State Rep. Phil Lyman lost the Republican primary for Utah governor by nearly 40,000 votes in June. While he is currently pursuing several legal challenges to Gov. Spencer Cox’s voting credentials, he will now launch a mail-in ballot campaign to replace the state’s top official.
In a social media post on Sunday afternoon, Lyman responded to a supporter: “I will run in the general election in November as an ineligible candidate.” He then told another supporter: “There is a real conservative option.”
“The only option we have is to pursue what is available to us, which is through the courts and possibly through a mail-in ballot,” Lyman told the Salt Lake Tribune. The doubts he raised about the election without much evidence were “positive” for his campaign, he said.
On Monday, as part of one of his ongoing court cases related to the election, he asked the Utah Supreme Court to block the state from printing ballots until it rules on a case in which Lyman is asking the justices to oust Cox and Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, the state’s top election official, and remove them from November’s ballots. If Lyman prevails, U.S. Rep. John Curtis — who is running for Senate — would also be removed from the ballot.
Lyman believes the party’s nominees for top office should be those who received more than 60 percent of the delegate vote at the Utah Republican Party’s nominating convention in April, not those elected by more than 425,000 Republican voters in the June primary.
In a press release Monday, Lyman accuses Henderson of “abuse of office by creating a fraudulent ballot,” a third-degree felony.
At the convention, Lyman secured just over two-thirds of the delegate vote, defeating Cox, who was on the ballot with over 28,000 voter signatures. Cox emerged from the primary with 54.4% of the Republican vote.
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This article is published by the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of Utah news organizations dedicated to informing readers across the state.
