The jokes started before the politics.
On Friday afternoon at the National League of Cities summit in Salt Lake City, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham walked onstage at the Salt Palace comparing their hair — or lack of it.
Cox and moderator Clarence E. Anthony, the CEO and executive director of the National League of Cities, teased each other about their shaved heads. Lujan Grisham, with a grin, joked: “I’m twice your age, but have twice your hair.”
The lighthearted start set the tone for a 30-minute “Bridging Our Divides” conversation that blended humor with more serious topics like political violence, while Lujan Grisham and Cox showed how to bridge bipartisan divides.
‘A new issue in our politics’
The session followed a presentation on the Dignity Index by Timothy Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics and a visiting faculty member at the University of Utah. University President Taylor Randall introduced Shriver, calling dignity a “fundamental right of a human being” and describing how teaching the Dignity Index on campus turned shouting matches into real conversations.
Shriver argued that the biggest emerging issue in American public life isn’t a specific policy area.
“If there is a new issue amongst us in our country … it’s how we treat each other,” he said, urging leaders to resist what he called the “contempt industrial complex” — partisan media and online algorithms that reward outrage.
With that framing, Anthony brought Cox and Lujan Grisham onstage as two governors from different parties who have tried, publicly and privately, to model another way.
Why they got into politics
Anthony opened by asking both governors why they got involved in public service.
For Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, the story started in childhood, watching her parents struggle to secure basic health care for her sister, who had cancer before she turned 3. But she said a later experience as a young lawyer taught her what it actually means to treat people with dignity.
Fresh out of law school, she couldn’t afford her bar dues and ended up working them off through a state legal services program for seniors. One day, she took a call from a 90-year-old man trying to prepay for his cremation but running into bureaucratic red tape.
“He said, ‘Is cremation legal in New Mexico?’ And I just passed the bar, and I knew everything,” she joked. “I immediately said, ‘Yes, but only if you’re dead.’”
She thought it was hilarious. He did not.
“I didn’t ask his name. I didn’t hear … his story. I didn’t give him the time or dignity that he deserved,” she said. Eventually she tracked him down, worked to change the law and helped him “to die with respect and dignity.”
“So what drives us into these jobs,” she told the local leaders in the room, “is solving problems.”
Cox, a Republican, described growing up in a tiny rural town in central Utah, where his father served as mayor and a city council member.
“I thought that was really cool,” Cox said, until he realized in a town that small “everybody’s dad had to be the mayor at one time or another.”
After law school, Cox returned home to work for a firm. A friend approached him about an open city council seat.
“He said, ‘We’ve talked about it and we’ve decided we want you to put your name in so we can appoint you,’” Cox recalled. “I was flattered … then he said, ‘We have this huge legal problem and we can’t afford an attorney, and we assume, if you were on the city council, you would do all the free legal work for us.’”
“Twenty thousand dollars of free legal work later, I was on the city council,” Cox said, laughing. But he found he loved it — not the title, but the chance “to solve problems” alongside volunteer firefighters and first responders, using his one distinctive skill: a law degree.
Both governors started in local government. Cox told those in attendance that he thinks it should be a requirement for state and national leaders to serve locally first.
How to ‘disagree better’ in real time
From there, Anthony turned the conversation to Cox’s “Disagree Better” work and asked him to explain the phrase “healthy conflict.”
“It’s actually pretty simple,” Cox said. “It really is just conflict resolution. … But you have to start from a position of respect for the person that you’re engaging with.”
“Disagree better,” he added, “is not just about being nice to each other.” Politics is about real stakes and real choices. He told the crowd he isn’t asking anyone to “compromise their values” — but he is asking them to actually engage instead of retreating into their corners.
He shared some of the practical tools he uses in tense public meetings. One, he said, is almost deceptively simple: “Tell me more about why you feel this way.”
Cox believes that Grisham is a great example of disagreeing better.
“Sometimes I am (wrong) — probably more than I’m willing to admit,” she said, adding that listening and learning from people who disagree is “your superpower” as local officials.
At one point she underlined the importance of relationships in disarming anger.
“It’s really hard to be mad at someone that you like,” she said. “So here’s a news flash: I like Spencer Cox.”
She pointed to a Cambridge study that found “a four minute conversation can change the way that voters and communities and neighbors feel about each other,” and described her own marathon town halls where she stays “six or seven hours” until every person has asked their question, even if some of them drove 40 minutes just to tell her they don’t trust a Democratic governor.
Political violence and a plea to local leaders
The conversation eventually turned to political violence.
Anthony acknowledged the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, then asked Cox what he had learned that might help local leaders in the room.
“Whenever there’s an emergency, it’s too late to build trust,” Cox said. “Trust is something you have to build early.”
He encouraged mayors and council members to prepare for “the unexpected,” including incidents they hope will never happen, and to reach out to peers who have experienced similar crises. Cox called Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, who was governor during the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, for advice.
One piece of counsel stuck with him: “Speak with moral clarity at all times. Don’t be afraid to call things what they are.”
Cox said that’s why he publicly described Kirk’s death as a political assassination and committed to transparency — telling Utahns what the state knew, when it knew it, and what officials were doing.
“You have to be completely honest,” he said, adding: “People see through it” when leaders hide behind lawyers or talking points. They need to see that their governor, mayor or council member is “a human being” who recognizes the pain.
Lujan Grisham praised Cox’s response, saying it mattered that he showed “courage and strength” and “compassion and empathy” at the same time.
“That’s another false choice,” she said, referencing picking one or the other. “You can do both at the same time.”
She argued that leaders at every level have a responsibility to “call it out everywhere” when political violence or dehumanizing rhetoric appears, and to center the families and communities who are suffering.
Both governors ended on a hopeful note.
Cox said that in his “Disagree Better” work he has seen that “Americans are tired of us hating each other. They hate what’s happening in politics right now.” Polling, he said, suggests large majorities want leaders to lower the temperature.
“The place where we can do that, more than anywhere else, is in our local communities,” he told the crowd. “You are the front lines. … You have the ability to show people that everything does not have to be politicized, that we can actually work through our differences.”
Lujan Grisham agreed, telling the leaders that the fact they were willing to watch two governors from different parties tease each other and talk seriously about their shared hopes was itself “an incredibly valuable” sign for the country.
“People just want to know that you care about them,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s that simple.”
