GOP operative undercuts Utah Republicans' hopes of ousting state Supreme Court foe: report

The Republican Party of Utah has been vying to defeat Justice Diana Hagen in the state's judicial retention election this fall, but the recent actions of a long-time GOP operative may have undercut those efforts, according to a new report.

The National Review reported on Saturday that Utah's Republican Gov. Spencer Cox has been campaigning to unseat Hagen, whom he appointed to the Utah Supreme Court in 2022, after the court ruled against Utah's GOP-controlled legislature in several cases and criticized its actions. The report includes a quote Cox gave to local news outlet Deseret News that reads: "If people don’t like decisions that are coming out of our Supreme Court ... the appropriate way to deal with that is to vote against those judges in a retention election.”

The Utah GOP appeared to receive a boon to their efforts when a complaint was filed against Hagen with the Utah Judicial Conduct Commission, alleging that she sent racy text messages to a local election attorney.

Those claims were filed by Michael Worley, who, the report noted, had applied for a clerkship under Hagen but decided instead to work in the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But Worley never produced the text messages in question, which left the commission with no choice but to "prefer the sworn denials by Judge Hagen over hearsay and documents it couldn’t review."

The report also suggested that the efforts may have damaged the Utah GOP's credibility.

"If we can safely conclude anything, it’s that nobody has come out of this mess looking particularly good," the report reads.