After the Utah Supreme Court refused to declare him the rightful Republican nominee for governor, write-in candidate Phil Lyman is taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, a last-minute and unlikely attempt to have Gov. Spencer Cox disqualified from the election which is now just two weeks away.
In August, Lyman filed an emergency petition to the Utah Supreme Court asking the justices to nullify Cox’s primary election victory. The court, without hearing a response from attorneys for Cox or the state, dismissed the suit a few days later in a six-page opinion that said Lyman failed to state a legal claim or factual basis for his demands.
“His request is based on a view that the Republican Party’s internal rules trump Utah’s election laws, a claim we rejected [previously],” Chief Justice Matthew Durrant wrote for the state’s high court.
Now Lyman, a Republican state representative, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that he should have been the Republican nominee without having to go to the June primary with Cox, arguing because he received more than two-thirds of the vote from delegates at the Utah Republican Party nominating convention.
Utah law, however, says that candidates may also qualify for the primary by gathering signatures — 28,000 of them, in the case of statewide office — and Cox, as well as U.S. Senate candidate John Curtis and Attorney General candidate Derek Brown, did that.
Because the state administers primaries, state law governs the processes for those elections, not Republican Party rules. Republican Party Chair Rob Axson has said that the party forwarded Lyman’s name to appear on the ballot, as required by law, and that is the end of the party’s role.
Cox won the June primary by nearly 38,000 votes — or 54% to 46%.
Read the full story at sltrib.com.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.