SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This weekend marks the funeral of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kirk's shooting a week and a half ago shattered national politics and shattered a part of Utah politics' self-image. Governor Spencer Cox of Utah has been in the national headlines just about every day since the shooting, and he has long held a vision of a state sheltered from political violence. That outlook comes in part from his Latter-day Saints upbringing and its focus on community harmony. The September 10 assassination in Orem, Utah has changed all of that.
Orem is also the hometown of McKay Coppins, a staff writer for the Atlantic. Coppins spoke to Governor Cox about the recent violence that contrasts with the governor's vision of Utah. He wrote about it, and now he's here on our show to talk about it. McKay, welcome.
MCKAY COPPINS: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: I want to talk about what Cox has been saying. And in your article, you put that into a really thoughtful context of the history of Utah, the founding of Utah by its original Mormon settlers and the idea that they thought of this as an American scion. Can you talk about that general idea and how that is still reflected in prominent LDS politicians talking about Utah today, centuries later?
COPPINS: Yeah, there's always been this sort of exceptionalist idea to Utah as a place, as a state as an idea, right? The Mormon pioneers who settled the territory had been driven into the desert essentially from a campaign of state-sanctioned persecution in places like Illinois and Missouri and had settled Utah as a place that they wanted to be a haven from the political strife and violence and sin that they believed characterized the rest of the country.
So that idea was always there in Utah, and it's still reflected today. You know, in recent years, many of Utah's political leaders have made a concerted effort to position and sort of brand their state as a model of cooperation and consensus building and compromise. They call it the Utah way. They've hammered out a number of state bills and policies that are sort of detentes in the culture war on issues like LGBTQ rights and religious freedom, immigration, the environment.
And in that kind of political context, people like Spencer Cox and Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, sort of more moderate and genteel Republicans, have been able to thrive while the rest of the national party has sort of moved away from that brand of Republicanism.
DETROW: Yeah, and it is fair to say that's what Cox seemed to be thinking and talking about when he made that remark that got a lot of attention, that I had hoped that this person wouldn't be from Utah. And I should say that was paraphrased.
COPPINS: Well, I mean, it's basically what he said. And, you know, when I talked to Cox about that, he sort of rushed to clarify that he wasn't saying that because he hoped the shooter would be a politically convenient scapegoat.
DETROW: Yeah.
COPPINS: And that really wasn't what he meant, which is this place, this state, was supposed to be a sanctuary from this kind of politics. And there is something, I think, really unnerving for Spencer Cox and a lot of Utahans to see that this kind of wrathful bitter, mean, frightening turn that's taken place in our national politics has arrived in Utah as well.
DETROW: Yeah. You know, Cox's campaign, this Disagree Better campaign that he had been on and obviously has gotten a lot more attention in the last few weeks - this is the latest in a lot of very different ways that various prominent Mormon politicians from Utah have tried to counter the MAGA-type drift of the Republican Party and the way that national politics has gotten just a lot more nasty, right? What do you make of the fact that these various attempts kind of hit a wall when they go beyond Utah? And even as you report within Utah, within Utah politics, the current discourse is becoming more and more prominent.
COPPINS: You know, it's interesting. I actually profiled Spencer Cox last year for the Atlantic, and I spent a lot of time talking to him. And even then, last year, as he was running for reelection, he kind of confided to me that he was worried about what was happening in Utah politics. You know, he had this idea, this idealized vision of Utah, and he was seeing the conspiracy theories and the extremism kind of leech into his state and even to his own campaign, his primary campaign. And what he said to me last year was, there's been a breach in the bulwark.
And I think that with this shooting, with the very bitter recriminations that have followed, I think Spencer Cox is realizing even more than ever that this kind of attempt to circumvent the MAGA-fication of the GOP and promote a form of conservatism that is not rooted in grievance or culture war is really not very fashionable in this moment, right?
And it's worth noting that researchers who study these things have seen actually a decline in Latter-day Saint representation in Congress. You've seen people like Jeff Flake of Arizona, who retired rather than try to run in a Republican primary during the Trump era. And I think one of the driving factors in that is that the kind of stereotypical Mormon brand of Republicanism is just not well represented or very popular these days in the Republican Party.
DETROW: Have church leaders continued to try to take the same path that Cox is taking in this moment, trying to create a bulwark almost of an ability to disagree but get along?
COPPINS: Yeah, in fact, I think a lot of people would say that Spencer Cox is sort of taking his cues from a lot of the messaging that's been coming from Latter-day Saint religious leaders. The current president of the church, Russell M. Nelson, who's 101 years old, has spent kind of these last years of his life and tenure repeatedly hammering this message that Christians are called to be peacemakers.
And he gave a kind of totemic talk on this subject several years ago, called Peacemakers Needed, calling on Latter-day Saints to avoid the increase in bitterness and anger in our politics to try to build bridges of understanding across political divides. And this is a very kind of top-of-mind discussion within Mormonism, not just in politics, but in churches in the pews. I hear about it almost every Sunday when I go to church.
DETROW: That is Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins. Thank you so much.
COPPINS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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