The proposed congressional redistricting map has passed the Legislature and now awaits Gov. Spencer Cox’s signature. Cox said during a virtual town hall Tuesday night that he planned to approve it because the Legislature passed it with enough votes to overturn a veto.
But the roughly 100 people gathered in protest outside the state Capitol Wednesday night said that wasn’t a good enough reason.
The map is controversial because it splits Salt Lake County into all four of the state’s districts. That makes them all solidly Republican.
“It shows he's not a leader,” said Sarah Buck from Salt Lake City. “Leaders do hard things and he's saying he won't do the right thing because he doesn't think he can peel away one vote. A leader could.”
But Former Republican lawmaker Holly Richardson said it makes sense that Cox wouldn’t spend political capital on a veto, when that veto wasn’t likely to change the outcome of the map.
Richardson said that’s a move that could hurt some relationships with lawmakers.
“That's one of the issues that you face with a super-supermajority state,” she said, referring to the fact that the GOP controls almost 80% of the seats in the Legislature — more than enough for a veto-proof majority. “You have a political party that's in power that doesn't actually need to work with the other party … Sometimes you get good bills, but sometimes you get bills that are really heavily favored by the party in power.”
Richardson said the Cox administration has a closer relationship with the Legislature than past administrations, possibly because he and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are both former lawmakers.
