The Red-State Governor Who's Not Afraid to Be 'Woke'
“I’m not trying to own the libs, I’m trying to convince the libs that there’s a better way.”
Political polarization is like the weather: everybody complains about it, but nobody ever seems to do anything about it. Or almost nobody. My new piece in TIME is a profile of Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, who’s taken heat from both sides—but especially the right—for trying to bridge partisan divides:
“There is nobody more cowardly than Tucker Carlson,” Spencer Cox says, gesturing with both hands over his plate of puntas de filete a la norteña. “This idea that you’re a coward for being kind, it’s so anti-Christian. It’s so anti-American. I mean that.” Over lunch at the Red Iguana, Salt Lake City’s most famous Mexican restaurant, the Republican governor of one of America’s most conservative states is trying to explain how he came to be accused of the gravest sin on the right these days: being “woke.” In March, Cox vetoed Utah’s proposed ban on trans girls in sports, expressing sympathy as he did so with “Utah’s female athletes and our LGBTQ+ community” and adding, “To those hurting tonight: It’s going to be OK. We’re going to help you get through this.”
In response, Carlson, the top-rated Fox News prime-time host, devoted his show’s 10-minute opening monologue to Cox, whom he ridiculed as a “low-IQ weekend MSNBC anchor” and “cut-rate Gavin Newsom imitator,” over a chyron reading “HOW DID UTAH GET SUCH AWFUL, LIBERAL LEADERS?” and a graphic of a puzzled-looking elephant. The conservative National Review accused Cox of “a pedal-to-the-metal zeal for many of the most corrosive and radical aspects of left-wing cultural ideology.”
Say what you will about Tucker Carlson, the man has a way with an insult. But Cox, far from being cowed by such criticism, has doubled down.
Why step right into America’s hottest culture war for no apparent political benefit? Cox, a 47-year-old former farmer and telecom executive, signed a “Utah Compact on Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” shortly after taking office last year and has been known to cite his pronouns: “He, him and his.” At the same time, he’s slashed regulations, expanded gun rights and presided over the banning of almost all abortions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. He’s determined, he says, to prove it’s possible to be a socially conscious Republican. “I believe I’m a conservative,” he tells me. “I think my voting record would show I’m a conservative. But just because I’m not constantly railing against the other side, you get painted as a [Republican in Name Only].” In a time when his party’s platform often seems to consist entirely of humiliating liberals, Cox jokes, “I’m not trying to own the libs, I’m trying to convince the libs that there’s a better way.”
Unlike the anti-Trump Republican governors of blue states, Cox’s positioning, in one of the reddest states in America, represents a real political risk—one he argues more politicians should be willing to take.
Cox did not vote for Trump in either of the past two presidential elections, writing in other candidates instead. He called on Trump to resign in the aftermath of Jan. 6. The riot was “evil,” Cox tells me, and the forces it unleashed remain “a clear and present threat that we need to address head-on as a party.” But Cox is of the symptom-not-a-cause school of Trump Studies. He understands the frustration of small-town residents like his Fairview neighbors, who’ve been left behind by a changing economy and culture, and who feel let down by decaying institutions and disingenuous politicians. “Institutions have been failing us for a while,” he says. “It led to a place where someone like Donald Trump could have a huge impact.” It’s incumbent on politicians to build trust with their voters, he says, so when they need to convince them of something—like, say, that the 2020 election, which Cox oversaw in Utah as lieutenant governor, was not rigged—they have a chance of being heard.
Read on for a Lin-Manuel Miranda cameo, some very weird dinner parties, a bowl of banana Laffy Taffy and my favorite Tom Lehrer quote. Here’s the piece.