The opposing candidates in Utah’s gubernatorial race released joint ads on Tuesday calling for voters to embrace civility and decide November’s elections without violence or animosity toward their political adversaries.
Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox (R) and law professor Chris Peterson (D) appeared in a pair of short videos posted online by both candidates, asking viewers together to “show the country that there’s a better way.”
“We can debate issues without degrading each other’s character,” Peterson says.
“We can disagree without hating each other,” adds Cox.
I’m not sure this has ever been done before…but as our national political dialogue continues to decline, my opponent @PetersonUtah and I decided to try something different. We can disagree without hating each other. Let’s make Utah an example to the nation. #StandUnited#utpol
There are quite a few articles about this around-- I looked for one that wasn’t paywalled.
YESYESYES! Civility has been missing too long from public discourse. Bring back civility!
While this is good, I suspect this is only possible because one candidate (Cox) holds an immense lead, 28 percentage points. Therefore neither candidate has anything to lose by taking the high road. Both can look good, and both know it won’t change the race a bit.
If it were some tight, narrow, hotly-contested race, it may be totally different.
I don’t know what the candidate’s platforms in Utah state. I do know that in my state, one of the candidates for Governor opposes efforts to contain Coronavirus (that is, he wants to kill me and people like me), opposes democratic elections, wants to dissolve the marriages of some of my friends, and wants to openly discriminate against other of my friends… just as a start. And as red as Utah is, I suspect that at least one of the candidates there is similar.
I think that if a candidate wants ME to show them no animosity, they have to first stop showing animosity towards me and the people close to me. And that means abandoning the pro-COVID stance, abandoning all attempts to encourage and protect discrimination against LGBT groups, embracing free and fair elections, and the like. I don’t consider wishing harm on me to be ‘civil’ behavior even if someone cloaks it in doublespeak, and these calls to avoid animosity ring hollow because of that.
And I’m perfectly fine with pointing out the degraded nature of the character of someone who opposes free and fair elections, encourages COVID spreading, and embraces outright bigotry. Treating those as legitimate positions that we need to give equal weight is dangerous.