Cox Maintains Lead Over Huntsman In Race For GOP Governor Nomination

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox leads former Gov. Jon Huntsman by just over 9,000 votes after another batch of votes was released by the state Monday afternoon.

Cox and running mate Rep. Deidre Henderson, R-Spanish Fork, had 185,104 votes (36.4 percent), compared to Huntsman and running mate Michelle Kaufusi, current mayor of Provo, who had 175,970 votes (34.6 percent).

That was a difference of 9,134 votes or 1.8 percent.

Greg Hughes, who has conceded, was in third place with 21 percent of the vote, having received 107,182 votes.

Thomas Wright, who has also conceded the race, was in fourth place with 40,313 votes (7.9 percent).

The state released the first batch of votes at 10 p.m. June 30 — two hours later than the normal 8 p.m. timeslot due to the pandemic. Counties were given the extra time to count ballots while implementing social distancing requirements.

Additionally, ballots turned in Tuesday were quarantined for up to 24 hours, meaning those votes weren’t counted Tuesday night.

Over 960,000 Utahns received ballots and over 390,000 were returned by June 30, pointing to a turnout over 41 percent.

State election officials said over 109,000 ballots needed to be counted as of July 1.

More results were expected after the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

LIVE results can be seen here.

Cox was holding his watch party in Mt. Pleasant at a drive-in theater. Both Cox and his wife grew up in Sanpete County and live in Fairview.

“We are very excited to see those initial results. Those were very big vote totals. There were actually more votes then expected got totaled tonight. Having that 10,000-vote lead is very good for us,” Cox told KSL Tuesday night. “We feel good. We are cautiously optimistic. We know there are still a lot of ballots out there and a lot of counting left to do.”

Cox believed his grassroots efforts to travel to all 248 cities in the state paid off.

“They’ve seen me work. They’ve seen me at every level of government,” he said. “I think people are hungry for positivity. They are tired of the divisiveness in our nation and we set out to prove that there is a better way to do politics.”

There was a lot of excitement at Huntsman’s camp. He said he’s seen winning campaigns and losing campaigns, and we live in a system where we should wait until the final vote is counted.

“The early numbers are encouraging but this election will be too close to call until every vote is counted,” Huntsman said. “That’s the beauty of the American election system. We look forward to tracking the final results over the next several days.”