The Beehive State is the site of a pilot program to rid campaigning of contempt
In October 2020, as political rhetoric was getting more and more toxic and presidential candidate Donald Trump was casting doubt on the integrity of the upcoming election, Utah’s gubernatorial race made national headlines – but not because of any mudslinging.
The major party candidates, Democrat Chris Peterson and Republican Spencer Cox, made joint ads promising to fully support the results of the presidential election and calling for civility in campaigning. The two, who alternate speaking, note they have political differences but agree on some things.
“We can debate issues without degrading each other’s character,” Peterson, a University of Utah law professor, says in one ad.
“We can disagree without hating each other,” Cox, who was then lieutenant governor and won the election, says.
“And win or lose in Utah, we work together,” Peterson says.
“So, let’s show the country that there’s a better way,” Cox says.
Another ad showcases this exchange:
“We are currently in the final days of campaigning against each other to be your next governor,” Peterson says.
“But today we come together with a message more important than our differences,” Cox says.
“That we will fully support the results of the presidential election,” Peterson says.
“So Utah can be an example to the nation,” Cox says.
“Whether you vote by mail or in person, your vote determines the outcome,” Peterson says.
“Then we commit to a peaceful transfer of power,” Cox says.
“It is the very foundation of our country,” Peterson says.
The ads end with the candidates announcing they approve the message.
“There’s tremendous division in our society and it’s critical that we turn down the heat on outrage and disinformation.” Peterson told the Underground. “It’s time for us to be creative about how to address the problem of division in our society.”
The ads went viral, racking up millions of views. They also played a part in the decision to make Utah the site of a pilot program of The Dignity Index, an effort to restore civility to public and political discourse.
The Dignity Index is a project of UNITE, an organization that wants to eliminate contempt in rhetoric by incentivizing politicians to treat their opponents with dignity and respect. The program rates messages by candidates in Utah’s U.S. Senate and House races on a dignity scale of 1 to 8.
The messages that are scored come from candidate speeches, debates, fundraising outreach, social media post and campaign ads. The scale is designed to rate speech itself – not people – in an unbiased manner.
“The Dignity Index reveals both the danger of contempt and the power of dignity, and most importantly, it shows us how to change,” UNITE founder Tim Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics International, said in a written statement. “It shows us that dignity is the means of preventing violence, easing division, and solving problems. Treating people with dignity has been at the heart of my work in the Special Olympics and in schools, too. But now we need it in our politics and we have no time to waste.”
‘Utah is the right place’
Tami Pyfer, Utah project lead, said that when UNITE was considering where to test pilot The Dignity Index, people around the country independently brought up the Cox-Peterson ads.
“They wanted to talk about why it’s different in Utah,” she said.
Another factor in the selection was Utah’s history of different groups being able to come together on major collaborative efforts, Pyfer said.
Those efforts included The Utah Compact, a declaration of five principles to guide the state’s immigration discussion covering federal solutions, law enforcement, families, the economy and a free society. The compact was signed in 2010 by community, business, law enforcement and religious leaders and reaffirmed in 2019.
And in 2015, the state Legislature passed the landmark Utah Compromise, a nondiscrimination law that protects LGBTQ rights in housing and employment and provides some exemptions for religious groups.
“It’s been touted across the country as a model on how to balance both seemingly competing interests,” Pyfer said. “In Utah, we were able to do that. We had political leaders, we had business leaders, we had religious leaders from all different faiths all come together to the table and say we can solve this.”
Utah also is attractive as a pilot program site because one media market covers the entire state, she said.
“Utah is the right place and we’ve got the right people in place,” Pyfer said.
Pyfer served as Gov. Gary Herbert’s education policy advisor and taught at Utah State University in the Department of Special Education before that. She also has served as an elected official, four years on the Utah State Board of Education and eight years on the Logan City Council.
“I’ve watched over 20 years how much more difficult it has become to even get people interested in running for public office,” Pyfer said. “The tone has become much more negative, the rhetoric much more contempt-filled. I even look at myself wondering if I could run for public office now. It’s just a very different world now.”
She added there is a feeling that “we have forgotten how to speak with each other and to each other about politics and about other things that matter to people.”
“If it goes well, we hope there are some national entities that would take notice,” Pyfer said. “We hope that people that fund political races would look and say, ‘are we funding contempt or are we funding dignity?’”
The Dignity Index is supported by the Kem C. Gardner Institute, the Hinckley Institute of Politics, Deseret Management Corporation and a Larry H. and Gail Miller Foundation grant.
The Dignity Index is led locally by a board of advisors that includes Maura Carabello, founder and president of The Exoro Group; Herbert; Pat Jones, CEO of the Women’s Leadership Institute; Rick Larsen, president and CEO of the Sutherland Institute; Rich McKeown, co-founder of Leavitt Partners; and Shawn Newell, president of Waves Consulting, LLC.
Scoring political discourse
Two books, “Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict” by Donna Hicks and “Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt” by Arthur C. Brooks, were among the research information the UNITE team gathered to create the scale.
Tom Rosshirt, the project director and a former foreign policy spokesman for Vice President Al Gore, said there is more toxicity in political discourse now than he’s seen in his lifetime. However, he thinks unity can be achieved “because it’s hard to look and find a society that has done better with more diversity at a time of faster change.”
“Treat everyone with dignity and not with contempt and that’s what’s going to be able to give us the kind of unity we need that preserves and honors our diversity and doesn’t suppress it,” he said.
The Dignity Index scores go from one for the language with the most contempt to eight for the language with the most dignity. Each point on the scale reflects a particular mindset, and each mindset is associated with certain beliefs and behaviors:
8 — Each one of us is born with inherent worth, so we treat everyone with dignity — no matter what.
7 — We fully engage with the other side, discussing even the values and interests we don’t share, so we know where they’re coming from.
6 — We always talk to the other side, searching for the values and interests we share.
5 — The other side has a right to be here and a right to be heard. It’s their country too.
4 — We’re better than those people. I don’t trust him.
3 — We’re the good people and they’re the bad people. It’s us vs. them.
2 — Those people are evil and they are going to ruin our country if we let them. It’s us or them.
1 — They’re not even human. It’s our moral duty to destroy them before they destroy us.
Rosshirt said a level 1 passage has total contempt for people on the other side and the attitude that you must destroy them before they destroy you. He cited the case of Leon Mugesera, a politician in Rwanda who is serving a life sentence for an inflammatory speech that led to genocide, as an example.
Mugesera said the minority Tutsis were “cockroaches” and said “anyone whose neck you do not cut is the one who will cut your neck.” The case is evidence that language itself is powerful enough to incite a genocide, Rosshirt said.
Level 2 passages are basically accusing the other side of promoting evil, not of doing bad or being bad. This is the stage where you’re beginning to justify violence, he said.
A level 3 passage is saying your opponents are bad people and we’re the good people, according to Rosshirt.
“A distinguishing factor of three is it’s a moral attack,” he said. “You’re attacking character. You’re attacking motive. You’re saying they hate us and want to hurt us. This is us versus them. We can’t win unless they lose.”
Level 4 language is moving toward more dignity but is still on the contempt end, he said. At this level, people mock and attack the other side.
It’s like us and them and there is no “we” here, Rosshirt said.
Level 5 language begins the dignity end of the scale, he said.
“You’re no longer talking about the person,” Rosshirt said. “You’re talking about decisions, actions, outcomes, analysis. That now becomes the basis for conversation.”
A level 6 passage is language used when someone wants to work with the other side, find common interests and values and create a basis for cooperation, he said.
Rosshirt said a line from a speech that Sen. John McCain gave after he had been treated for cancer and returned to the Senate captures what level 6 is:
“The times when I was involved, even in a modest way, with working on a bipartisan response to a national problem are the proudest moments of my career and by far, the most satisfying.”
Level 7 is the scale point where people are open for criticism and don’t mind being told they’re wrong so they engage in a disagreement thinking there could be a breakthrough, Rosshirt said. These excerpts show someone is willing to admit mistakes, he said.
Rosshirt cited McCain’s speech again as a “heroic” example: “Sometimes, I’ve let my passion rule my reason. Sometimes I made it harder to find common ground because of something harsh I said to a colleague. Sometimes, I wanted to win more for the sake of winning than to achieve a contested policy.”
People who use level 8 speech love their group but also feel they are a member of every group and treat everyone with dignity no matter what, according to Rosshirt. He said Desmond Tutu, the South African Anglican bishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner who fought apartheid, is an example of someone who is an 8.
“We think the biggest problem we face is division,” Rosshirt said. “We think the biggest cause of division is contempt. We believe the antidote to contempt is dignity. We believe if we popularize an index that can start a conversation about dignity and contempt, we will get more dignity and less contempt. We think so because we think we’re all sick of it.”
Reaching a consensus
Professor Jesse Graham, who teaches management and business ethics at the University of Utah, said everyone has political biases so it was important to have a large ideologically diverse group to code political text for The Dignity Index.
Graham went through rounds of coding and meetings with the coders, who are students doing internships at the Hinckley Institute, to discuss why they rated certain passages the way they did. In a round scoring about two dozen passages, 19 coders were able to reach a consensus on the selected speech, Graham said.
“The numbers are basically indicating excellent agreement between the coders,” Graham said. “We can code this in a somewhat objective way.”
Dignity Index scores will be published on https://www.dignityindex.us/ each Friday up to Election Day. The first ratings were released on Oct. 7 and included scores from all the Utah federal races.
Scores – Oct. 7, 2022
Third Congressional District Debate (Oct. 6, 2022)
John Curtis
Well, if you know anything about me, you know I like to talk about this. I’m kind of the rare elephant in the room on climate change. Listen, I think it’s important on climate to do something which we don’t generally do in this conversation. And that is if you draw a continuum and you take people where they are on this issue, and you value everybody’s opinion, we can have a very thoughtful conversation about how we reduce emissions and how we pass on an Earth better to our children than the one we inherited.
SCORE: 7
John Curtis
But I get a unique perspective where I sit and I would, I would bring up two things. First of all, we have been in bad places before as a country. I think about of course of the Civil War, Watergate, the assassination of President Kennedy. And what’s so great about this country is in every single one of those cases, we emerged a better country than before we went into that, and part of the seat that I get to sit at right now is to see the slice of Congress of Washington, D.C., that most of you rarely get to see on the cable news network or in social media. And I can tell you that there’s hundreds of my colleagues on both the right and the left who wake up in the morning and say, I want to do what’s best for this country. And they’re not part of the divisiveness. They’re not part of the screaming and shouting and the fight, but they come together every day to work to see how we can advance the will of this country. So that gives me hope and tonight I hope all of you have hope in this great country.
SCORE: 6
John Curtis
Mr. Wright, I have so much respect for your military service. And thank you. You mentioned as we were standing outside, I think if I heard it right, that you’d completed 250 combat missions. And I want you to know how much I respect that. But it comes back to the conversation you just had about we can’t keep putting money in non-discretionary spending. That $400 billion comes out of those things, veterans, Social Security, but I tell you what, I will meet you on that challenge not to make you come back every year and ask for it and figure out a way to pay for this so you don’t have to.
SCORE: 6
John Curtis
It’s about fairness. We have to be fair to these young women. I have four daughters. I do not want men competing with them in sports period, under any circumstances. Now, if it’s more complicated than that, I’m happy to sit down and talk about it, but I don’t see there’s a place for that.
SCORE: 5
Glenn Wright
I think it’s important not to try to make a lot of cheap soundbites, and call your opponents names and belittle them. What I’ve learned is that I truly think most people – now there’s some people are never going to agree with me on a lot of issues – but most people, we can agree on what the problems are. And what we have to do is, we may not agree on their solutions and that’s where we have to have a dialogue and figure out how to get things done. But you don’t start that dialogue by calling somebody a nasty name.
SCORE: 6
Glenn Wright
I think immigration reform is critical to that. As I said, I’ve done a lot of work on affordable housing and looking at the cost of affordable housing over the last several years where we’ve had not enough workers to build houses. There are lots of folks outside the country that would like to come in and help us build our economy. I think we need comprehensive immigration reform. And this sense, I think Representative Curtis has some good ideas in his in his pipeline. I think they’re a little strict in some places, so I think we can negotiate them. But if he puts that out, or if some, if I’m in his place and somebody like him puts it out, I think is a good place to start negotiating.
SCORE: 6
Glenn Wright
I agree with several things that Representative Curtis just said. And I salute his efforts to bring in a conservative climate caucus. I do think we need to be a lot more aggressive. We don’t need to sacrifice our economy. We can be energy independent by electrifying our transportation infrastructure, by electrifying the way we heat our houses and creating that stuff internally, both renewable energy and carbon-free energy such as nuclear and geothermal and pumped hydro and various solutions. I think we have to have hard goals that we are forced to meet.
SCORE: 6
Glenn Wright
I think the really bad part of that bill was it came from a segment of our society that is afraid of the LGBT community and just they found transgendered folks as the latest whipping person.
SCORE: 4
Senate
Mike Lee
Campaign email, Sept. 28, 2022
“Democrats have figured out a way to make this race for Utah’s Senate seat competitive by supporting a fake “independent” who will, in reality, vote with them. Unfortunately, many are falling for it and he’s raising more than we anticipated through a system that otherwise supports only Democrat candidates. The left is funding my opponent’s campaign.”
SCORE: 4
Washington Times op-ed, Sept. 20, 2022
No matter their national origin, children need to be treated with the utmost care, respect, and reverence. We should take every precaution to safely return children attempting to cross the border. Currently, we return unaccompanied children from Mexico and Canada quickly and safely. Children from other countries, however, are placed in a lengthy removal process. In the interim, we release them into the United States with the same adults that smuggled them into the country. Consequently, the policy incentivizes the enlistment of couriers to smuggle children across the border. We can end this incentive by extending the same seamless process available to children from Mexico and Canada.
SCORE: 5
Evan McMullin
Campaign email, Sept. 5, 2022
My name is Evan McMullin. I’m running for U.S. Senate in Utah to replace
obstructionist Senator Mike Lee and I’m asking for your support.
SCORE: 4
Twitter, @EvanMcMullin, Sept. 24, 2022
I was undercover in the CIA for 10 years. The men and women I served alongside never asked each other who they voted for or what political party they were a part of. We all knew we had the same goal: Protect our democracy. Those shared values must continue to bring us together.
SCORE: 6
First Congressional District
Blake Moore
Op-Ed for Deseret News, Sept. 27, 2022
Here in Utah, I look forward to casting my vote for Lee in his reelection campaign. We know what’s at stake. Out-of-control government spending and crippling regulations are hurting Utah families. We need to return to a pre-2020 American government that puts people ahead of bureaucratic red tape. We need to get our country back on track.
SCORE: 4
Congressman Blake Moore Statement on Impeachment Vote, Jan 13, 2021
Without a single hearing or investigation, I simply cannot reach the high bar of impeachment…. Other members of my party will vote to impeach, and after countless conversations with them, I know their motives are pure, and I believe we share the same desire for a more productive and unified America.
SCORE: 7
Rick Jones
Statement from website
“Something is fundamentally wrong when self-proclaimed billionaire Donald Trump can in one year spend 350 times as much paying prostitute porn stars as he does paying federal income taxes.
SCORE: 3
Statement from website
Recipients of tax cuts worth tens of millions do not use the saved money to support local businesses and eat out more often. Instead, the money is used to purchase assets, such as land, contributing to asset price inflation, which makes housing less affordable or even out of reach for many.”
SCORE: 5
Second Congressional District
Nick Mitchell
Twitter, @Nick4Utah, Sept. 21, 2022
You’ll never guess who voted against The Presidential Election Reform Act. If you guessed @RepChrisStewart, you’re absolutely right. You should ask him why he hates democracy but I don’t think he’ll reply like always. I wonder why he hates Democracy so much.
SCORE: 3
Twitter, @Nick4Utah, Sept. 20, 2022
We have a chance to unseat @RepChrisStewart I’m putting in the work, but it means nothing if we don’t vote whether for me or against me your voice needs to be heard.
SCORE: 5
Chris Stewart
Facebook, Congressman Chris Stewart, Sept. 20, 2022
New data shows the 9-8-8 Suicide Prevention Hotline may have saved more than 150,000 lives in its first month. Congressman Seth Moulton (D-MA) and I are thrilled to see our bipartisan bill making a difference. Now let’s keep working to fight our nation’s mental health crisis.
SCORE: 6
Facebook, Congressman Chris Stewart Sept. 29
Families in Utah are facing inflation costs of more than $8,000 over the next year. Can you afford to lose one month of your yearly salary? Because that’s how much Joe Biden’s spending spree is costing American families…and he wants you to give him credit for it.
SCORE: 4
Third Congressional District
John Curtis
Twitter, @RepJohnCurtis, Sept. 27, 2022
It is an honor to be working with Rep. Lowenthal (D-CA) and recognize Congress role in harnessing the power of free market and government collaboration to create jobs, expand our economy, strengthen America’s national security, and preserve our environment.
SCORE: 6
Twitter, @RepJohnCurtis, Sept. 21, 2022
No one can argue, right or left, that what’s happening at the border is acceptable. We need a secure border and a fixed immigration system. I continue working with my colleagues in Congress to find solutions that bring the best and brightest to the U.S.
SCORE: 6
Glenn Wright
Twitter, @summitcodem, Sept. 18, 2022
We can work together across the aisle. A lot of us know what the problems are. We may not agree on the solutions, but we can no longer afford to be a divided country and state. We must work together.
SCORE: 6
Twitter, @summitcodem, Sept. 18, 2022
I am a 2 tour #vietnamveteran. It took us 2 decades to get Agent Orange protections enacted. Rep Curtis disrespected veterans by voting against the PACT Act, which will provide similar protections for Iraq/Afghanistan veterans. Vote for me, a veteran protecting veterans.
SCORE: 4
Fourth Congressional District
Owen Burgess
Twitter, @BurgessOwens, Sept. 23, 2022
Our Commitment to America brings a future of hope after 2yrs of failure by the Biden Administration and leaders of the Dem party
SCORE: 4
Facebook, Congressman Burgess Owens, Sept. 21, 2022
Inflation is costing the average American an extra $717 per month – on top of the $8,607 families have shelled out over the past year on groceries, gas, and rent. Basic necessities are unaffordable in Biden’s economy.
SCORE: 4
Darlene McDonald
Tweet, @VoteDarlene, Sept. 21, 2022
Burgess Owens has proven that he has no qualms throwing people under the bus to get what he wants — voters in PA, veterans, women, his constituents, contributors to his ‘charities’ and ‘PAC,’ the Black community, his family, and the American people. It’s time to send him back to Florida with DeSantis where he can proudly wave his Betsy Ross flag and hang out with Matt Gaetz, TFG and all his friends from FOX at Mar-a-Lago (if he gets an invite after becoming an EX-Congressman).
SCORE: 3
Tweet, @VoteDarlene, Sept. 27, 2022
In a R+31 District, should a Democrat run? The question should be, why would #CD4 re-elect MAGA Republican @RepBurgessOwens, who is more comfortable on FOX with the Betsy Ross Flag behind him than he is talking to or showing up for constituents?
SCORE: 4
