Utah Gov. Cox: Republicans ‘suffered a historic defeat.’ Now, he says they have to ‘listen’

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on Monday addressed the stunning blue wave from last week’s election that put Democrats on track to claim more than a dozen seats from Republicans in the GOP-controlled Utah Legislature. 

“Republicans suffered an historic defeat across the country,” Cox said during a news conference broadcast by PBS Utah. “While many of us expected a difficult election nationally, I don’t think anyone — myself included — anticipated the extent to which that wave would reach and impact Utah, particularly in our state legislative races.” 

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The massive blue wave that swept the country on Election Day last week installed not just a majority of Democrats in Congress, but also flipped many gubernatorial offices and state legislatures blue across the country. 

In Utah, the House’s Republican supermajority has been broken for the first time in more than 30 years, with about 16 Republican seats on track to be lost to 14 Democrats and two unaffiliated candidates as of Monday morning. While the Senate will still be controlled by a GOP supermajority, the House will have a simple Republican majority. 

That means the Utah Legislature no longer has one party with two-thirds control — or the power of one party to override the governor’s veto. 

Will Cox wield his veto pen more often now?

Cox acknowledged to reporters that he now has more power behind his pen, but he stopped short of saying he’ll wield it more often. He said he plans to continue having a collaborative relationship with lawmakers.  

“It depends on the issues,” Cox said when asked if he’ll veto more bills now. “Look, in the conversations I’ve had with legislative leadership, I think this is going to be a different kind of session than we’ve seen in the past. I suspect that some bills that I maybe would have vetoed before but knew that they would get overridden, probably don’t get run in the first place this time around because of the significant changes. But time will tell.” 

Cox said there’s an “aphorism that goes around” at the National Governor’s Association that “the only thing worse than having the Legislature be a majority of the opposing party is to have a supermajority of your own party because your veto is completely meaningless.” 

“Now that’s not true for me because I have such a great working relationship with the Legislature,” he said. “We’ve always worked closely on issues.” 

He said having a “non-veto-proof majority doesn’t allow you to get more stuff done.” Rather, he said it acts as “more of a brake than a gas pedal.” 

“It means I can stop some things from happening that maybe I couldn’t before,” he said. “But I have such a great working relationship with the Legislature that they’ve always been willing to engage, regardless of whether they could override my veto or not. But certainly, it means that we’ll be having more collaboration going forward than maybe we have.” 

Cox analyzes the blue wave 

The governor called it a “repudiation election” with “crazy” margins that reflected a swing in Utah that he’s never seen in his lifetime. 

He said it’s a moment that Republicans — both nationally and in Utah — need to seriously reflect on. 

“First,” he said, “I think this election is a powerful reminder of something we must never forget. Article I of the Utah Constitution is ‘all power is inherent in the people.’ Not in the governor. Not in the Legislature. Not in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. In the people.” 

He said elected officials only hold power “because the people have entrusted us with a portion of their power.” 

“It does not belong to us, and the people have every right to take it back,” he said. 

When voters send a message “that those in power may not want to hear,” Cox said, “that’s not a flaw in our system. That’s the beauty, the perfection, in our system.”

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Cox also said Utah’s leaders “have to be willing to listen to what the voters are telling us.” 

“Now it would be very easy for me and everyone else to look at these results in Utah and conclude that this was all about what was happening in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “And definitely, the national political environment played an enormous role in the outcomes here in Utah. But I think it would be a mistake to stop there.” 

Cox said the frustrations he’s hearing from Utahns the most are concerns about housing, growth and development, including data centers. He said he’s also hearing frustrations about transparency, “trusting government” and “whether people making decisions are really listening to the people that are affected by them.” 

“These are valid concerns, and they deserve real answers,” he said. “We can be the best state in the nation and still have a lot of work to do. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. And that includes me. I don’t have all the answers today, but I am committed to working to find them. I want to spend more time listening to Utahns, including people who disagree with me. Maybe especially the people who disagree with me.” 

Most broadly, Cox said the biggest problem is too many Utahns simply feel unheard. 

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“Not listening to people is not a conservative or, you know, liberal issue,” he said. “I think that’s just what happens when a party has been in power for a long time. Sometimes we get a little lazy when it comes to what we should be doing and what we should be listening to.” 

Cox said according to national exit polls, the top issues for Republicans’ loss were “very clear,” with the top two being cost of living and corruption. Next came the war in Iran and immigration. 

While Utah leaders can’t do much about the war in Iran, the price of housing is a sharp issue for Utahns, Cox said, and “the corruption piece is something that I think we all have to be incredibly wary of.” 

“Whether real or perceived, it doesn’t matter, that’s what voters think (is) happening, and so we have to be very cautious of that and work to build trust,” he said. “So we’re going to be working with legislative leadership, whatever that looks like, to make sure that we’re not falling into those same traps that are happening nationally.” 

On data centers, Cox pointed to his executive order setting a framework for considering data center projects — but also said “we’re working on a bill right now” that would enshrine “many of those restrictions in place in legislation.” 

He also said an anti-public unions bill was also “deeply unpopular and completely unnecessary,” he said, adding that “I got more calls on that bill than any other.” 

Trump ‘shares the blame’ 

President Donald Trump “certainly shares some blame” for Utah’s blue wave, Cox said. 

While Cox added “we have a good relationship (and) we’re working on many important issues,” he also said he hopes “that the same reflection that’s happening here with leadership in Utah is happening at the national level, including with his administration.” 

Nationally, Cox said he doesn’t think Americans have “suddenly embraced every idea on the political left,” but rather “the lesson is something much more fundamental.” 

He pointed out that this year’s blue wave was an “extraordinary” reversal from just two years ago, when voters chose Republicans to control both the White House and Congress. 

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“We seem to be caught in a cycle where one side wins, the other side gets angry, and two years later the roles reverse,” he said. “Each election becomes a repudiation of the last one. Each victory becomes an excuse to push harder, and the contempt, the outrage, and the division just keep getting worse.”

He argued “people are tired of the way we’re doing politics in our country today. They’re tired of the fighting. They’re tired of the extremes … and they’re tired of being told that if they don’t agree with everything their party says or does, they somehow don’t belong.” 

That sentiment aligns with Cox’s depolarization calls in his recently published book, “Off Ramp: How to be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt.” 

“My hope is that this election becomes something more than just another swing of the political pendulum,” he said. “Instead of simply trading places, trading blame, and trading insults, we actually learn something. That we have the humility to recognize where we’ve fallen short, the courage to change where change is needed, and the character to work together even when it’s hard. That’s what I want for our country. That’s what I want for Utah, and that’s what I’m going to be working toward in the years ahead.”

Cox says he had warned lawmakers about changing ballot initiatives

Cox said in recent years he’d issued warnings to the Legislature to “do things differently, when we needed to slow down, listen more carefully, or be more responsive.” 

“I think the message from this election makes the need for that kind of reflection even clearer,” he said. “I don’t believe voters are asking their elected officials to be perfect, but I do believe they’re asking us to do better, and we should take that seriously.”

Asked what will change, Cox told reporters “we’ll be doing a lot more listening.” He pointed out newly-elected Senate President Sen. Evan Vickers and House Speaker Mike Schultz had a similar message on Friday. 

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When it comes to voters feeling unheard, Cox said redistricting is “maybe where it starts” — and that issue was compounded by the Legislature making changes to voter-approved laws, like Proposition 4 in 2018 that banned partisan gerrymandering and created an independent redistricting commission. 

“That was a big one,” he said. “I’ve warned the Legislature about this many times over the years.” 

He pointed to an amicus brief in Utah’s redistricting lawsuit, in which he warned the Legislature “that they change initiatives at their own peril.” 

“Now, I was making the case that they have the authority to do that, and if you don’t like it, you should vote them out,” he said. 

Asked about how he thinks the Legislature should handle redistricting or ballot initiatives moving forward, Cox said lawmakers need to be “incredibly cautious” in making changes to ballot initiatives that pass at the ballot box. 

“This is what I’ve been warning about for years is if you do this too many times, people will take that authority away from you, and it will cost you,” Cox said. 

In 2021, when the Legislature ignored an independent redistricting commission’s recommendations and instead adopted congressional boundaries that they drew themselves — which the courts have since ruled unlawful as the result of an unconstitutional process — Cox acknowledged that some people called on him to veto the maps, but he didn’t because he firmly believes the Legislature itself has the authority to draw political boundaries. 

“I take some of the blame for this,” Cox said. “People said I should have vetoed the maps or I should have pushed back more. … I’ve always said the way to push back is at the ballot box … and I think part of that is why we’re here.”