This is for my Utah readers, as the GOP primary, which will decide the Utah governorship, is on the 25th—register today if you haven’t, as I believe the deadline for that is the 14th.
Others have made the full case against Cox—maybe try Eric Moutsos’ Utah Revival facebook podcasts—so I’m going to limit this post to one slogan, one observation, and to one letter I sent Cox a year ago.
The slogan, and feel free to reproduce:
C. "Civility”
O. Oligarchy
X. “X-perts”
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F41b57bcf-a5a8-46ab-ad9f-dffdde5c93da_2560x1440.jpeg)
Phil Lyman is the ballot alternative to Cox, and even, the candidate supported by the Republican party this time around. Last weekend, I was part of group supporting him in a Utah Valley parade. (Maybe you saw me goofing around on my big yellow bicycle at the front of our group?) Unfortunately, I can report that expectations in my group for a Lyman victory were kinda low, very worried. Nearly everyone notices that at least in Utah county (Provo, Orem, Lehi, Springville, etc.), lawn-sign support for Lyman outpaces Cox’s something like 25 to 1—I’m not kidding about that number—, but the fear is that too many elderly Mormons will fall for him again, and lots of conservatives are near-assuming that some election-steal fix is already set, which they say explains Cox’s lackluster campaigning. Not to my credit, as it reflects a low-level of local politics involvement, I have no idea on that hypothesis. I have seen evidence presented that there was Cox-friendly cheating in 2020, but don’t know what to make of it—even though I do believe there was major cheating in the presidential election.
There are a lot of good reasons for voting against Cox, but as I said in the caption, both when he served as Lt. Gov. under Governor Herbert, and since the reins were passed over to him in 2021, he has been highly authoritarian, dialogue-squelching, and duplicitous about Utah’s Covid-policies. So the letter I feature here (which of course he never answered) mainly concerns that. Sent around March, 31, 2023.
Dear Governor Cox, I published yesterday a piece on a group substack, PostModernConservative, with the title "Lockdown Letter to Utah Governor Gary Herbert, 2020: Remembering the Betrayal of Three Years Ago." It briefly comments on some of your actions, so if there is anything in it you would like to respond to, feel free to use the comments section, or to contact me via email. I would also appreciate your fwding the link onto Gary Herbert [the governor in 2020], as web-contact services for the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce seem not to be functioning.
You and I are opposed sides regarding the future of the Republican Party of Utah, so I am unlikely to vote for you in any primary. However, as you may surely know in your heart, much from the Covid/Vax disaster years remains unresolved, undiscussed, and is the "elephant in the room" of Utah politics, and in a way that goes waaayyy beyond intra-GOP factional divides. I would suggest that any deeper seriousness you have about carving a moderate and bridge-building path for your career will require you to grapple with the unresolved issues in this area. Utah suffered deep wounds here. I do believe you should apologize for a number of actions and speeches you were involved in during these years, and while your and my area of agreement on that is likely small or even empty, what I would most encourage you to do, as a move of serious moderation, as a way of moving forward, is to help the major vax--harm dissidents with whatever Utah moves you can to help push forward the needed research. Full releases of Utah data of the kind yearned for by researchers like Steve Kirsch would be a major step towards real reconciliation. I urge you, clear your schedule for a day, and sit down and read what Kirsch, Peter McCullough, Igor Chudov, Midwestern Doctor, and Mark Crispin Miller have discovered. Contact them and ask what Utah data they need. This issue of the widespread harms and deaths caused by the mRNA vaxxes folks like yourself pushed is NEVER going away, and the longer leaders like you delay and suppress the reckoning with it, the worse the outcome will be for all of us. The band-aid must ripped off, and the pain will be intense. But you are surely called to lead here. I also urge you to watch the film Anecdotals I link to in the substack post. The victims are many, and their suffering is real. Sincerely, Carl Eric Scott
Cox touts “civility,” and poses this against the manners of MAGA-types, a smart ploy in Utah. And it is true that he has often been the target of vile insults questioning his masculinity, particularly when issues surround LGBTQ topics have come up. (He announces his pronouns, for example.) One time, an angry group of my fellow populist-conservatives gathered at his home (as I’ve said on this stack, that protest tactic is a no-no, because it implies a threat of on-offence violence), and he “won” the local news-angle on that by baking cookies for them! And by smiling, smiling, smiling.
So in my letter I tried to suggest what real civility on the Covid/Vax Disaster for politicians like him would look like. I tried to respect his “moderate” brand of Republican politics as something which may well have a long and successful future, especially in Utah, even though I generally oppose it.
But towards myself, or people like me, he has tried nothing. To us, his “civility” amounts to one big “shut up.” And he has done nothing to help the victims of CV-19 vax injuries or to advance research. He will be “Pretending” that these harms are not widespread, and that he did not grievously stumble on Covid-policy, his whole life. He doesn’t get that it’s politicians like himself who are the main danger to democratic say and authentic civility in this state.
He so deserves to be rejected by the people of Utah. If you live here, make sure you’re ready to vote on the 25th, or by mail if you must.
"He doesn’t get that it’s politicians like himself who are the main danger to democratic say and authentic civility in this state."
I disagree. He knows what he is doing. He just doesn't care. The situation is much worse than even your very good article describes.