INCUMBENT SEN. MIKE LEE ALREADY FACES FOUR CHALLENGERS (TWO REPUBLICANS, TWO DEMOCRATS).

As Mike Lee approached the stage at the 2010 Utah Republican State Convention, the crowd broke into raucous cheering. These spectators were polite to incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett and animated for business owner Tim Bridgewater; but when Lee, then a 38-year-old lawyer from Utah County, stepped to the podium, his Salt Palace audience erupted.

Lee smiled and waved, shifting his weight from side to side. “My name is Mike Lee,” he said when the cheering subsided, “and I want to be your next U.S. Senator.”

His speech was largely reminiscent of his entire campaign — with emphasis on limited government, limited government, limited government; a balanced budget; tax reform; and a Constitutionally limited government. The crowd loved it; when the first ballots were counted, Lee won nearly 29% of the nominating convention’s votes, to Bridgewater’s 27% and Bennett’s 26%.

Lee went on to win the primary and general elections, taking his seat in January 2011 as a freshman member of the 112th U.S. Congress. He won a largely uncompetitive reelection campaign in 2016. And now, with nearly two full Senate terms under his belt, Lee is gearing for a third.

But Lee faces stiffer — and earlier — electoral competition than at any time since 2010. Two Republicans and two Democrats have already announced their candidacies to challenge him in the primary, with others considering a run, too.

Any challenger confronts the same steep task Lee faced in 2010: unseating a two-term incumbent with general, albeit wavering, support from statewide constituents. Lee had the benefit of riding the Tea Party wave into office; no comparable national movement has arisen today.

But Lee’s favorability among Utah voters has fluctuated during his two terms. After his fight against the Affordable Care Act contributed to a partial government shutdown in October 2013, his favorability rating sunk below 50 percent for the first time during his tenure. And after the 2020 election, 45% of Utah voters approved of Lee’s job performance, while 41% disapproved, though he maintained popularity within his party (69% of GOP voters approved).

Regardless, Lee’s challengers — both within the GOP and outside of it — face an uphill battle.

“Objecting to Lee’s approach is easy,” political commentator Frank Pignanelli explained, “but constructing a campaign to oust him is enormously difficult.”

The enormous difficulty of such a campaign isn’t lost on Ally Isom. The former deputy chief of staff and communications director for Utah Gov. Gary Herbert announced her candidacy on July 1, releasing a video in which she laces up bright-red running shoes and says, with intended wit, “I’m running for the United States Senate.” (Central to Isom’s campaign is a “Walk a Mile Tour,” in which she’ll wear those same shoes and walk around one mile in every community in Utah.)

“If you’re going to challenge an incumbent, you better know what you’re doing,” she told me during an interview in her Kaysville home. “There is a path. It’s narrow, and it’s steep, but it’s there.”

Of all the candidates, to this point, Isom is most ideologically similar to Lee. She champions limited government and fiscal conservatism. She’ll emphasize free enterprise, the national debt and low taxes, and she calls herself a “sensible, mainstream Republican.”

Isom’s foray into politics came at the local level. She helped with Herbert’s early campaigns, served on the Kaysville City Council and chaired the 2006 GOP State Organizing Convention. After three years in the Governor’s Office, she accepted a position with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where she spent six years in public affairs and communications. Most recently, Isom worked as an executive at EVŌQ Nano, a Utah biotech startup.

Her decision to run for the U.S. Senate was not whimsical; by her account, it took nudging and prodding from several individuals. After the Jan. 6 insurrection, she realized that she needed to act. “I thought, I want my country back, and I want my party back,” she recalled. “This isn’t who we are.”

That disconnect with her party goes back several years. Isom didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016, and the day after the election, she disaffiliated with the Republican Party. (“Dear GOP, you may have won an election yesterday, but you lost me,” she wrote on Facebook.) She remained distanced throughout most of the Trump presidency, returning in mid-2020 to vote in the Utah Republican gubernatorial primary.

That decision has already become a target for Lee’s supporters. One mailer sent out by the Club for Growth, a conservative PAC that supports Lee, shows a photoshopped image in a car with President Joe Biden and reads, “Ally Isom took a ‘vacation’ from Donald Trump and the Republican Party.”

But Isom doesn’t consider herself to be a “quasi-conservative” or a “RINO” — labels that Trump’s conservative dissidents often assume. “I’ve always considered myself a diehard, classic, conservative Republican,” she said. “Those things have always mattered to me. And they still very much matter to me. I think our party is ready to return to that.”

That return, Isom says, represents a “crossroads” for the GOP and the nation. The polarization and incompetence that prevents solutions in Washington is Isom’s biggest concern and top priority.

“I think our national dialogue is screaming for cooperation, for collaboration,” Isom explained. “And it’s reached a pitch that I can no longer just sit aside and say, ‘it’s who we are.’ It’s not who we are, I reject the notion that this is who we are, we can do better. And I feel like it’s time we do better.”

Becky Edwards knows Utah as well as anyone. She’s a lifelong Utahn and spent a decade in the Utah House of Representatives. But her new “Yellow Couch Tour” has the intention of taking her even deeper into Utah’s communities.

Like Isom, Edwards plans to visit every Utah community during the campaign, but instead of walking a mile, she’ll pack up a couch from her family’s living room, put it in the back of her Volkswagen Atlas, and haul it to a Utah city. While serving in the state legislature, Edwards invited constituents into her living room each week during the session to hear their concerns; this is a way to continue that outreach. “I don’t think I can bring the entire state of Utah into my living room,” she said. “But wouldn’t it be great if I could take a piece of my home around the state.”

On one recent Saturday, she spent the morning in Ephraim, Sanpete County, meeting with community leaders and answering questions (with the couch in tow). That afternoon, she was a three-hour drive north, doing the same in Corinne, Box Elder County. (“She’s really impressive,” one Ephraim resident told me after seeing the yellow couch firsthand.)

“One thing that we’re continuing to hear over and over, which is really gratifying, is people’s desire to see something different in Washington, D.C.,” Edwards said. “The message that we’re bringing better leadership and better solutions is really resonating around the state.”

Edwards’ tenure in the state legislature made her name recognizable in Utah political circles. During her decade of elected service, “she worked to expand affordable housing options, improve Utah schools and support clean energy opportunities across the state,” her campaign website reads.

Edwards was also instrumental in passing Utah election reform that allowed candidates to make it onto the primary ballot by gathering signatures — a route both Edwards and Isom plan to pursue, in addition to the convention. (When asked if she ever thought she’d utilize the signature-gathering process she helped make possible, Edwards said, “I always looked at what I thought was best for the people of Utah, and how it would affect me in the future was not at the forefront of my mind.”)

Edwards’ platform is built upon four main pillars: “families first,” “taking care of business,” “environmental stewardship” and “strengthening our democracy.” She champions typical conservative causes, like protecting gun rights through the Second Amendment and creating free-market economic opportunity. But other issues — like addressing climate change and finding nuanced solutions for immigration — are subjects of intra-party debate.

Edwards, too, has been the subject of campaign ads from national PACs. One Club for Growth mailer read, “Becky Edwards: BAD FOR UTAH.” Another recent fundraising email from the Lee campaign claimed Lee is “the ONLY conservative in this race who has and will fight for our America First priorities,” and emphasizes that the Senator has “no less than NINE GOP Primary opponents.”

Edwards says such ads are “a distraction” and deter from the real issues Utahns face. “The race is going to proceed in its own way, where we are focused on our campaign and our message,” she said.

“When I say better leadership, better solutions, those aren’t sound bites, those are actually things that I was able to do when I served,” she said. “And I look forward to taking that very same approach to the U.S. Senate on behalf of the people of Utah.”