strategic move in a state that holds the highest concentration of Latter-day Saints in the country. 

“I’m a Democrat because of my faith, not despite it,” a post pinned to the top of his X platform states.

However, the Mormon church appears to be on the decline in the state. In 2020, over 60% of Utahns subscribed to the Latter-day Saints community. Three years later, that number dropped to 42%. 

Additionally, Mormons heavily lean Republican. Seventy-seven percent described themselves as part of the GOP, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. 

Nationwide, support in the Latter-day Saints community for top Democrats appears to be dropping. A recent poll showed that in 2023, 1 in 5 Mormons approved of President Joe Biden, down from nearly a third of support in 2021. 

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The Democratic representative is headed to a debate with Cox on Sept. 11. 

The Washington Examiner reached out to the King and Cox campaigns for comment.