Disagree Better
Episode 2 Utah Governor Spencer Cox—Main Street Idaho Podcast Season 3
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Live from the Governor's Mansion in Salt Lake City, Utah, Governor Spencer Cox sits down with our host, Brennan Summers, to share about his background in public service and his time as the Governor of Utah. Governor Cox explains his bipartisan initiative, Disagree Better, emphasizing respectful conflict resolution to grow healthier political relationships with friends, family, and disagreeing parties from across the aisle.
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(00:11):
Welcome to the Idaho Main Street podcast. We're recording live today here in the Governor's mansion in Salt Lake City, Utah with Governor Spencer Cox. Governor, thanks so much for joining us, Brandon. It's great to be with you. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I'm glad that you would lum it down south of the border with the good people of Utah I 15 construction is what we endured for you today. I'm glad you made it. We're grateful to have you here in the mansion. Yeah, this feels full circle for me because I picked up on the Coxon Friends podcast from day one, and I loved that atmosphere being able, it's like you and my mom are the only two people. That's right. That's right. Those two. I loved the atmosphere for what you and your friends were able to create, talking about important issues in a way that felt just very comfortable for people.
(00:53)
Well, I miss it, and so I'm glad we get to do this. We may have to fire the old Coxin friends up sometime, but this is the next best thing. Is this a hint? Is there a chance? No. Well, not right now. Maybe second term we'll see. All right. I guess you are pretty busy with other things. A lot going on right now. It's good. Good, good. This is the Idaho Main Street podcast, so some of our listeners, largely Idahoans over their plates of mashed potatoes right now are wondering what's a Utah governor getting on this podcast? But you have a lot of connection to the Gem State. I do. Obviously Utah and Idaho just have a lot of connection always. We always have. From the early days, the settlers that came, those pioneers that came across, and almost everyone I know from Utah has family in Idaho and vice versa.
(01:38)
So we spent a lot of time in Idaho and just really, really, I spent a few weeks between my junior and senior year at what was in Rick's College. It was called the Summer Honors Institute, and that was four or five weeks that I was there that that was a pretty magical summer for me as well. So yeah, love the Gem State's because you were in Rexburg in the summer and not the winter. That's why it was magical. That's why we loved it. Well, as Utah State grad, I mean Logan Rexburg, it's very similar. We did. I tried to get a couple of minutes in this podcast for you and I embellishing our Aggie roots, but we did it. We're here. Go Aggies. That's right. All right. So it's not just the fact that we're geographical neighbors. We got a lot in common, a lot of businesses going across borders.
(02:18)
What's it been like working with Governor little as neighbors, governing neighbors? So it's incredible. My time with Governor Little actually started when we were both Lieutenant governors and it's interesting because our elections are not at the same time we are on the presidential cycle. You are not. It was great for me to kind of model things after what was happening there. So you had a lieutenant governor who was running for governor, very similar kind of state, similar atmosphere, watched similar opponents, almost even. You had Tommy, the business guy who was running, who had lots of money. You had an established member of Congress. There were just so many similarities, and I love Governor Little. We worked together as Lieutenant Governors very closely. We've worked together very closely as governors on WGA, the Western Governor's Association, the National Governor's Association that I chaired, and I've learned a lot from him.
(03:20)
He may have learned a few things from me, but we certainly talk often and share the similar challenges and opportunities. Yeah, sure. So many similarities there. You actually came up and spent some time at the Idaho National Lab recently. What was that like? Yeah, loved it. Loved the Idaho National Lab. We're a little jealous of that lab, but the strength of the lab lies in our ability to collaborate together, and I think Utah brings something to the lab that helps both of us and we care deeply about energy. It's one of the biggest issues facing our country right now. I don't think enough people understand the energy demand curve that we're facing right now. And the only way, if you care about our economies, you care about the environment at all. We need nuclear power, and so we're all in and we have so much to learn from INL and the great people there.
(04:15)
Yeah, I know there's some really good collaborative partnerships between the state that are breaking out when it comes to energy and things like that. To our listeners that aren't familiar with your origin story, you've got an initial one, you'll be very uncomfortable with this comparison, but to those that study your coming to be in public service, it fills at times like Washington called Off the Plantation, but instead it's Spencer called Off the Cattle Farm in Fairview, starting as a city councilman and then a mayor of Fairview and then into county commissioner. What was it about having such close proximity in your early days of public service that kept you from just hanging it up and then calling it good then? Well, look, I'll quote another founding father. I'm a Jefferson guy, and Jefferson believed that the power closest to the people was always the best, the most important, and I was grateful for that.
(05:06)
So my dad was on the city council when I was a kid growing up, and then he was the mayor of our little town, town of Fairview, about 1200 people. I was always really proud of that, but then realized everybody's dad was on the city council at some point, we kind of took turns and that's how it works. And so when I decided to move back after law school in Virginia, came back home, worked for a big law firm and realized my wife and I, who grew up on a ranch in the town next to us, we went to high school together. We wanted to raise our kids on a farm. We wanted them to have the same upbringing that when I moved back, it was six months later that they asked me to be on the city council. There was a vacancy and they were pointing somebody, and I just felt really honored that they would ask me and turns out they couldn't get anybody else to do it.
(05:50)
That was the main reason. And they needed some legal help for, they couldn't afford an attorney. So it was doing free legal work for the town. It just felt like giving back. One of the things that both Idaho and Utah have in common is this service. We lead the nation in service and charitable giving every year. It's kind of part of our DNA from the time where we're young. And having seen it with my own dad, it was a chance to give back to the community that had given me everything I was grateful for that never expected to be here. That was not part of a lot of people. A lot of governors from the time they were five years old, knew that they were going to be governor someday and worked towards that, had a life plan to that the accidental governor in every sense.
(06:36)
After county commission, I ran for the House of Representatives, got elected, and I was only there for nine months when our lieutenant governor resigned, governor Herbert out of nowhere, I barely knew him, asked me to be his lieutenant governor, and that was the shocker that no one expected. But I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world and grateful that we governor little and I get to represent the best people on earth. And it does feel like at times you stumbled into the job, but very well prepared. And as you look back, do you find yourself saying, if I didn't have that experience sitting on the city council in Fairview, then I would maybe look at this problem on a state level a little different. Oh, sure. Yeah. In fact, I wish there was a requirement that everybody who runs for legislative office or for Congress or for governor, any higher office in the land, I wish there was a requirement that they had to have prior local public service at the city or county level changes everything.
(07:31)
I can tell you that the best legislators I know are former mayors, city council members, county commissioners. They understand that this isn't like an episode of West Wing a game when you're dealing with a 29 billion budget, we are, those numbers don't even feel real. And unless you understand that everything you do has a consequence, then you kind of don't get it. But when you go to the post office or the grocery store and you have to look people in the eye, if your phone's ringing at two in the morning because the neighbor's dog's barking, somebody neighbor's dog is barking. That's real. That's real to people. And I try really hard never to forget that I had an employee at the city. We had eight employees, or maybe not even, maybe it was like six and two of them were part-time, small town. But he always said, every day I ask myself, is the widow Madson proud of what I did today because she's paying for me on a fixed income, has nothing.
(08:46)
Her husband passed away. I love Widow Matson. I was friends with her daughter. So I've always thought of that. It's easy to say, yeah, let's spend here. Let's do this, but would the widow Matson be happy with what I'm doing today? And I'm grateful for that background and that upbringing because we talk a lot on the podcast about architects versus arsonists and at the local government level, it's really hard to be an arsonist. It's really hard to just burn things down, but no, on everything and not care. But you got city employees relying on you to get it right, whether you're organizing Easter egg hunt or you're making sure fire and police are taken care of, you can't just vote knowing everything, right? That's right. And I love the architects and Arsonist framework. I use it all the time. Builders and destroyers, and look, there are architects that are on the far right, the far left, the middle, and there are arsonists, lots of arsonists on the far left and the far right.
(09:37)
And there are arsonists in the middle too, people that just want to tear down. It's interesting. You're right about the local level for sure. Congress has too many arsonists and we see that governors, it's a little harder. There are certainly some of those, but mostly if you're a governor, you have to get stuff done. And we like to say that potholes aren't partisan, and there's this competition between 50 states. I want my state to be the best. I don't wants to be the best. And so we're constantly stealing ideas. And I will say that is true, not just Republicans stealing ideas from other Republicans, but across party lines. If somebody's figured something out that's working, we want to do it and we want to do it better than them. So I like that competition piece as well. I think it's important, but certainly just solving problems is why I got into government, and I hate that it's getting harder to solve problems and it's driving away some of our very best people.
(10:35)
And I hope we can turn that around. Which leads us right into your initiative. You just finished as chairman of the National Governor's Association, and you got to pick, you could decide, are you going to talk about federal overreach? Are you going to talk about public lands issues? You could talk about some of the great work that the First Lady's doing with showing up for Utah, foster families, public education, a lot of good priorities. How did you land on disagree better? Yeah, we actually had several good ideas. I remember sitting actually upstairs here, the governor's mansion with my team, and we were whiteboarding some issues, pros and cons. I was really close to doing something around the rising cost of healthcare. The one that I kind of actually landed on though was critical minerals and energy policy and how we're doing it poorly and how we could do it better.
(11:28)
And then we had had this other idea in the back of our mind and one of my team members just said, Hey, I love all of these ideas, but the problem is we can't solve any of our biggest problems today if we all hate each other. And with the arson is not even a word. The arson that's just happening in the federal government that we're seeing, we desperately need to change that. Things that we saw during election cycles, both at the federal level and the state level and that thus was born disagree better. We had no idea what we were getting into. We weren't sure anybody would care. Anybody would listen to us. And so we launched the initiative and it was really fascinating to see there is a hunger out there for this. One of the first meetings we had before we even launched, just to kind of get some good ideas, we brought together all of these groups across the country who were doing what we affectionately call a depolarization work.
(12:32)
And these were groups on the right and the left and the middle, and we brought them all together in a room and it was incredible. Two things were incredible. One to see the work that they were actually doing was amazing. Groups like Braver Angels and More in Common, just so cool to see the things that they're working on. But two, they'd never been in a room together and many of them kind of toiling in obscurity. They've been doing it for years, and they were so excited and so grateful that finally there was a convener at a national level who had a platform that could elevate the work that they were doing. And so we didn't want to go in and recreate everything. We didn't want to take credit for the work that they were doing. We just wanted to elevate them, try to get them more resources and learn from them.
(13:22)
And that's what we were able to do. We learned that 70% of Americans hate what's happening in politics right now. So there really is. We used to refer to kind of the silent majority in our country. We affectionately call them the exhausted majority now. And we were working with some of these amazing labs universities. So Stanford has an incredible depolarization lab. Duke is doing great work in this space. Dartmouth as well. We were able to work with some of these researchers that are just brilliant and figuring out how we can depolarize this crazy cycle that we're in. And it's been fun work. I've loved it. And we ended up having to say no to hundreds of opportunities to speak to a peer in different news stations. And it renewed my hope. I guess I can say that in our country because it's important to outline what this is and what it's not.
(14:25)
So you came out and said, people have forgotten how to persuade and without hating each other and without fighting. And what disagree better is not is. It's not asking anybody to water down their police and passions. And it's not, as you just mentioned about ideology. It's not about asking everybody just to step to the middle and just meet me in the middle. It's not about conformity, it's about solutions. It's about engaging our mutual friend, Claire Canfield at Utah State. He teaches on the beauty of conflict if you do it right. Yeah, my former roommate, I have to say, it's no college. That's right. And we went to high school together. So the beauty of conflict, I love that we talked a lot about healthy conflict. Conflict has kind of a negative connotation, but it's not, conflict is neutral. There's healthy and then there's unhealthy conflict.
(15:11)
And I love Claire's framing of that. And you were able to kind of engage people on this different level where this wasn't policy or political, it's just about practice, about how we disagree and how we engage. Typically, when we think of leaders, we look at strong leaders are the ones that can enact conformity. We think of the strong leader that's standing in front of the troops yelling. And at times I think those who've been critical have viewed disagree better as not a strong man, as kind of a softer sensitive approach to politics. That's not the case. In your perspective, you view this as essential part of leadership. Why is that? Yeah. It's interesting that the criticisms that have come, and I do, I always start by defining disagree better by what it's not right. And it's not about just being nicer to each other, although we certainly need that.
(15:59)
It's not another civility initiative, at least the way we perceive civility. I think civility properly understood is about conflict and healthy conflict and conflict resolution. But the true answer is it's the only way to do this. It is the only way that works and it isn't easy. To those who think this is soft or squishy or whatever, they could not be more wrong. There is nothing easier than just listening to Fox News or M-S-N-B-C and then regurgitating whatever they told you to say last night. This is real work, and it takes strong leaders to actually pull it off. And I don't always get it right. It's so much easier to set up a straw man to tear down the other side instead of actually understanding where the other side is coming from and then trying to persuade them. And that's what we used to do better as a country.
(16:49)
It's certainly what we've gotten away from. But there is nothing new about disagree, better. This is as old as there have been human beings in families. This goes back to the very beginning, depending on where you believe the beginning is. But this is about two brothers fighting about killing each other in the Bible. It is about if you've ever, as I did, I was in business for a long time, if you've ever been a leader of people in that space, it is about conflict resolution, but it's more important now than ever before because the Constitution was set up to drive this. There's an incredible book that everyone should read by one of my favorite authors that just came out, Yuval Lavin. You should read his prior book called A Time to Build, which is about what we've been talking, how institutions are failing and we're becoming more polarized.
(17:42)
But this book that just came out, it's called American Covenant. It's about the constitution and how the Constitution was designed to drive us towards building consensus. That's why it's so frustrating to us. And we think that frustration is a flaw that we can't get anything done in Washington dc, that we have these different institutions, this balance checks and balances that make it really hard to get stuff done. But that was purposeful because they wanted to drive us to actually having to engage with those. As Yuval says, those damn people, we hope we will win this election, and then we never have to talk to those people anymore. Well, no, the Constitution says, you always have to talk to those people. If you want to do the thing you want to do, you actually have to talk to those people. And that's frustrating, but it's so important.
(18:33)
And sadly, we've kind of gotten away from that. But this has been, again, a renewal of hope to me that we can engage with people who are different than us, not ever give up on our principles at all, stay true to who we are, but do so in a way that shows dignity and respect and recognizes that those people are our people. That we are Americans first and foremost, and we need to remember that. And the critics may say, and they have that the Constitution is hanging by a thread that this is the time where we have to fight with everything we've got and that things are getting worse than ever. And so it's not time to disagree better, it's the time to get stuff done. But you think that those are actually mutually inclusive, that in order to get stuff done, we actually have to disagree better.
(19:26)
And not only that, but far too often the people who are screaming that the Constitution is just hanging on are the ones cutting the courts, the threads and then saying, oh, look, the constitutions not doing what it's supposed to do. And I've been burning it down. I've been the one doing that. And so again, I think that's the piece. Not only are they not mutually exclusive, it's kind of the other way around. The way to save our constitution and our constitutional republic is to actually engage. What's happening now is there are two things that happen. One, if we do engage at all, we just yell at each other. We don't speak the same language, we just yell past each other. That's bad. But I think it's even worse when we just stop engaging at all. And I see that a lot. I hear that more from the left.
(20:17)
Why would I speak to those people? Those people don't care about me, don't want anything to do with me. Those people are racist, sexist, whatever. And when you do that, then we truly are in trouble. And sadly, every election becomes the most important election in our nation's history because so much is riding on that. We have to win. We have to destroy the other side. We have to hold them accountable. It was never supposed to be that way. And too much is riding on these, and it's a razor thin margin, right? Last, well, I mean, going back the past 20 years and longer, it's razor thin margins In every election. No party learns any lessons from the election. We have two minority parties that just hate each other, and neither of them lose as bad enough to do anything different. They just know they'll win the next time because they're not the other party and the other party's so bad.
(21:14)
So that's kind of where we find ourselves right now. And that's not healthy. It's not, we should be looking to build durable coalitions that will last. And to be able to do that, sometimes you have to compromise. But compromise is seen as a bad word. And what I'm saying is you can get 80% of what you want, and that's good, versus getting zero of what you want and tearing our country apart. My old boss, Congressman Simpson would always say anyone that refuses to compromise or says they never has never been married or is not currently married. And so we're capable of compromising in some facets of life, but in the public service. Yeah, and he's absolutely right. And also show me somebody who's never willing to compromise, and I will show you someone who never wins. That's just how it works. So what you're speaking of here is political tribalism, right?
(22:01)
This idea that people are isolating themselves to the voices that only make them feel good. Is it getting worse? Yes and no. And I'll explain why. So it's definitely getting worse. There's no question that we're seeing this polarization happening. We're seeing, if you look at Congress, for example, which raise their thin margin there as well, right? You've got a four person majority. Nobody knows what's going to happen in the next election. It looks likely that right now, if the election were held today that Republicans are going to get West Virginia and Montana. We've got a four point lead there. So we end up with a one vote margin there. The house, who knows? I mean, it's possible that we lose the house and then the presidential, no one knows. So we're probably headed to divided government again. So yes, the ranker is getting louder. Social media is getting worse for sure.
(22:59)
It's much easier to be polarized today to surround yourself only with people whose voices are just like yours. And so that part is definitely getting worse. But there are some signs of hope, and that is, again, more and more people are tired of what's out there. So we have a market failure. No one is trying to fill that void, that market failure. Neither party seems interested in doing that, but somebody's going to figure it out at some point. And when they do, I think they'll win by huge margins. I think if the Republicans, I'm hoping it's the Republicans that figure it out in the 2028 election, when we have new candidates coming in and new ideas, there's a possibility of that. I look at some governors out there like Governor Glenn Jenkin in Virginia, somebody I like who has an incredible approval rating right now in Virginia, which is a purple state, maybe even a blue state.
(23:53)
I mean, Biden won by 10 points there, I think. And so I think there are some people like that. We've heard on the left. I'm trying not to be completely biased. Somebody like Josh Shapiro, who's a governor in Pennsylvania, a great guy, incredibly high approval rating. There are people, Wes Moore in Maryland has a very high approval rating. Good guy who's a builder. And so there are leaders out there, and I'm hopeful that as a country, we will find those leaders eventually. And we may not be able to legislate a fix here, but there are some things that you're doing that may be able to help. And you talk about social media. Talk briefly to maybe some of the stuff Utah's doing when it comes to youth and social media that may be able to address some of these problems. Yeah, look, we are, we care deeply about free speech.
(24:40)
That's not what this is about. But if another book, the Anxious Generation by Jonathan, he who I recommend. Great book. Yeah, great book, great guy, incredible researcher. I tell people, if you're a parent, you have to read it. If you're grandparent, you have to read it. If you're a teacher, you have to read it. If you're aunt and uncle, you have to read it. If you're going to have kids someday, you have to read it. It's the best book ever written on this issue about how social media is really destroying our kids, their mental health. It's so bad. And we're trying to hold social media companies accountable. Sadly, these companies knew they were doing this. They knew it was bad, and they hid it. I believe very strongly that they are the tobacco companies of the fifties and sixties. They're the opioid companies of the nineties and two thousands.
(25:24)
They knew that they were addicting and destroying our kids, and they did it anyway. They have the ability to make kid accounts, youth accounts that don't have the addictive features that allow them to still connect with people, which is important, but not beyond them all day. So we have passed some historic legislation. We're being sued, so we'll go through those lawsuits right now. We're also working to get phones out of schools. Again, some of the research that Jonathan het has shared is that kids do so much better when they don't have their phones and trying to get bell to bell as well. It's important that during lunchtime and recess, they also don't have their phones. So they can actually connect and have conversations and the learning improves. Bullying goes down in these schools where they've done that. Test scores go up, parents are happier, kids are happier.
(26:14)
Not the first week, the first week, it's like taking cigarettes away or alcohol away from an addict, drugs away from an addict cold Turkey. But by week two, there's so much happier and better off and that the whole environment at the school changes, and it's really cool to see it happening. I love to hear it. We love the optimistic message, this message of hope. You've got a lot of things on your calendar today, and you've been very, very gracious to give us some of your time. So as we wrap up today, what's kind of the last word you want to give revolving this message of things can get better if we engage better. So look, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. There's so much to be excited about. We get focused on the negative, but most people are really good people, especially in Idaho and especially in Utah.
(27:02)
And I mean that sincerely. Every time I get a chance to be out and see the good, I just want to share this. So I grew up in a small town. I mentioned five little towns go to the same high school. There were 110 people in my graduating class. We had our 30 year reunion last year. It was great to see everybody again. Two days ago, we had a terrible storm flash flooding in one of those little towns, fountain Green, a town of, I don't know, 600 people, somewhere around there, 700 people. And I think we don't have a final count, but probably half the homes in that town had basements that flooded anywhere from two or three inches to nine feet. A basement's completely full. And I went down there that night and I watched as the people who had four inches in their basement went to tell the people who had eight feet in their basement, people from every town, every community nearby came, fire department showed up, pumping out basements, tearing out carpet, tearing down drywall, and it's just, it renewed again.
(28:05)
My hope for us as a people, my hope for our nation, we have the two best economies in the country between Idaho and Utah. We're two of the fastest growing states, which brings challenges. But we can solve those challenges. Every single one of those challenges, we need a prosperity agenda. And the nation is hungry for what Idaho and Utah have right now. I hear it all of the time. That's why people are coming here, and that's something that we should be proud of. And I'm grateful that you guys are doing incredible work in Idaho. Congratulations for all of this, the main street stuff you're working on, and thanks for letting a Utah kid hang out with the cool kids from MI Idaho. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. We ran out of time to talk about Utah State playing USC in a couple of weeks and get your take on that or the jazz off season. There's so many things, any of it. Anytime you want to turn this into a sports podcast, you just let me know and I am You're here for it. All in all in. Well, let's wrap up with, there's an old quote from Sam Rayburn, old speaker of the house from Texas who used to say, any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one. So we appreciate what you're doing to go out and build barns, especially here. Love that. Thanks governor, man. Appreciate your time.
