Utah Gov. Spencer Cox delivered an emotional speech when speaking about the arrest of a suspect Friday accused of shooting and killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Specifically, Cox, a Republican serving his second term as governor of Utah, urged people not to consume violent content depicting Kirk’s assassination even as it proliferated online.
“This is not good for us, it is not good for us to consume,” he said. “I would encourage people to log off. Turn off. Touch grass. Hug a family member. Go out and do good in your community.”
Cox’s delivery immediately received praise from Democrats.
“I know this guy is a Republican and all but I swear you could win all the electoral votes with this message in 28,” Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said on X.
David Axelrod, a former strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns also praised Cox.
“Such respect for @GovCox for the heartfelt, thoughtful plea he just delivered to our frayed American community,” Axelrod said on X. “We can continue to barrel down this path of increasing violence, or choose a better path and resist the siren song of hate and division.“
In many ways, the fatal shooting at Utah Valley University has proven to be the ultimate test of Cox’s brand of conservatism, which has valued working together and disagreeing without seeing political opponents as enemies.
“We will never be able to solve all the other problems, including the violence problems, if we can’t have a clash of ideas safely and securely — especially those ideas with which you disagree,” Cox said as he called the shooting “an attack on all of us.”
But it’s also a message that been put to the test Cox tries to balance his support for Trump with Utah’s style of more even-keeled politics.
After serving as a city council member and then mayor of Fairview, Utah, Cox joined the Utah state legislature. In 2013, Gov. Gary Herbert tapped him him to be lieutenant governor and he earned unanimous support in the state senate.
Cox gained national attention in 2016, when during a vigil for the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, he spoke about how in the past, he had bullied people he later realized were gay.
“Over the intervening years, my heart has changed,” he said. “It has changed because of you. It has changed because I have gotten to know many of you. You have been patient with me.”
In 2020, Cox won a contested primary against former governor Jon Huntsman, which Cox won. In the general election, he appeared with his Democratic opponent Chris Peterson in an ad entitled “disagree better.”
Just last week, Cox joined democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore for a talk on reaching across the aisle hosted by the National Press Club.
Cox told the audience he frequently reminds Americans that the country suffered far worse political turmoil during the Civil War “when 600,000 people died” and the 1960s when “rough things” happened.
“I think our institutions are holding,” he said. “We have to do stuff. We’ve gotten very bad at doing stuff in this country.”
Cox has governed like a conservative, but at the same time, occasionally made overtures to political opponents. In 2022, he vetoed a bill that would have restricted transgender athletes from playing in women’s sports, though the legislature overrode the veto.
At the same time, he still passed plenty of conservative pieces of legislation. Recently, a law in Utah allowed for students to carry firearms if they have a concealed carry permit. He also signed legislation to ban fluoride in public water earlier this year, making him the first governor to do so. Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long criticized the practice.
Many Utah Republicans have long had a complicated relationship with Trump. Given the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ history as a persecuted religious minority, many were repelled by Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims emigrating to the United States. Some of Trump’s biggest critics from the right came from the church, such as former Arizona senator Jeff Flake and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
In July 11, 2024, Cox told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that he would not vote for Trump. He had vocally denounced the president on January 6, 2021.
“I’ll write somebody in, as I’ve done in the past,” he said. But after Trump’s shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania two days later, Cox threw his support behind Trump.
But his style of politics would almost immediately brush up against the president’s when Cox joined Trump at Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the deaths of US servicemembers where one of Trump’s staffers clashed with a cemetery official.
Cox shocked many when he used the event for a campaign fundraising email, for which he later apologized.
At the same time, Cox has also denounced political violence on directed at Democrats and Republicans such as the assassination of Minnesota’s former speaker of the state house Melissa Hortman and the burning of the residence of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro.
“Our nation is broken,” he said earlier this week. “We had political assassinations recently in Minnesota. We had an attempted assassination on the governor of Pennsylvania. And we had an attempted assassination on a former president, a presidential candidate and now current president of the United States.”
Cox won re-election overwhelmingly in November. It is unclear if Cox has national ambitions and loyalty to Trump will serve as a major litmus test in 2024. Utah has no term limits for its governors.
