The 2024 primary tested Trump influence on Utah Republicans. What did it tell us?

Gov. Spencer Cox talks to media after the Associated Press called the GOP primary for governor in his favor at an election night event in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

Soon after polls closed on Tuesday, unofficial election night results showed both of Utah’s statewide Republican primary races had clear wins: Utah Gov. Spencer Cox won the GOP gubernatorial race, and Rep. John Curtis beat his three Republican competitors in the race to replace retiring Sen. Mitt Romney. 

Though the results aren’t necessarily surprising — aligning with what local polls signaled would happen, though by narrower margins — they affirmed what historically has been true: Utah, though as red a state as ever, continues to have trouble accepting Trump-style politics. 

Cox’s competitor, Rep. Phil Lyman — who as of Wednesday evening trailed Cox by nearly 12 percentage points — catered to MAGA Republicans with a MUGA (“Make Utah Great Again”) campaign. Former President Donald Trump himself endorsed Curtis’ leading competitor, Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs, and yet Staggs only got 31% of the vote to Curtis’ nearly 50%.

“What a fascinating primary,” Chris Karpowitz, political science professor at Brigham Young University, told Utah News Dispatch on Wednesday, the day after the election. 

Two takeaways surfaced, said Karpowitz, who is also a senior scholar at BYU’s Center of the Study of Elections and Democracy. It highlighted, he said: 

1. An ongoing and deepening division within the Republican Party — both nationally and in Utah. 

2. Continued “challenges and liabilities for politicians” who firmly align themselves with Trump, especially in Utah. 

However, the two races also show that brash, populist-oriented rhetoric does indeed resonate with a significant, “meaningful” number of Utah voters, Karpowitz said. 

“Utah continues to be reticent to fully adopt MAGA-style politics,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t voters who do endorse that. And those voters are passionate. They get involved. But they’re not a majority, and they’re not a majority among Republicans.” 

The fact that both Lyman and Staggs’ campaigns gained notable traction — and Lyman’s race with Cox was perhaps closer than some expected — shows Trump-aligned candidates can find a foothold. However, Karpowitz said it’s “hard to say” whether this is a growing faction within Utah.

“But I think these results show that there’s an audience for that style of politics, even in Utah,” he said. “It’s not a majority — yet. But it might be creeping in that direction.” 

Still, this year’s primary shows “it’s not a winning argument,” he said.

“And maybe this is a warning for (Sen.) Mike Lee, too,” Karpowitz said, referring to the Utah senator who went from not voting for Trump in 2016, to now one of his most vocal supporters. “There really are limits in Utah to fully and completely aligning yourself with Donald Trump.”

What makes Utah so different from other states? The answer lies with the history of the state, settled by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints escaping religious persecution. Today, Utah remains home to the highest concentration of members of the church, and its culture continues to place heavy emphasis on religion and morality. 

It’s a big reason why Utahns have been reluctant to embrace Trump’s rhetoric and behavior. 

“I do think the state’s history and religious tradition matters here,” Karpowitz said. “And that has led to a certain style of politics and a certain willingness to try to work for practical solutions that don’t involve completely demonizing people on the other side.” 

Utah, compared to other deeply red states, is “red in a different way,” he said. 

“It’s going to stay red,” he added, “at least for the foreseeable future. But there are big tensions within the party and big differences of opinion about the best way to go forward and what the responsibilities of elected officials are. And it’s simply not sufficient to have the endorsement of Donald Trump.” 

Another election that calls into question the caucus-convention system

Karpowitz said Lyman’s and Staggs’ losses also add to the tally of examples of how disconnected Utah Republican Party delegates are from the rest of the state’s GOP voters.

Both Lyman and Staggs won overwhelming majority support at convention, and yet they lost with wide margins when the race was opened up to the rest of the state’s Republican voters. Cox, in the governor’s race, along with Curtis and other U.S. Senate competitors, qualified for the primary by gathering signatures under Utah’s dual path to the ballot. 

Karpowitz, along with another BYU professor Jeremy Pope, has conducted research, including an analysis in 2015, that shows caucuses are more likely to attract partisan voters, and in turn they’re more likely to produce more ideologically extreme party nominees. 

“It’s vindication, again, for the notion that the convention is out-of-step with Republican voters in the state, that it caters to a more extreme and different set of voters than primaries do,” he said.

Republicans who favor the caucus-convention system — many of them Lyman and Staggs supporters — have long detested the passage of SB54, a 2014 law that allows a dual path to the primary ballot via signature gathering and not just through convention nomination. 

Many convention loyalists balk at being deemed extremists or out of touch. Rather, they argue delegates are more informed about politics and are best equipped to make knowledgeable decisions for their neighbors. They also argue the signature gathering path allows candidates with enough money and resources a way to bypass the convention system. 

Yes, Cox as an incumbent and Curtis coming from Congress were both well-resourced candidates that also benefited from name recognition, Karpowitz said. But they both also ran campaigns that framed them as candidates based on traditional Utah politics. 

Curtis told the Deseret News on Wednesday that he’s often stereotyped as a candidate that’s either MAGA or moderate — and he doesn’t see himself or Utah that way. 

“I like to define it as normal,” Curtis told the publication. “I don’t think most Utah voters define themselves by conservative or moderate or liberal. But I think they tend to define themselves more by — for lack of better words — Utah values.”

Lessons from the gubernatorial race

The Lyman campaign — though it was not successful — demonstrated there is a significant segment of Utah’s Republican population that is hungry for change and likely energized by a possible return of Trump to the White House. 

Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, who supported Cox at his election night party, told Utah News Dispatch he expected Cox to win. Lyman’s support, he said, runs “narrow but deep” while Cox’s support is wider and quieter. 

“(Lyman supporters) are going to go out and put up signs and call their neighbors and tell their family members to vote for Phil Lyman,” Weiler said. “I think the Phil Lyman supporters feel like they’re part of an uprising or a cause, but there’s just not enough of them to win.” 

Weiler’s prediction was right, though the margin is shaping up to be narrower than what he expected — which was no more than 40% for Lyman (As of Wednesday evening, Cox had 55.9% of the vote to Lyman’s 44%).

County-by-county results show Cox handily beat Lyman along the Wasatch Front, while Lyman gained traction in rural Utah, especially southern Utah and his home San Juan County. Karpowitz noted there were so many Lyman campaign signs scattered throughout neighborhoods that it likely made some wonder, “‘Is he going to do better than we think?’ And I think that’s just a reflection of the fact that Lyman did engender a certain level of enthusiasm and support.” 

“It’s not a majority of voters,” he said, “but those who liked him seemed to like him quite a bit.” 

Shortly after results posted Tuesday night, Cox and his running mate Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson told supporters the outcome of the race validated their decisions to “do the right thing” and run a clean, policy-based campaign despite pressures from their opponents and national political norms.

“We believe that there is a better way to govern. That the way that our country is trending, the polarization … is not healthy. The destruction of institutions. Destroying trust in our neighbors,” Cox said. “So I’m proud that we rose above the fray, that we did it the right way. We did it without attacking … without negativity. And I’m grateful that the people of Utah responded.” 

Lyman’s campaign largely employed an attack strategy, accusing Cox in various ways of not being a true conservative, while Cox advocated for a clean race while parading his National Association of Governor’s “Disagree Better” campaign, meant to discourage hyperpartisanship, polarization, tribalism and political hate. 

However, when reporters asked Cox about “attacks from the right” of his own party during the campaign season, Cox bristled, and argued there’s a different definition that should be used to describe Lyman and his supporters. 

“I want to be clear. Those attacks don’t come from the right. Populism is not ‘the right.’ Populism is not conservatism,” Cox said. “This is something different.”  

Populism is defined as a political approach that seeks to appeal to ordinary people who feel they’re being disregarded by established, elite groups. It’s a strategy that Trump has embraced and normalized, and one that Lyman mirrored. 

I want to be clear. Those attacks don’t come from the right. Populism is not ‘the right.’ Populism is not conservatism. This is something different

– Utah Gov. Spencer Cox

Karpowitz noted there are populist movements “occurring all across the world,” and Utah is not immune. 

“Part of that is a reflection of the economic challenges that we face in a post-COVID world, and part of it is a sense of frustration that elected officials in both parties have overlooked or ignored, you know, the challenges that ordinary people are having,” he said. 

Trump and his followers have seen an opening to grasp onto that kind of rhetoric — but they’ve also taken a tear-it-down approach that can be “dangerous” for the country’s institutions and democracy, he said.

Like Trump, Lyman — who would not concede Tuesday night — has also embraced rhetoric that sows doubt in elections. In a post on X Wednesday, Lyman’s campaign criticized the media for calling the race soon after polls closed. 

“Cox’s speech was bizarre. And, on top of that, we have a lot of votes still to count,” Lyman’s campaign posted. “Call it dangerous if you want but I’m not buying it.”

In the final week leading up to the primary, Lyman laid the groundwork for questioning the election itself by accusing the lieutenant governor’s office of lacking “transparency” for not releasing all of the signatures Cox and other candidates submitted to qualify for the ballot. For candidate signature gathering petitions, Utah law requires election officials to redact names from signature packets of voters who have chosen to classify their records as private.

Lyman told his supporters Tuesday night that his campaign is suing over Cox’s signatures in order to confirm their validity. He also indicated he would try to press to get his name on the general election ballot despite his primary loss because he earned more than 60% of delegate support at convention. 

That’s not how it works in Utah. Winners of primary elections or unopposed party nominees advance to the November ballot. 

Part of living in a democracy is respecting the decisions of the voters, and of recognizing you lost when you lost.

– Chris Karpowitz, poiltical science professor at Brigham Young University

Karpowitz called Lyman’s rhetoric around the election “worrisome.”

“I think it’s a result of Donald Trump’s reaction to 2020, and I don’t think that’s healthy for democracy,” he said. “Part of living in a democracy is respecting the decisions of the voters, and of recognizing you lost when you lost.” 

The margin in the Cox-Lyman contest “is not close,” he said, “and so continuing to sow doubt about the outcome of elections is just not healthy for a republic.”

“That’s just deeply problematic,” he said. “Certainly every candidate has the right to pursue any significant concerns in a court of law, but at this point at least it’s not clear that there’s any reason to doubt the outcome of the election, and continuing to sow those kinds of doubts just plays into this narrative … where politicians feel they can gain by playing on the concerns and fears of ordinary people.”

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