Lee looks to be a lock in the June 28 GOP Senate primary, but lots of undecided voters left
From the sprouting sprawl peppering southwest Salt Lake County to the tony suburbs of Holladay to the progressive and parading 9th & 9th neighborhood, red, white, and blue Becky Edwards U.S. Senate lawn signs festoon so many home-fronts you’d be forgiven to think Fourth of July jumped up the calendar.
And yet, as ubiquitous as that campaign branding is, the prospect of Edwards’ ultimate success remains harder to see — despite two-term Senate incumbent Mike Lee dragging unprecedented disapproval numbers like an anvil.
On June 28, Republican primary voters will decide whether to stay in the far-right lane with Lee or steer nearer the center with Edwards, a former state legislator, or business leader Ally Isom.
Edwards has credibility and a built-in constituency from her years serving in the Utah Legislature. She has focused on energy independence, fiscal responsibility and family prosperity as priority issues, while pointing to drought, inflation and housing as top concerns for Utahns.
But with less than two weeks remaining before the primary, questions remain about whether Edwards has been tough enough on the polarizing incumbent — and whether it’s too late.
“If either of the challengers really were going to take a significant bite out of Mike Lee’s lead, they were going to have to have done it already,” says Jason Perry, Director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics. “But you never say never in politics.”
‘Completely Unique’
For so long, statewide Senate races in Utah have been dreary, drama-less affairs with well-backed Republicans trouncing token Democrats. The Lee race, where the Republican candidate will go on to face independent Evan McMullin, is radically different.
“Everything about this race is completely unique,” Perry says. “It’s unique to have two intraparty challengers gunning for an incumbent — both fighting for the same portion of the political spectrum. And the person who emerges will face another unprecedented candidate, who has previously run as a Republican. It’s just so absolutely unique.”
Despite multiple requests over several days for an interview as well as a request to provide written responses to questions, Edwards and her campaign declined to talk to Utah Political Underground for this story.
A recent Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll suggests Lee has a comfortable cushion for the June 28 primary. He is leading with 49 percent followed by Edwards with 19 percent and Isom with 6. However, it is unusual for an incumbent Republican in Utah to dip below 50 percent and 26 percent of voters remain undecided.
“For Becky Edwards to be successful, she’s going to have to carefully articulate how a vote for her is better than Mike Lee,” Perry adds. “His unfavorables have gone up over the last several weeks, but it’s going to be very difficult (for Edwards) between now and the primary election.”
Lee’s job approval rating has plunged into the 40s and he hemorrhaged nearly a third of the delegates during April’s GOP state convention.
On the stump, Edwards argues Lee has failed over 12 years to capture and keep the solid support of Utahns. In the only debate where all three candidates appeared on stage together, Edwards claimed Congress has no vision and no results while pointing a finger, if indirectly, at Lee.
“Utahns deserve and expect elected leaders representing this state who are more than focused on personal gain, cronyism and D.C. politics,” she said. “There is a better way.”
Yet Edwards didn’t lay a glove on Lee over his controversial text messages with former President Donald Trump’s then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about challenging the 2020 presidential election results.
Lee was also aware beforehand of the so-called Eastman memo, which outlined plans to attempt to overturn the election results. This week, the January 6 Select Committee released video showing one of Trump’s own White House lawyers telling John Eastman the day after the Jan. 6 insurrection to “get a great f-ing criminal defense lawyer, you’re going to need it.”
During their debate, neither Lee nor Edwards expressed support for additional gun restrictions, despite the horrific spate of mass shootings — and a growing chorus to enact reasonable reforms — last month alone.
More daylight opened between them regarding abortion and whether the Supreme Court should end Roe v Wade. Lee argued the Supreme Court never had the authority to enact a law protecting abortion rights in the first place. But Edwards said her work as a social worker, where she encountered women in hospital rooms contemplating abortions due to awful circumstances, is reason not to revisit Roe v Wade.
“It’s for women like that, and so many other young girls who have experienced rape, women with disabilities who have experienced being taken advantage of for their entire lives on repeat,” she said. “It’s for those individual circumstances that my heart goes out and I understand, we have to have conversations that are thoughtful, productive and meaningful on this issue.”
Neither of the primary frontrunners went after the other when it came to energy production, immigration and inflation — mostly mirroring the same conservative positions.
But while Lee has long criticized the federal government over its control of Utah public lands, Edwards blasted him for being unable to work in a bipartisan way to forge a sustainable future for both sides of the public lands divide.
“Because Congress is so ineffective, it’s led to a leadership vacuum that the executive branch has stepped right into,” Edwards said. “Over and over it has continued to have this ping-pong approach with designation and then pulling it back and then re-designating public lands to the tune of hundreds of millions of acres is leaving communities across the state behind.”
Fishing From The Same Pond
Recognizing they are competing for a modest number of moderate Utah Republicans, both Edwards and Isom have implored the other to bow out of the race. Neither has budged.
The math probably doesn’t compute, since, as Perry points out, there are only so many center-right voters who show up during primary elections.
“It just makes it harder for both of them, which is why you saw both of them asking the other to withdraw,” Perry says. “It’s very difficult for one of them alone, but it’s exceptionally difficult when both of them are staying in.”
The intriguing thing for Republicans is to game-plan general election scenarios against McMullin, who himself ran as a Republican in the 2016 presidential election, garnering 21 percent.
According to a new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll, Lee holds a 41 to 37 percent edge over McMullin. But Edwards is also leading the independent candidate, 29 to 28 percent. Nineteen percent of voters are undecided in the Lee matchup, while a whopping 37 percent are undecided in Edwards v McMullin.
“That number is interesting,” Perry says. “There are a lot of voters that don’t know what they’d do. This is so unique because you don’t have a Democratic candidate.”
Given that opening, and just generally, neither Perry nor longtime Utah political veteran Lisa Roskelley could understand why Edwards wouldn’t take advantage of a campaign profile in the local press.
“As a candidate, doing media is a calculated risk, but it’s a risk you’ve got to take,” says Roskelley, who worked as communications director for former Gov. Huntsman and now does political and business consulting. “It would be strange to reject the opportunity to convey your message.”
The Edwards campaign said the candidate has been booked “for weeks” with the primary fast approaching, apologizing for the lack of access. The campaign did not respond to a request to provide written answers to four short questions.
“If a candidate is unable to answer questions and unable to navigate hard questions, it should raise questions to voters,” Roskelley says. “Earned media is so valuable, especially in a statewide campaign where your goal is to talk to as many constituents as possible. It’s that free media.”
“So long as you can communicate your vision, that’s what you’re running on,” Roskelley adds. “It’s an unfortunate situation when a candidate doesn’t take the opportunity to tell their story. That engagement is why you go through the heartache of a campaign.”
Is The Middle Too Little?
Throughout the campaign, Edwards has tried to prosecute the case that Washington is broken — with Lee being part of the wreckage — and that a conservative, yet pragmatic approach, unafraid of bipartisan compromise, can render real solutions.
“Our elected officials have traded the needs of their constituents for their political ambitions,” Edwards wrote in response to a campaign survey asking what sets her apart on policy. “In all of my policymaking, a common-sense approach to finding solutions is top of mind. I intend to bring more proactive, productive, and inclusive solutions to Washington. My commitment to collaboration and to making real change for Utahns is what guides those solutions.”
At the same time, Edwards insists the Republican party has work to do when it comes to the important art of actually governing.
“I believe that many of the issues we face as a country will require more collaboration and bipartisanship than we’ve seen in the past,” she wrote in response to characterize the identity today. “Division in government affects all of us, but by building bridges and working together, we can bring Republican values to any piece of legislation.”
That moderating mission is now face to face with a block of voters decidedly more entrenched in MAGA-style politics, who appear loyal to Lee.
“Mike Lee has a very strong base that he’s been able to keep and cultivate,” says Perry, noting the trick for Edwards will be to convince the undecideds to come her way and not to Isom. “Where do you carve out enough votes when you’re drawing from the same constituencies. Polling has showed it’s just not there.”
Lawn signs are rarely a metric of success or failure for campaigns. But on some blocks in Salt Lake City, it’s not uncommon to see the earnest Edwards version juxtaposed with snarky neighboring signs showing an empty male silhouette framed by the headline “Humans Against Mike Lee.” Thing is, when adding the number of ‘moderate’ humans statewide, the math is different.
