A Red-State Governor Not Afraid to Be ‘Woke’

Molly Ball has a good profile of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R), who does not seem like a typical Republican.

“High energy and bald-headed, Cox is an avid reader whose media diet skews Acela Corridor. Over the course of our interviews, he will name-drop the New York Times columnists Thomas Friedman and Ezra Klein, the political theorist Jonathan Haidt and articles from The Atlantic. His conversation is littered with pop-intellectual buzz phrases: ‘deaths of despair,’ ‘happiness gap,’ ‘empathy crisis,’ ‘trust barometer.’ He’s the kind of politician who quotes George Will in speeches and answers questions with an eager, ‘You want to hear my theory? Because I think a lot about this stuff.’”