GOP Convention Wrap-up
>> Rob Axson: Count us down, Cooter.
>> Bryan Schott: 1.1, a 1.2, a 1.3.
Let's rock.
Hello and welcome to Special Session. I'm your host, Bryan
Schott. Today on the podcast, we're wrapping up
Saturday's Utah GOP convention.
Rob Axson won another term piloting
Utah's dominant political party for the next two years.
He defeated former Representative Phil Lima.
We'll talk about what that means for the
future of the Utah gop. But before we get to
that, I want to point out something that really
struck me from Saturday. As you
know, I am currently suing the Utah Legislature because
they won't give me a media credential to cover
the Utah Capitol, even though I've been reporting
on politics here in the state for more than 25
years. It wasn't easy. It took a few discussions,
but I was able to secure a press
credential from the Utah Republican Party to
cover Saturday's convention on the campus of
Utah Valley University. So
I'm not considered a journalist by
the Utah Legislature, which is dominated
by Republicans, but I am
considered a journalist by the Utah
gop, which is dominated
by Republicans. The Utah
Legislature is a public body.
They're funded by taxpayers and they say
I'm not a journalist and want to keep me out. The
Utah Republican Party is a private organization.
They're funded by donations from their members
and they say I am a journalist.
What's the difference? I don't know,
but it is quite the juxtaposition, don't you think?
Anyway, enough of that. Let's get to breaking
down what happened at the Utah Republican Convention
on Saturday.
Rob Axon won another term as Utah
Republican Party Chair on Saturday, but it was a
lot closer than even I thought it was going to
be. He defeated former Representative Phil
lyman by just 125
votes. It should not have been this close.
Action's been extremely effective as
the chair of the Utah Republican Party. By
any measure, under his guidance, the party has
raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is a
reversal of what we've in past election
cycles. And that was used to
support candidates up and down the ballot,
which is something that the party also has not been able to
do in recent election cycles. But despite
that success, he came
really, really close to being ousted by
Lyman. 48% of the delegates who showed up on
Saturday voted for Lyman, which could
portend some troubles going forward. And we'll
get to that in a second. Now, Axon got
a last minute endorsement from President Donald Trump
and he admits that that probably
is the reason why he won.
>> Rob Axson: I was very grateful to have earned the support of President Trump. I was
grateful to have earned the support of Congressman Kennedy
and Congressman Owens and certainly Senator Lee.
Turning point action focused on young people. Do I think
that I could have one on my own? No, I
don't. And I don't know what that metric is. But
it's all these people in this room, it's a bunch of delegates down there that
voted for me. It takes everybody. And that's, that's my
vision and my commitment, as long as I'm chair of this party,
is to not have it be about me. It's not about
me. It's about this party and all of us together.
>> Bryan Schott: Building actions Win does continue
the recent trend among Utah Republican
delegates to pick the more pragmatic candidate
when it comes to running the party. When they're
deciding political offices, the delegates
usually go for ideologues, but not so much when it
comes to chairman. I think back to
2017. Former chairman
James Evans had run the party into the ground
financially. They could not pay their bills. They hadn't paid their
rent on their headquarters. They
had trouble paying for the convention. There was even a
moment where they might not have gotten the
convention hall. They had rented out the Sandy Convention
center, and because they hadn't paid
a bill, they were going to be locked out of the convention. They had
to scramble to come up with some money. A lot of those
financial problems were because of the party's
years long legal battle to try and overturn
SB54, which created the signature
path to the ballot. That fight
nearly bankrupted the party. But Evans was
ousted in 2017 in favor of
Rob Anderson, who had served as the
chairman of the Davis County Republican Party.
And Anderson immediately got sideways
with a small group of hardliners
on the party State Central Committee, which is the governing body of
the party. Because he wanted to drop the lawsuit
over SB54. The party was over
$400,000 in debt. Big donors were not giving
any money to the party anymore because of that legal battle against
SB54. They favored having
a signature path to the ballot. So
they had cut off funding for the party,
$400,000 in debt. They were in a lot of
trouble. And Anderson said, we need to stop the
lawsuit. Well, that upset this small group
of people on the
who wanted to keep it going. And that's
when his trouble started. And after two years in office,
Anderson decided he had had enough and didn't run for another
term. In 2019, the delegates
selected Derek Brown, who's now the
attorney general over Phil
Wright, who was one of those hardliners
on the State Central Committee who wanted to continue the legal
battle against SB54. A few months
earlier, the Supreme Court had turned away
the Republican party's appeal of a lower court
rul But Wright and his supporters
wanted to keep the fight going. Try another
lawsuit. The delegates picked Brown, who was the more
establishment candidate. He was a former
staffer for Senator Mike Lee, much like Axon
is now, and Lee has broad support
among Republican delegates. So they elected
Brown, who with Lee's help, was able to dig the party
out of the financial troubles that they had. There
was a little hiccup to that. In 2021, Brown decided he
was not going to run for party chair for a second
term. There was a slate candidates put together
by the former Utah County Party
Chair Stuart Pay. He was running with
Austin Cox, who was the campaign
manager for Governor Spencer Cox. And
on the eve of the convention, there was a
letter that was sent out to Republican delegates
from Governor Cox, Lieutenant Governor Henderson, state
leaders, former speaker of the House Brad Wilson, Senate
President Stuart Adams endorsing this slate of
candidates put together by pay. They had branded
themselves Team Utah gop and
this letter went out to delegates
endorsing them. And that backfired
spectacularly, frankly, off a
number of delegates who felt that Cox and other
establishment Republicans were telling them who to vote for.
And they didn't like that. So at the 2021
convention, in an upset, Carson
Jorgensen, who had run for Congress
against Chris Stewart in the previous election
cycle, was elected party chair. Now, they
weren't bomb throwers or anti estab
types, but they were seen as an alternative to this mainstream
slate of candidates put together by pay and endorsed by
state leaders. Jorgensen decided that he did not want to
run for another term. And Rob Axon was
elected without opposition in 2023, and
he is the first chairman since James Evans to
serve more than one term. He's got some work to do.
That close victory over
Lyman could spell some trouble going
forward. There are a number of Lyman supporters who have been elected to the
state Central committee. And as we
Rob Anderson, they could make actions life
h*** if they wanted to. They like to stir up
trouble. They advocate for
hardline positions. They are ideologues.
And that could complicate actions efforts
to try and bring in more
younger voters, more casual Republicans
to the party, which he said is one of the things that he
needs to do over the next two years. These
hardliners on the state Central Committee they don't want that.
They like having control over
the party. They like keeping the party an insular
group. So he needs to find a way to build some bridges between
Lyman supporters and his supporters.
I think he can do it. He's been very competent as
a chair over the last two years. He's got good
political instincts and he's got the support of Donald Trump
and Mike Lee. That's going to help him
as he starts his next term.
Where does Phil Lyman go from here? It is
really hard to wash off the
stink of losing in politics, and Lyman has
managed to compress several campaign cycles worth
of election losses into just 11
months. To recap, he lost the Utah
GOP gubernatorial primary to Spencer Cox
last June. He followed that up with a third
place finish when he ran for governor
as a right in candidate. He finished third in
November and then he rounded that out by losing
to Rob Axon on Saturday and his bid
to become the chair of the Utah Republican Party. He's
already announced plans that he's going to run for Governor
again in 2028, but it's really
difficult to see how he's going to be able to
get voters to take him seriously. Over the past few
years, Lyman has aligned himself with political
crackpots here in Utah. Conspiracy
theorists, election deniers. Whoever is
behind his social media accounts are bomb
throwers who have turned off a lot of the middle
ground Republican voters that he's going to need
if he has any chance of
trying to appeal to a broader audience. And that's the
lesson that he should take away from. This past year
he's been running his campaign by focusing on a
very narrow group of supporters who are
with him. Ride or die. And these people are very
inflexible in their views. And that has made it difficult
for him to attract more casual voters who don't really know
much about him, but might have come across his Twitter
account or his Facebook page or or
wherever and have been turned off by what they've
seen. One of his chief advisors support
in this run for party chair was
Sophie Anderson and she was one of the
biggest election deniers in the state. Big
a conspiracy theorist after the 2020 election,
claiming that there was fraud in that election. His supporters have
a scorched earth's approach to politics
that does not translate to
broad support. It does not scream
mainstream appeal. He came really close to
winning the Republican Party chair
on Saturday, but I know that there were a lot
delegates who showed up simply to vote
against Phil. One delegate told me
his quote was and I thought this was great. I've had my fill
of Phil, but he asked me not to use his name in
my story because he was afraid of retribution by
Lyman supporters. That's the kind of
reaction that Lyman has caused over
the past year or so since he ran for
governor and party chair. And he's gonna have to find
a way to make voters forget about that
or take a step back from this aggressive style of politics.
The problem for Lyman is he doesn't have much of a platform
anymore. He's not in the legislature, he's not party
chair. And without that platform, it's going to be
very hard for him to attract new supporters.
When a candidate wants to rehabilitate
their image, they disappear for a while and let the
bad news fade into the past. Americans
have a very short attention span when it comes to
politics. Look at what's happening in the New York mayoral race right now.
Now, Andrew Cuomo, who was the governor of
New York, left office
disgraced because of controversies that surrounded
his administration. He's leading the race to
become the next mayor of New York City because
he faded into the background for a while. And there's
a large group of voters who aren't hyper
focused on politics and don't remember this stuff.
And frankly, the media loves a good
comeback story. So if Lyman can find
a way to rehabilitate his image,
or if he tries, I suspect he'll find at least some
media here in Utah who are willing to help
him with that. But it's gonna take some time
and it's gonna take a concerted effort to
try and undo a lot of the
damage that he's done to his brand over the
past year. I don't know if he can do it. I don't know if his supporters
will let him do it. But never say never.
Something happened on Saturday at the Republican
convention that got my antenna twitching. And there are
signs there's an effort going on in the
background of the Republican Party
to try and repeal SB
54, which is the 2014 law that
allows candidates to gather
signatures and bypass the caucus and
convention system. Now delegates hate
signature gathering because it
dilutes their power. Before there
was the path to gather signatures to
get on the ballot, it was a small group of delegates who
controlled access to the ballot, who
could run under the banner of the Utah GOP.
There are about 4,000 state level delegates in the
Utah GOP, and then fewer when you get down
to the county level. And before the signature
gathering path came along, those delegates had an
incredible amount of Power, an incredible amount of
influence over who would appear
on the ballot. And when there's no signature
gathering candidates, they have complete power
over which Republican candidates advance.
Last year, Senator Lincoln Fillmore, he needed
just 116 delegate votes
at the Salt Lake County Republican
Convention to win the party nomination.
He was challenged by another convention only candidate. There was
no signature gathering. Candidate got 116
votes. He wins. And then he ran
unopposed in November. In a lot of these
solidly Republican or even Democratic districts,
winning the delegate vote at the party convention is
pretty much winning the election in
November. Representative Candace Perucci
got got 68 votes last year at the
convention to fend off another
convention only challenger. She did have a Democratic
challenger, but Republicans outnumber
Democrats in that district almost 5 to 1.
So winning a convention was the hardest part of her
reelection race. Let's look at what happened with Representative
Ken Ivory last year in House District
39. He got a Republican
challenger, Lisa Dean, who collected
signatures to get on the primary ballot. If
she had not done that, Ivory would have won the
Republican nomination at convention outright
with just 38 votes from delegates.
Without the signature collecting path, Lisa Dean would have
been knocked out at convention and Ivory would have cruised
to another term. Instead, he was forced into his first
ever primary election. He won that fairly easily,
but he had never had to face a primary before.
I remember seeing him visibly upset at that
convention because he was facing a primary election in
the past. All he had to do was appeal to
38 delegates. That's it. That's all
he needed. So that's why delegates hate
the signature path. Anyway, back to the
convention. There was a proposal to change the Republican
Party constitution to say that any
candidate who collects signatures or
tries to collect signatures to get on the
ballot would have their membership in the
party stripped. They would be kicked out of the party.
That would have set up all sorts of problems for the
Utah GOP because they would have been in
direct conflict with state law.
Unexpectedly, at the beginning of the convention, the
sponsor of that proposal got up and
yanked it off the agenda. He said he wasn't moving forward.
And his reasoning was kind of cryptic where he
said he was recently made aware
of a better path that was coming forward.
And then when Senator Mike Lee got up to
introduce Rob Axon, he said something in
that speech that really set off alarm bells for
me.
>> Mike Lee: Mr. Governor, I ask you to convene a special
legislative session as soon as possible, bring
together the legislature and ask the legislature
to restore the caucus and
convention system. Do I call upon all within the
sound of my voice. If you agree with me, please
express it in any way you can to your state
senators, to your state representatives, anyone
else who will listen. Let's
reinstate the caucus and convention
system and tell the state, tell the government,
stay out of our nomination process. It doesn't belong to
you. Thank you very much.
>> Bryan Schott: You could dismiss what Lee said as simple
bluster, calling on the governor to
convene a special session to repeal SB
54. And perhaps maybe I'm reading too much into
it, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the guy who
wanted to change the rules of the party to kick
signature gathering candidates out,
abandon that effort. And then shortly thereafter,
you have Senator Mike Lee calling on the governor
to bring the legislature into special session to
repeal SB54. After his
win, Rob Axon was asked about this, and he
noted that there are enough votes in the House to repeal
the law. They're still working on the Senate.
>> Rob Axson: I'd like them to repeal that, but.
>> Bryan Schott: It sounds like that's not on the table.
>> Rob Axson: It is on the table, one side of the
Legislature. The votes are there in the House. The
votes are not there yet in the Senate. But it can't
be a vitriolic conversation. It's not threats.
It has to be a conversation that's transparent and
upfront and collaborative. If we can
show the value of what the Republican Party is doing
and trying to do and trying to grow and build additional
capacity, we make it a lot easier on these
elected officials to take the hard votes of repealing
SB54. It's going to take some time.
How long or how short that is, I don't know.
But what I do know is we have in our ability the.
The opportunity to build a strong party, and that will be a
benefit in repealing SB 54 or solving other
complex issues.
>> Bryan Schott: They said they're still working on getting enough votes in the Senate.
If that happens, I think the pressure
to call a special session is going to
be ramped up significantly
on Governor Cox, and here's why.
Candidate filing for the
2026 election starts
on January 2nd. That's the first day that
candidates can file. And if they wait until the
2026 session, which starts later in the month,
then they're gonna have problems because they will change the
rules on candidates who have already started to gather
signatures. If they want this to go into effect for
the next election cycle, they need
to do it before January 2nd.
Now, remember, SB54 was a
compromise. There was a group called Count My
vote, and they were pushing a ballot initiative that would
have gotten rid of the caucus and convention system for
nominating candidates. And we would have gone to a
direct primary where all candidates use petitions
to get on the primary ballot. Republicans
in the legislature saw that this was a problem. There was
polling at the time that showed this idea was
overwhelmingly supported by a majority
of Utahns. Had they been able to get the signatures
to get on the ballot, it would have
passed. And that's why they created this
compromise. And delegates have hated it ever since.
And if they were to hold a special session, say in the summer or
in the fall sometime, and repeal
SB54, then there would be no
signature gathering path for Republican candidates
in the 2026 election cycle.
And that would put a number of office holders
in real trouble because there were people who
are in office right now where signature gathering
saved their bac. Representative Blake Moore, who is
in leadership for the Republican caucus
in Congress. He would have a real
tough time winning another term if the signature
path goes away. He was defeated at the
convention last year, and signature
gathering is the only reason why he made it
through. I could be making too much of this. I could be connecting dots that
aren't there, but it really feels like Utah Republicans have a game
plan to try to get rid of the signature gathering path for
candidates for the 2026 election election.
I could be wrong, but this certainly feels like
there's something going on.
Unsurprisingly, Governor Spencer Cox and lieutenant Governor
Deidre Henderson did not show up for the convention.
And who can blame them? Cox was booed by delegates when he
showed up to speak at the convention in 2021.
He got trounced by Phil Lyman among the
delegate vote last year, and this is pretty much the same
group of delegates that were present last
year. I think it was smart for Cox not to show up because he would
have faced hostile reception. There was a large
contingent of Phil Lyman supporters who are still
fuming that he defeated Lyman for the party
nomination last year. The last thing he needed was
more video showing him being booed
and shouted down by members of his own party. So it
was probably a smart decision on his part to stay
away. It was even smarter for Lieutenant Governor
Deidre Henderson to skip the convention because
while Phil Lyman supporters do not like Cox, they
absolutely loathe. Henderson
has spent much of the last year falsely claiming
that Cox was an illegitimate candidate, that
the signatures he gathered to appear on the ballot were
fraudulent. He doesn't have any evidence for that. He's also
claimed without evidence that the machines used to count
the ballots in the primary were rigged
and that the election was rigged and that's why
Cox won. And he and his supporters
directly blame Lt. Gov.
Henderson, who oversees the state's elections for
those perceived seats. Sins for Lyman supporters,
Henderson has become a catch all for
government corruption. When they want to talk about government
corruption, they usually talk about
lieutenant Governor Henderson. And given
how many of them were in the audience
on Saturday, if she would have showed up,
it would have been like waving steak at a pack of rabid
dogs. So why would she want to show up?
Whoever it was who advised them to stay
away, they made the right choice choice. Their
absence was notable, but politically it
was absolutely the right choice.
That's all I got for this week. Before we go, I'd like to remind you
to subscribe to this podcast and leave us
a rating and review. Wherever you get your podcast,
Apple Podcasts, wherever that helps new listeners find the
show and helps us grow our audience. If you haven't
already, remember to sign up for my newsletter and
it's at Utah Political Watch News.
It's free, but you can also support my
work as an independent journalist by becoming
a paid subscriber for as little as
$5 a month. What I do takes time
and resources. This is my full time job and I
intend to keep doing it as long as
I can. But I can't do this for free.
I rely on subscribers in order to
keep doing what I'm doing. I don't have have a
billionaire telling me what I can and can't write. I'm not
worried every day that some big hedge fund is going to shut
me down. But that means I have to rely on
listeners on my audience to help
fund what I do. And if you can swing a
paid subscription or make a one time donation
to help me keep doing what I'm doing, I would sure
appreciate it. You can find that at Utah Political
Watch News. Also, if you
are a local business or no business and you'd
like to to support and sponsor this podcast,
let's talk My email. I've got it linked in the Show
Notes. I'd love to hear from you. Also, if you have any
feedback for the show, suggestions,
complaints, hate mail, a guest you want to hear
from, a topic you'd like me to cover, a question
I'd love to hear from you. Once again, my email is
in the Show Notes. Thank you so much
for listening. We'll be back next week.
Bryan out.
