Bryan Schott

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman made a surprise announcement Thursday night that he is running to become chairman of the Utah Republican Party.

"The fight is taking me, taking us to the GOP right now," Lyman declared to an energized gathering of conservatives in Davis County.

"I don't want to be the chair of the GOP, but it feels like that has to happen if you're sincere about the fighting. So, yeah, we're running for the state chair."

Lyman did not respond to a request for comment from Utah Political Watch following the announcement.

The current chair of the Utah GOP, Rob Axson, has held the position since his election by party delegates in 2023. Axson said Friday that he had not yet decided whether he would seek another two-year term this year, but expects to make that determination within the next week or two.

It would be a mistake to dismiss Lyman's chances — he's remarkably popular among Republican delegates who will decide the next party chair at the state convention in May.

Last year, those very same delegates voted to give Lyman the party's gubernatorial nomination over incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox by a decisive 2-1 margin, forcing Cox into a primary election.

After performing better than expected in the June primary, where he fell to Cox by a surprisingly narrow margin of just over 9 percentage points, Lyman launched a write-in campaign. He secured third place in the November election with just over 13% of the vote.

Lyman, who has already declared his intention to run for governor again in 2028, said he's running for party chair because it is the only way to challenge an entrenched system within the party that he claims favors the existing establishment over political outsiders like him.

"I was hesitant to run for chair because I don't want to be seen as an office seeker," Lyman explained. "If you don't fix the GOP, then you'll be facing the same apparatus when we run again in 2028."

Losing the GOP gubernatorial nomination remains a sore spot for Lyman, who has tried to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Cox's candidacy at every turn.

When it became clear he was on track to lose the primary election to Cox, Lyman began throwing accusations that Cox did not legitimately qualify for the primary ballot by gathering signatures. He and his allies bombarded election officials with open records requests demanding access to Cox's signature packets — they insisted they needed to conduct their own analysis. Those requests were denied. Lyman then sued to pry the packets from the state, but a judge swiftly rejected his request.

After a legislative audit detailed weaknesses in the state's signature verification system, Lyman claimed the audit revealed Cox did not submit enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot — a claim that election officials have consistently refuted.

Prior to the election, Lyman petitioned the Utah Supreme Court to throw Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson out of office and off the ballot. When that request was rejected, Lyman escalated his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.

https://www.utahpoliticalwatch.news/phil-lyman-announces-surprise-bid-for-utah-gop-chair/