Game over: Supreme Court slams door on Lyman's last-ditch election challenge

The death rattle heard Monday morning in Washington, D.C. was Republican Phil Lyman’s futile effort to somehow undo his loss in the Utah GOP gubernatorial primary breathing a final labored breath.

The Supreme Court refused to take up Lyman’s appeal that he hoped somehow would throw Gov. Spencer Cox out of office and force a new election.

The rejection effectively ends Lyman's months-long campaign to invalidate Gov. Spencer Cox's primary victory and force a new election.

Lyman called the decision disappointing.

"They should give us a response that lays out a bit more of their reasoning. In the meantime, we will continue to seek signature and primary runoff information," Lyman said in a text message Monday morning.

As recently as last week, Lyman insisted that the Supreme Court would take the unprecedented step to force a new election.

“ The only thing that would be a remedy to this would be to acknowledge that the primary election was a fraudulent election that never should have happened,” Lyman said during a livestream discussion last week.

“ The Supreme Court could say the primary was nonsense and to redo the general election with me as the Republican nominee, which is what the Republican Party chose.”

In his court filing, Lyman argued that the Utah Republican Party's internal rules should override state election laws, specifically targeting SB54, the law that established Utah's dual-track system allowing candidates to collect signatures to qualify for the primary ballot. Lyman claimed the law violated the First Amendment right of political parties to choose political nominees.

While Lyman won the delegate vote at the Utah GOP State Convention, Cox secured a spot on the primary ballot by gathering signatures. Cox defeated Lyman in the primary by about 9 percentage points before securing a second term in office in November.

Following his primary defeat, Lyman mounted a long-shot write-in candidacy, which garnered just over 13% of the vote in November's election. According to campaign finance disclosures, Lyman spent more than $2 million on his primary and write-in efforts.

Throughout his campaign, Lyman and his supporters made an increasing number of false and bizarre claims to sow doubt about the legitimacy of Cox's win:

• They misrepresented a legislative audit about the process for validating signatures on petition packets to falsely assert that Cox did not qualify for the primary ballot. Contrary to what Lyman said, the audit did not make any determination about whether Cox reached the signature threshold.
• Lyman overlooked the audit's conclusion that Cox likely would have qualified even if he fell short because hundreds of surplus signatures he submitted were not counted, and he had plenty of time before the deadline to gather more if he needed to.
• When it became clear Lyman would likely lose the primary election, he filed a court motion requesting access to Cox's signature packets to challenge Cox's petitions . A judge swiftly dismissed his request.
• In October, he asked his Republican colleagues in the Legislature to convene an emergency session to remove Cox from the November ballot and name him the replacement.