Lt. Gov Henderson says some state GOP tactics are ‘taking us down the wrong path’

[Thiệu Ngô]

Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said Tuesday that the state Republican party “is using tactics too often that are taking us down the wrong path.”

By Annie Knox

Henderson made the comments while speaking on a panel about dignity in public discourse, and in response to a moderator asking for an example of someone “shining with brightness.”

“I have to give props to our governor right now,” Henderson replied. “Our governor, who leads a state and a party within our state that really, I think, is using tactics too often that are taking us down the wrong path.”

Henderson, a Republican, did not elaborate. Her remarks come against the backdrop of Utah’s Republican Party launching an effort to undo a voter-approved law at the center of the state’s current redistricting process ahead of the 2026 election.

Henderson told Utah News Dispatch last week the moves add uncertainty into the process and she fears that as a result, “we won’t have maps when we need them, or that we’ll have to change in the middle of a process.”

Utah GOP chairman Rob Axson told Utah News Dispatch Tuesday that “the ‘tactics’ we are taking are merely what the law says is available to us as we fight to protect the structural and constitutional order of the Republic nationally and here in our state.”

Earlier this year, top legislative leaders criticized Cox for vetoing a measure that would have allowed him to appoint and the Senate confirm Utah’s chief Supreme Court justice every four years, one of several measures focused on the judiciary after lawmakers publicly criticized the court’s decisions on redistricting and abortion. Cox signed a new version of the bill last week that extends the term to eight years.

On Tuesday, the lieutenant governor praised Gov. Spencer Cox as an example “of how to do it differently and how to do it better, and you don’t have to just fall in line with the national trend to be successful and to be impactful.”

As chair of the National Governor’s Association, Cox asked Americans to “disagree better” starting in 2023. After the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in September, he urged rejecting violence and division.

“This is our moment. Do we escalate, or do we find an off-ramp?” Cox said in a news conference after announcing the arrest of a suspect in Kirk’s killing. “It’s a choice.”

It was a contrast to the tone taken by President Donald Trump, who said he hoped for healing but also blamed the “radical left” for Kirk’s death.

Disagreeing while respecting others’ inherent worth, even despite gaping political differences, was the subject of Tuesday’s panel discussion hosted by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

It’s natural to respond with an attack when treated with contempt, acknowledged panelist Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics and a creator of the Dignity Index, a tool measuring speech on a scale from contempt to dignity.

“Is that the best way to win?” Shriver asked. “I suggest that’s worthy of a discussion, not because we want to temper our passions or because we want to create a moral equivalence between positions, but because we’ve got to figure out what’s going to work. It’s a practical question.”

He recalled a woman asking him, “What do you want from me? I hate hateful people.”

“Most people hate hateful people,” Shriver said. “And we think that’s the best strategy — hating them — because they’re so hateful. And we don’t quite snap out of it enough to realize we’ve become what we loathe.”

The audience at the panel discussion in Salt Lake City responded with laughter when Henderson shared aloud that her No. 1 rule is, “if it feels good, don’t say it.”

“It’s served me well,” Henderson said. “I have never once regretted not saying something mean that would have felt good in the moment. I have, however, regretted violating that rule, because I have violated that rule on occasion.”

Speaking about division that goes beyond disagreement and ends in political violence, Henderson said “it’s easy and tempting these days to give into despair. There’s a lot to be worried about, a lot to be concerned about, and it is tempting to feel like nothing we do matters because we’re just one person, but it’s such a dangerous attitude to have.”

“What we do will not solve all the problems,” she continued. “We do our little part anyway. There is a lot of darkness, but there’s also a lot of examples of light.”