Gov. Spencer Cox: Moving forward with ‘Disagree Better’ as a national nonprofit

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox plans to create a “Disagree Better” nonprofit organization to continue the work of his year-long initiative as chair of the National Governors Association, he told the Deseret News.

Cox said his team is currently in the early stages of filing the legal forms necessary to set up a 501(c)(3), the IRS category for a non-profit educational, charitable or faith group.

The current concept is for the organization to continue under the “Disagree Better” name, functioning as a “convener” to bring research, bridge-building institutions and concerned citizens seeking to improve the quality of American politics all under one umbrella.

These groups expressed they were “very anxious to have ‘Disagree Better’ continue,” Cox said, because the initiative was the first time they had come together in close collaboration.

“There’s just this real sense that now more than ever we need this type of structure and organization, and maybe message more than anything else,” Cox said in an interview with the Deseret News on Thursday. “And I would say that appetite has only grown in the last week because of what we saw — the assassination attempt on the former president.”

While Cox made a point of bringing his message to the national stage during his year as NGA chair, including in a TED talk , he said his goal was to use his time in the spotlight to highlight “the very best of Utah to the rest of the country.”

“Utah is a place that’s populated with builders, instead of arsonists or destroyers,” Cox said. “And I feel very fortunate that I get to be the voice of that for Utah. That’s the role of a governor.”

What is ‘Disagree Better’?

The National Governors Association summer meeting on July 11-12 capped off a year of Cox’s “Disagree Better” initiative, which included four NGA meetings across the country, ads promoting bipartisanship with over 20 governors, trainings on healthy political dialogue and community service projects.

Last week’s “Disagree Better” event in Salt Lake City featured former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse , actor Matthew McConaughey , Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a research presentation on the effectiveness of the “Disagree Better” commercial campaign.

During the conference, the new NGA chair, Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, praised Cox, a Republican, for “Disagree Better,” and said it will become a “permanent part” of how governors lead and shared a hope that Cox would keep the initiative alive apart from the NGA.

“Both Democrats and Republicans have shown an immense interest in ‘Disagree Better,’ and that the tenets of that will continue,” Cox said.

Cox was initially apprehensive about how his program would be received by the nation’s governors, he said. Modeling civil political discourse seemed like it might be a tough sell for elected officials in a polarized electoral environment. But the initiative, Cox learned, “sells itself.”

Can the nation unite over ‘Disagree Better’?

Following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13, a number of voices, including many who Cox said had previously “contributed to the polarization in our country,” began calling for lowering the temperature of political rhetoric.

“It was very positive to me that people do recognize that the natural consequences and the ends of this type of polarization and hate is that we will see more political violence,” Cox said.

He said before the attack at the Trump rally, gubernatorial colleagues from across the political spectrum embraced “Disagree Better” in a way that surprised him.

“It was far more popular than I expected,” Cox said.

Even governors who couldn’t fully participate in “Disagree Better” because of “political reasons,” he said, “would say to me, quietly, ‘Hey, thank you for doing this. This is some of the most important work. We desperately need it right now.’”

“There was this recognition among virtually all of them that this is important work. And I think that matters and it would give people hope to hear that,” Cox said.

But Cox knows first hand about the difficulty of promoting “Disagree Better” amid increasing political polarization, particularly in election season.

During the governor’s contentious primary race against state Rep. Phil Lyman, “Disagree Better” became one of the central targets for Cox’s challenger. Lyman argued that an emphasis on civility and compromise can prevent conservatives from taking a firm stance on important issues. Lyman lost to Cox by around 9%, delivering him a smaller winning margin than recent Utah incumbent governors.

What’s next for ‘Disagree Better’?

As Cox moves forward with the creation of a nonprofit, he said it would allow the “Disagree Better” brand to engage more with faith groups, business leaders and corporations across the country.

“Just anywhere we can find people who are doing this work, we want to elevate what they’re doing and then follow the best practices,” he said.

A good example of something Cox said he would like to do more of was the “Disagree Better” forum hosted in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, the Wesley Theological Seminary and Deseret Magazine.