Governors of Utah and Pennsylvania have an Rx for preserving democracy

LOUISVILLE — They both married their high school sweethearts and both have four children. Both are governors, and both are Gen Xers. Both are recovering lawyers who are people of faith — one a Jew, the other a Mormon.

The main difference between Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox is the letter designation following their name — a “D” for Shapiro and an “R” for Cox.

With NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie serving as moderator, the two governors spoke last week as part of Washington National Cathedral’s Better Way Initiative in a program called “Toward a Better Politics.” Listen to their conversation and one that preceded it here. Guthrie and the governors begin their discussion at the 46:40 mark.

Image

On the day in September that political activist Charlie Kirk was killed on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Cox spoke to Utahns and to the nation. “When that very dark day happened in my state, the first call I got was from this guy, Gov. Shapiro,” Cox said. “He gave me some advice that changed what I was going to say when I stepped in front of that camera for the first time. He told me to speak with moral clarity and to speak from the heart.”

“I don’t care what color his politics are” Cox said of his friend and fellow governor. “In that moment, we were two Americans who were deeply saddened and struggling. I’m grateful there’s somebody I can trust.”

Shapiro went back to a day in April, the day he and his family had just concluded their Passover Sedar. A few minutes after the family had retired to the living quarters of the governor’s residence, an arsonist broke in and fired Molotov cocktails throughout the home. Wielding a metal hammer, Cody Balmer, who’s serving a sentence of 25-50 years for his crimes, testified that he’d planned to use the hammer to kill Shapiro, the governor said.

“I never looked to myself to being any sort of expert on political violence or frankly needing to engage in a national conversation about political violence until I saw Spencer Cox in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk handle that matter in the way he did,” Shapiro said. “It was at that moment I thought, I need to have this conversation and it needs to be with Spencer — not just because I respect the heck out of him as a governor … but because I think this is a necessary conversation that has to happen in our country if we’re going to get out of this, and this is the man I want to have this conversation with, given the strength of his leadership in a really dark moment in his state.”

Recalling the gun violence perpetrated on House members including Gabby Giffords and Stave Scalise, Shapiro noted the emotional scars that can compound physical injuries. The April event left Shapiro feeling “extraordinarily guilty as a dad, that doing this job that I love and so believe in put my kids’ lives at risk, put my wife’s life at risk. That’s a hard thing to work through.”

Image

“But as a family we also understand that you can’t allow that violence to force you off stage and to force you out of doing the work that is so unbelievably important right now … at a time when the nation really needs us to come together and drown out those voices of hate, drown out that violence and instead focus on our common humanity.”

The discussion in the historic cathedral included several instances of members of the audience shouting at the governors. At one point, Cox said this: “The idea that we feel it’s OK to scream and interrupt now — we’ve given a pass on this type of boorish behavior for far too long, and this is what we get.”

While leading the National Governors Association, Cox launched Disagree Better, an effort to help depolarize the nation. Cox pointed to the work of Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Kleinfeld “has studied political violence across cultures and over time,” Cox said. “She was the one who got me the most interested and the most nervous. She said we’re passing all the checkpoints toward ultimately failed states and things like civil war.” Those are terms Cox said he hates to use, “but if we don’t make a course correction, that’s where this leads.”

“We have to fight for our ability to engage,” Cox said. “We have to put our stake in the ground and say, ‘We’re going to have events like this and others where we can disagree and disagree passionately and try to convince others to believe what we believe in, because that’s what it means to be an American.’”

Political violence has taken people on the right, like Kirk, and on the left, including former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, Shapiro noted. An attempted presidential assassination took place in Pennsylvania as well as the attempt on Shapiro’s life.

“We need to begin by saying that all leaders must condemn all political violence, not cherry pick which violence to condemn and which violence to accept,” Shapiro said. “Leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity and call it out wherever they see it, exactly the way Spencer Cox does.”

Governors and the U.S. president must be sources of moral clarity, Shapiro said, but “we have a president of the United States right now that fails that test on a daily basis,” he said. “What are we to ask of citizens if their leaders aren’t meeting that standard?”

Image

Cox said President Trump called him the day Cox offered his remarks following Kirk’s shooting to say he appreciated what Cox had said. While “I’m not going to play down his divisive rhetoric, I will say this: If we think a president of the United States or a governor is going to change where we are right now, we’re fooling ourselves,” Cox said. “I truly believe that the people of our country are the ones who are going to have to change this.”

“Our elected officials are a reflection of us,” Cox said. “If we want to change what’s happening in Washington, D.C., we the people have to decide this is not who we are. We have to demand better.”

Guthrie’s final question for each governor was how their faith informs their service to their respective states.

Image

“Spencer and I are men of deep faith — he a Mormon and me a Jew,” Shapiro said. The commonality is that both faiths call their adherents to serve others, he said. “I have seen in my own commonwealth, as I have been open about my faith, people of other faiths have been drawn in and have shared their stories with me.” In the days and weeks following the arson attack, Shapiro could “feel the strength” of prayers being offered on behalf of him and his family.

“There is more that binds us as Americans than divides us,” Shapiro said. “The answers to so much of the darkness that we see in America today is the light that ordinary Americans bring each day, oftentimes grounded in faith and in our shared humanity.”

“I think politicians would do well to take cues from the people they represent — to listen more to them and to see our shared humanity and our common bonds,” Shapiro said. “That is what this horrific experience my family and I went through has taught us, that there is goodness out there. The really good ways that Spencer Cox led Utah and really led America through [the Kirk] tragedy — that is what we should take inspiration from.”

“This Jewish friend of mine was an answer to my prayers in the darkest moment of my service as governor Utah,” Cox said. “I believe God works through angels, and I feel that spirit of God with us. Often God works through people we can see — our friends and our neighbors, the people who are around us. I felt those prayers as well.”

Too many people, Cox said, have left the faith of their upbringing “and tried to replace that God-shaped hole in every heart with politics, and it will not work,” Cox said. “We have to see each other by other labels first. We’re Americans, or Utahns or Pennsylvanians. We’re moms, we’re dads. We’re Utah Jazz fans, or Philadelphia 76er fans. Those are good tribes.”

A Cathedral choir closed the evening with St. Francis’ “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace.”