Utah Rep. Phil Lyman speaks during Utah’s gubernatorial GOP primary debate held at the Eccles Broadcast Center in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (Pool photo by Isaac Hale/Deseret News)
The write-in Lyman drama in Utah’s race for governor has hit the courts — and now Phil Lyman is the only candidate with that last name in the running.
Richard Kennedy Lyman and his mother, Carol Lyman, on Thursday withdrew their own write-in candidacy for governor and lieutenant governor amid a lawsuit from Phil Lyman alleging their campaign amounted to a “conspiracy” of election interference.
It’s another twist in what’s been a bitter race for Utah’s next governor, as Rep. Phil Lyman — Gov. Spencer Cox’s Republican challenger who lost by nearly 9 percentage points in the primary — continues his bid in a long shot write-in campaign as an unaffiliated candidate. Cox, who is also competing against Democrat Brian King and three third-party candidates, is the expected front-runner in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1980.
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In a lawsuit filed Oct. 16, Phil Lyman accused Richard and Carol Lyman of filing their own write-in candidacies “for the purpose of creating voter confusion and undermining (Phil Lyman’s) legitimate campaign efforts.” The suit sought at least $1.7 million — the total cost so far of Phil Lyman’s campaign — plus attorneys’ fees.
Richard and Carol’s write-in campaign angered Phil Lyman’s supporters because it complicated Phil Lyman’s write-in bid by requiring his supporters to specify on their ballots which Lyman they intended to vote for.
In early September, Phil Lyman claimed he had received text messages from “two individuals who provided information that Richard Lyman was recruited and paid by the Cox campaign,” his campaign wrote in an email to supporters. “Richard told one of these individuals that the Cox campaign had contacted him and offered to pay him $1,000 and a steak dinner to file for governor.”
Cox’s campaign has denied Phil Lyman’s allegations as “blatantly false.” Richard and Carol Lyman also denied claims they had been paid to file their campaigns, and they told the Deseret News that they were running to “make a statement,” expressing frustration with the “negativity” of Phil Lyman’s campaign.
In a statement issued through their attorney on Friday, Richard and Carol Lyman announced they had withdrawn from the race with “deep sadness.” They denied Phil Lyman’s lawsuit’s claims and accused him of forcing them out of the election.
“Before we even submitted our candidacy, a plan was already in motion to push us out of the race,” Carol and Richard Lyman said. “This plan culminated in a frivolous lawsuit that we simply cannot afford to fight. The claims in this lawsuit are false, and we want to make it unequivocally clear that we did nothing wrong and broke no laws. We have every right to run for Governor and Lieutenant Governor and should not have been forced out by those with deeper pockets.”
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Richard and Carol Lyman’s attorney said Carol “suffered an unexpected broken femur just days after knee surgery on the same leg, which made it even harder to get their campaign off the ground.” Additionally, he said Richard Lyman has had “political aspirations since childhood.”
“He wanted to bring attention to issues like homelessness, addiction, and mental health. He hoped to inspire Utahns to see that people who have faced these struggles can overcome them and even run for governor someday,” their attorney said.
Phil Lyman asked a 3rd District Court judge to disqualify Richard and Carol Lyman’s candidacies and also sought a restraining order, alleging their sole purpose was to “create voter confusion and an ambiguity for county clerks counting votes in the election that results in throwing out otherwise viable votes for (Phil) Lyman.”
However, on Thursday, all three Lymans agreed to a stipulation to resolve the matter, if both Richard and Carol Lyman withdrew their candidacies, and that “any vote for ‘Lyman’ for governor in the general election shall be construed as a vote for Phil Lyman.”
Friday, a judge approved that stipulation and gave them until Nov. 30 to resolve any remaining issues in the case.
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