- Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, spoke about the 2024 election and how to make friends across the aisle.
- In an age when more than half of members of the opposite party would rather have a colonoscopy than dine with either President-elect Donald Trump or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Murphy and Cox weighed in on how to make things better.
- Cox said the 2024 election was an 'earthquake election.'
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy cracked jokes and spoke seriously about the 2024 election as they sat alongside one another on Tuesday at the University of Virginia, as part of the Democracy Dialogues series.
Cox explained why he thought President-elect Donald Trump won the election, what disappointed him about both presidential campaigns, and why he and his wife, Utah first lady Abby Cox, are “12 years sober” from cable news, calling it “the best move we ever made.”
“I mean this sincerely. Our marriage got better, our family got stronger. There was more of joy in life because of that,” Cox said.
Murphy spoke about his relationship with President-elect Trump, why the Democratic Party is like the end of “The Godfather,” and his worries about the next six months. Both governors weighed in on the relationship between the federal government and the states.
Colonoscopy or dinner with Donald Trump?
One of the moderators, UVA politics professor Jennifer Lawless, said she surveyed possible Democratic and Republican candidates and found they were much more likely to say they’d rather do an array of unpleasant things than sit for dinner with a politician from the opposite party — for the Democrats, Donald Trump, and for the Republicans, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
More than 50% of Democrats said they’d rather have a colonoscopy than sit down to dinner with Trump, and about the same number of Democrats said they’d rather be audited by the IRS. For Republicans, a colonoscopy also “won out” over dinner with Ocasio-Cortez, Lawless said. She asked Cox and Murphy, “What do you do with this?”
Murphy said he and his wife Tammy Snyder Murphy “have had dinner with Donald Trump.” The president-elect spends a lot of time at his property in Bedminster, New Jersey, Murphy pointed out.
“He’s a very different animal privately than he is publicly, which is fascinating to us,” Murphy said. “I spoke to him last Monday to congratulate him, and again, the private conversation versus the pro
nunciations ... . In other words, we ourselves play that game. We say things up on a stage to get people riled up that are probably at least packaged in a way that is more excessive, or more extreme than where we are.”
But Murphy was a little less positive about the relationship between Congress, the executive branch and the states over the coming year, saying the country would have a “fascinating” next “six months to a year, if not longer.”
“This is going to be one of the most fascinating chapters in our country’s history. The interplay between the executive branch and, I think, Congress alongside of it, and governors over here, is going to be an incredible source of tension,” he said.
Cox replied, breaking the tension, “I’m excited to see my Democratic colleagues get really excited about federalism again.”
Cox and Murphy on the 2024 election
Murphy pointed out that Trump did much better in New Jersey in 2024 than he — or other Republicans — had in recent years. He said Trump “brilliantly played some cards.”
On the coming policies from a Republican Congress and executive branch, Murphy said he wouldn’t support deportation of migrants in the country illegally or Medicare reforms, but said he was interested to see what Republicans would do on tax relief and industrial policy.
To Cox, the 2024 election, with its realignment of Black and Hispanic voters, was a harbinger of change.
“I do think this is an earthquake election,” he said.
“Look, I’ve had a lot of people on the left try to tell me not to read too much into this, it was only a couple points,” Cox said.
“We have not seen this in years, in decades, and I think there are lessons to be learned from this,” he said.
To Cox, Americans were voting for an “abundance agenda,” in the hopes that the country could “start building again.”
“We used to be really good at building stuff, you guys, so good. That’s what made
this country so special. We’re terrible at it now. We have choked, through overregulation, through burdensome regulation and taxation, we are slowly killing that American idea, that American dream,” he said.
He pointed to a transmission line he started working on in 2008 as a county commissioner that was finally finished last year. If the country is going to have the energy it needs to support artificial intelligence and other projects, we will need to build faster, he said.
In Europe, projects get approved in a year, even as they take into account environmental concerns, he said, calling for permitting reform.
Murphy echoed Cox’s frustration over permitting, and both governors said they were happy with the choice of North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to run the Department of the Interior and to chair a new energy council.
Murphy said he was called by a Democratic Party chair the morning after the election who was disappointed in the results.
“I said, ‘How you feeling?’ And he said, ‘I’m not feeling too good.’ And I said, ‘How serious do you think this is?’ And he said, ‘You know what? Our party is like the end of “The Godfather,” we get wiped out about every 10 years, and then we figure out a way to get back on our feet.’ I’ve never heard anyone put it quite in those terms, so I hope he’s right,” Murphy said.
For Cox, it was the fatalism that frustrated him about the 2024 campaign.
“I was very disappointed in both campaigns, people in both campaigns, where I heard that if the other side wins, that will be the end of our country, that will be the end of democracy. ‘We will never have another election if Kamala Harris wins or if Donald Trump wins,’” he said.
“I loathe that type of thinking and that type of division, because we are so much better than any one person. It’s not our presidents that have made America special and made America great. In fact, you could make the argument it’s the opposite. It’s ‘We the People.’”
Cox on decision to cut the cable news cord
When Cox was chair of the National Governors Association, he started a national campaign to get people to “Disagree Better,” an initiative Murphy said “hit a real nerve.” Disagree better, Murphy said, is about instead of “kicking each other in the shins, let’s have it out and figure out where the chips fall as a result of that.”
People are living in “bubbles,” because of social media and the rise of cable news, Cox said, pointing out why he and Abby Cox decided to stop watching cable news networks.
Cox called for college students and others to develop the art of curiosity again.
“My wife said something yesterday. She said, ‘You know, I’ve come to the conclusion that when certainty happens, learning ends.’ And I was thinking about that all night,” he said. “We all need to be a little less certain and a little more curious. And that’s how we learn, that’s how we find truth.”
Cox called out the self-censorship happening on college campuses and in workplaces. “We’ve seen data on this all the time where we don’t feel comfortable sharing our views, because we’re worried we’re going to get canceled or we won’t fit in, and especially in the university system, where we’re supposed to be seeking truth.”