Eyebrows were raised with some concern this week after a Republican governor of a solidly red state was heard to have unironically adopted and made use of phrases and terminology typically espoused by radical leftist activists.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) has drawn the ire of some conservatives after stating his “preferred pronouns” and using Critical Race Theory buzzwords in a resurfaced virtual town hall event with students last year, Breitbart reported.
He said what?
A conservative Twitter user in Utah sparked controversy about the governor this week when a shortened and edited video clip was posted that featured Gov. Cox sharing his “preferred pronouns” of “he, him, and his” with a self-identified “bisexual woman” student who had shared her preferred pronouns before asking a question.
Utah “republican” Governor Spencer Cox shares his preferred pronouns with students to teach kids leadership with Equity & Inclusion#utpol @GovCox @SpencerJCox #Utah pic.twitter.com/ioLWv7WC4r
— Adam Bartholomew 🗨️ (@lifeisdriving) April 5, 2022
The video also briefly showed Cox discussing “equity and inclusion” — terms favored by leftist activists who espouse the anti-white Critical Race Theory teachings.
Breitbart noted that those and other remarks from the governor were uttered in April 2021 during a #OneUtah Student Town Hall event broadcast live on Facebook.
Giving his GOP supporters “heartburn”
Carson Jorgenson, chair of the Utah Republican Party, told Breitbart of Cox’s comments, “I don’t know if I would call it buyer’s remorse, but there’s a lot of people who are having heartburn because this is not what they signed up for.”
“Right now, the governor is out of step with what people in the state and especially Republicans in the state really feel,” he continued. “As a state party, we want to support him, but this is not something we can support. And this is not something the majority of Republicans and the majority of people — not just Republicans here in the state — are in for.”
Jorgenson further pointed to another incident from 2021 in which Cox had fought to maintain control over school boards and suggested that the governor’s desire to exert control over education paired with his use of leftist terminology was upsetting to some of his constituents.
“This is why people are upset. The school board races here in Utah are pretty heated because we want to have control, and the populace wants to have control over what goes into our curriculum and what our children are learning in school,” he said. “And when we start hearing the governor, you know, using the Democratic [buzz words] and using preferred pronouns to speak to little kids … [it] has a lot of people on edge.”
Not the first time
Breitbart noted that the resurfacing of this video from last year shouldn’t be all that surprising given the fact that Gov. Cox has been open about his support for the LGBTQ+ community for some time, as was expressed in a June 2021 interview with Deseret News about his decision to formally designate June as a month in honor of that community.
On multiple occasions in that interview, the governor made use of leftist activist-favored terms and signaled his disagreement with many Republicans on the gender identity/sexual orientation issue, going beyond mere acceptance and tolerance to instead champion such ideas while subtly denigrating those with different views on the matter.
