State Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, was stuck in a special session of the Legislature on Wednesday evening, so his wife spoke about his candidacy for governor at a gathering in Jeremy Ranch.

Lutisha Merrill’s home was buzzing with supporters, some sporting campaign T-shirts, as Jody Lyman exchanged pleasantries and explained that the core of her husband’s campaign for governor comes down to local control.

The former county commissioner believes in power pushed to as close to the frontlines as possible, basically. No state overreach as he and she see with water and other issues, she said. No federal overreach with, say, the Bear Ears lands near where they live. He went to jail in protest of a BLM road closure in Recapture Canyon for 10 days in 2014, she said. President Donald Trump pardoned him in 2020.

Lyman won 67.5% of the state’s 4,000 GOP delegates to 35.5% for incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox at the Utah Republican convention in April.

Lyman’s running partner for lieutenant governor, Natalie Clawson, an attorney and voting rights advocate, was asked what they would do first if they won office.

“Repeal SB 54,” she said to cheers. The 2014 legislation allowed statewide candidates to petition for enough signatures to get on the ballot. That’s the path Cox took.

“So we want to be able to repeal that so that it goes back to the people,” she said. “Let the Republican Party determine how they get their candidates.”

Lyman himself showed up later, taking questions for nearly an hour.

While Lyman dominated the party convention vote, he trails in a mid-June poll conducted by HarrisX for the Deseret News and the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics  polls in a mirror image of the delegate vote with the primary sweeping up Tuesday, June 25.

Supporters who packed the home nonetheless were in high spirits and didn’t count his candidacy out by any means. They also were focused on Utah. Not a word was heard about presidential candidate Donald Trump, though plenty support the former president as well. Maybe after the primary.