McMullin says lee has lost way in D.C., time for change amid senator's embrace of extremism
Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s personal text messages to high-profile Trump Administration officials during the dark days and weeks after the 2020 presidential election and leading up to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 are already roiling the senator’s reelection bid this year.
The messages, revealed last week in exclusive reporting by CNN, make clear Lee was neck deep in various efforts to maneuver a technical win for Trump based on dubious and later debunked claims of widespread voter fraud.
Lee seemed intent, based on the cache of texts leaked from the House’s Jan. 6 committee investigation, to work toward inducing various swing state legislators to send “alternative” electors to Washington in order to throw the 2020 presidential vote into the House of Representatives, where Trump would have almost certainly won a second term.
The cynical political machinations exposed by Lee’s private communications make his race for re-election now one of the hottest to watch this election cycle.
His opponents, inside and outside his own party, have been quick to capitalize on this likely breach of the public trust, calling his antics a violation of his oath of office, and worse.
Independent candidate Evan McMullin asked on social media, “Why did Sen. Mike Lee advise spurious legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election? And why did he hide those plans from both the public and the FBI in the days leading up to Jan. 6?”
Republican Becky Edwards tweeted, “Lee has an obligation to protect and defend our Constitution and democratic process, as he swore to do when he took office. Instead, he allowed the situation to continue and enabled those seeking to keep themselves in power, no matter the consequences.”
Democrat opponent Kael Weston posted, “As these text messages show, Mike Lee acted as Trump’s lawyer after the 2020 election, not a U.S. Senator putting country ahead of party.”
And Republican Ally Isom’s press team released this comment: “When a sitting US senator asks what he should say (referring to a Lee text to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows pleading for talking points in which to bolster Trump’s inane voter fraud claims), he is freely admitting he is more concerned with playing DC games—with the politics of politics—rather than the people of Utah.”
Edwards and Isom will face-off with Lee in the June 28 primary vote. No doubt the texts will feature prominently in that contest.
However, chances of Lee coasting into the general election in November unscathed— that is if he wins the GOP primary—are highly unlikely. And that’s because of the independent, coalition-building campaign behind McMullin, who recently won over Millard County Democrats when they voted at their recent convention to back him, even over their own party’s candidate.
McMullin recently sat down with the Chronicle Progress to discuss his campaign, share some tidbits about his personal history and talk about why he thinks Lee is no longer an effective voice for Utah in Washington, D.C.
McMullin was born in Utah County. He grew up in Washington state after his father moved the family there when he got a job with Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer.
McMullin returned to Utah when he entered college at Brigham Young University. In his sophomore year, he was recruited on campus by the Central Intelligence Agency.
He spent the rest of undergraduate years in college traveling back and forth between BYU and the CIA’s training facilities in and around Washington, D.C.
“I would do a semester on and a semester off at school, and then training with the Central Intelligence Agency,” he said.
McMullin graduated about the same time terrorists were pulling off the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington.
After graduation he joined the agency’s clan- destine service and was soon on foreign soil.
“Then deployed to the Middle East and South Asia, North Africa to join our fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups looking to attack us again. And so that was the early part of my life and the beginning of my career. It was a phenomenal time to serve,” he said. “I was a young man in my twenties and asked to go overseas and given an immense amount of responsibility to defend our country, to find those who wanted to destroy it and stop them from doing so.”
He would spend the next 11 years with the agency.
When he decided it was time to move on, he went back to school, this time the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned an MBA. He started a career in high fi nance only to be drawn back into public service, this time in Congress.
“I received an unexpected opportunity to return to Washington to serve as a national security adviser in Congress. I was excited about another opportunity to serve,” he said.
Expecting to be there only a year or so, he ended up serving two years before becoming the House Republican’s chief policy director.
He served in that capacity until 2016, when the rise of Trump through the primaries startled his sensibilities enough that he made the decision to make a serious, though very long-shot run at the presidency.
“In a three-way race, I had no name ID at that point. We had very modest resources. I was a rookie candidate and we had mostly a rookie team. But there were a lot of people, especially here in Utah and the Mountain West, who were looking for an alternative,” he recalled.
Astonishingly, McMullin earned 21.5 percent of Utah’s presidential ballots in 2016—a mere six percentage points behind Hilary Clinton and likely the most effective, non-major party showing for any candidate for president in U.S. history.
McMullin became a serious contender for future office almost overnight, thanks to moderate Utah voters who saw his appeal.
The latest example of this occurred on Saturday when members of the United Utah Party, formed in 2017 as a bastion against increased polarization at the national level, voted overwhelmingly to support McMullin’s candidacy at its party convention. It’s the first time the young party has endorsed a candidate who is not a member, according to KSL.com.
Another example illustrating that Lee is probably in for a nasty fight ahead of November is the fact the other senator from Utah, Mitt Romney, decided NOT to endorse the fellow Republican and Senate colleague, which might as well be an endorsement for McMullin.
Asked about this, the former intelligence officer said he considers Romney a friend.
“I think our state and our country are very lucky to have him. I consider him a friend and very much respect his position in this race…we share a concern about the health of our republic and a desire to serve constructively,” he said.
Uniting voters of all political persuasions is clearly a major goal of McMullin’s campaign. He said he believed the only way to remove Lee from his seat is if “principled Republicans” joined Democrats and independents in Utah to oust the two- term senator.
“I think it’s critical now, in Utah but also across the country, that those of us still committed to truth and decency and to our Constitution, our democratic republic, that we make a common cause and join together in a cross-partisan coalition to defend our country,” he said. “I firmly believe the country needs Utah’s leadership in this moment. Not the divisive extremism, but the kind of leadership that holds to principle but still finds common ground to solve problems. We have a style of leadership here in this state that I think is informed by our history.”
McMullin said Lee had become a “poster child for the politics of division and extremism in America.”
“I think he’s lost his way in Washington and put his own personal ambitions first. That doesn’t represent Utah. We are suffering as a state with only one effective senator in Sen. Romney…we’ve got to have two effective senators in order for our interests to be represented in Washington,” he added.
McMullin is criss-crossing the state, visiting all 29 counties, in his bid to defeat Lee. He says he’ll do it multiple times before voters decide.
He says he’s been energized by the support he’s received from the public so far, even here in Millard County.
“I greatly appreciated the support we found in Millard County. It was very encouraging and motivating. We’ve got a lot of really strong allies there. In general what we are seeing is there is a real hunger for change in the state,” he said. “There’s a sense that our problems have become so tangible, whether it’s water or air or managing the growth of the state, issues that are as much national as they are state issues. The cost of healthcare, inflation, just so many tangible, mounting challenges that we just don’t seem to be able to overcome as a country.”
Getting back to the basics of governance— finding common ground with people you might not totally agree with 100 percent of the time—is a basic tenet of his platform and something he says is the Utah way, through and through.
“We are seeing Romney Republicans join us. We are seeing growing sup- port among Democrats as well, who know, yes, I am not a Democrat, I don’t check every box for Democrats, but I think we’ve been effective in demonstrating there is common ground in this coalition,” he said. “Sufficient common ground that we can come together to replace Mike Lee. People are getting on board. We saw that in Millard County.”
McMullin, a longtime bachelor, wed last June. His wife Emily, who lost her first husband to cancer, brought five young children to the marriage.
“I married the woman I have always hoped to find,” McMullin said. “I was fortunate to find her and them. They have been a tremendous blessing in my life.”
He said his wife is totally on board with his campaign.
“Emily has joined me in this effort, in this campaign and been an incredible support. We’re loving being a family together… She’s new to it (national politics), but highly capable. And most importantly feels strongly that we have to stand up to the politics of extremism and division destroying our country.”
