Senator Mike Lee may be sitting pretty as ballots hit the mail
Tea Party fervor fueled Mike Lee’s path to the US Senate in 2010 when he managed to oust centrist, three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett. That critical midterm election signaled Republicans moving further to the right in efforts to regain legislative control.
In 2015, a BYU study ranked Lee as the most ideologically extreme senator today and also the most conservative Senator elected by Utahns. Lee now seeks his third term in the U.S. Senate and surprisingly faces two GOP challengers in the June 28 primary.
“The fact that he was challenging a sitting senator (in his own party) was a little different,” University of Utah Political Science Professor Matthew Burbank said of Lee’s 2010 rise to the Senate. “Bennett was very popular. But it was also an indication of what was happening, particularly with delegates, that they were becoming more and more conservative, really reflecting more of the hard right wing. Lee used that to his advantage.”
The two-term incumbent likely isn’t at risk this time. A recent Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll shows him with a significant lead over former state Rep. Becky Edwards and political insider Ally Isom.
And the depth and breadth of Lee’s campaign funds make his challengers’ hard-fought financial support look like loose change.
Both women represent the moderate wing of the Utah GOP, a sector of the party that has largely fallen out of favor with many who serve as delegates in the state’s dominant party.
Burbank described Edwards and Isom as credible candidates – also more moderate and collaborative than Lee. But barring something unforeseen, he believes Lee will likely nab a third term.
“You now have two women challenging him with basically the same message,” Burbank said. “And Lee is happy to keep both in the race because it pretty much guarantees him a win. The anti-Lee sentiment gets split between those two candidates. Their messaging is very similar.”
Pioneer roots, anti-fed sentiment
Lee, 51, and his wife Sharon have three children and a home base in Provo.
The son of former BYU President Rex Lee earned his law degree from BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School in 1997 and went on to clerk for Samuel Alito twice – first when Alito served as a third circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals and second after Alito became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Lee served as general counsel for Gov. Jon Huntsman between those stints with Alito.
Several attempts – for more than a week – to set up a short phone interview with Lee through his campaign yielded no success. He also did not respond to questions sent by email.
However, his Senate record, spanning close to a dozen years, speaks for itself. And he recently outlined his stance on several issues during a June 1 primary debate hosted by the Utah Republican Party.
In his opening statement, Lee spoke of his pioneer ancestors who settled in Utah 175 years ago.
“They came here searching for religious freedom,” Lee said. “That’s why I focus on the Constitution, because we’re the party of the Constitution and of freedom.”
He also beat the drum of limited government, a view that has attracted significant financial backing from the conservative Club for Growth.
“The Federal government has become too big and too expensive because it’s doing too many things that it wasn’t intended to do,” Lee said. “I’ve learned a thing or two about how to unravel it and I’d love the chance to continue doing so in Washington.”
Babies and guns
More than an hour into the 90-minute debate held in Draper on Wednesday, Utah Republican Party Chairman Carson Jorgensen asked the candidates about abortion and guns.
In 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. And now, the country’s highest court is poised to overturn that landmark decision.
Both Edwards and Isom – mothers and grandmothers themselves – described the issue as complex and nuanced.
“I understand that we have to have conversations that are thoughtful, productive and meaningful on this issue,” Edwards said, noting she had worked as a trauma social worker and would prefer to let the almost fifty-year-old ruling stand as it is.
If overturned, Edwards said that states need to support women’s health, including contraception and family planning.
Isom believes the issue underscores why women are needed in the Senate.
“Reproductive health matters and women matter … I’m not just for life, I’m for consent,” Isom said. “I’m against violence. I’m for family planning and for improvements in the way we talk about sex education with our children. We’ve got to do all we can to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place.”
But Lee views the issue as more black and white – and said he would applaud overturning the “false claims” of Roe v. Wade because the ruling was both morally and constitutionally wrong.
“We’re talking here not about undifferentiated cells, we’re talking about babies,” Lee said, describing Roe v. Wade as judicial overreach that tells government it can’t protect babies in the womb.
“There’s nothing in the Constitution that gives this power to federal judges, nothing that prohibits governments from protecting unborn human life,” Lee said.
In the wake of the recent mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, 2nd Amendment rights have again come under scrutiny, particularly the damage high-powered assault rifles can inflict on small human bodies.
All three candidates lamented the horrific, senseless loss of life. But mass shootings have become almost commonplace in the US, and very little progress has been made to address the complicated issue head on.
Edwards, who has a concealed-carry permit, said that it’s possible to support the 2nd Amendment and to also discuss firearm safety.
“Let’s bring responsible gun owners together with people who want to see action on firearm safety,” Edwards said. “It takes political will and I am willing to have those hard conversations.”
Isom agreed that responsible gun owners are not at fault.
“They want to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. They support background checks and are willing to have meaningful dialogue about red flag laws,” Isom said. “But show me one that works, show me one that would have prevented what happened. Let’s have those conversations.”
Lee believes there’s a need to understand why young men commit these offenses.
“We’ve seen a fraying of some of our institutions, of society, a fraying of people’s confidence in families, in faith, in schools and in community associations,” Lee said.
Lee believes that social media companies should act as watchdogs to “figure out who’s going to do this and then report it to authorities.”
“And if they won’t do it on their own, we will make them,” Lee pledged.
Lee also indicated that he’s open to closing gaps in laws that prohibit certain groups of people from purchasing guns (i.e. convicted felons and individuals with domestic violence records).
“In the meantime we need to have this conversation about why it’s happening,” Lee said, adding that “looking to one weapon of choice isn’t going to fix it.”
Women rising?
Former state lawmaker Pat Jones heads up the nonpartisan Women’s Leadership Institute in Salt Lake City. In a recent phone interview, Jones said that more and more women want to enter the political arena where they can have a greater voice and impact.
“The fact that (Edwards and Isom) are running against an incumbent tells you something,” Jones said. “If you really want things to be different, you’re in a position where you can change policy and you can decide where the money gets spent. That’s where the power is.”
Jones also sees a growing appetite for legislators who can collaborate and compromise.
“There is a huge demand, especially seen in women, to get along with the other side … to do something meaningful for our citizens,” Jones said. “In this election, that will be a very important criteria for the large majority in the middle who will cast votes.”
Ironically, Lee replaced a senator “widely viewed as the person who knew how to get things done,” the U of U’s Burbank said of former Sen. Bob Bennett.
But Utah has yet to elect a woman to the U.S. Senate and Burbank questions if it will happen in 2022.
“He’s got two credible challengers within the Republican party, both who are attacking him not how you’d think they might (saying he’s not conservative enough) but that he’s not really getting anything done and he’s not representing the state,” Burbank said. “That’s basically their argument.”
But Burbank expects Lee to win the June 28 primary because Edwards and Isom basically occupy the same space and make the same argument.
“So they’ll split the vote against Lee,” he said.
A look at Lee’s record
A quick glance at Lee’s recent actions in the Senate shows a mixed record of obstruction, bipartisanship and varied levels of success or failure in passing legislation.
During Wednesday’s debate, Lee spoke in support of legal immigration reform.
“We’ve got to make sure that in order to be the country that welcomes immigrants for future generations to come, that they come through the front door and not the back door,” Lee said. “We’ve made the front door very difficult.”
In early 2019, Lee teamed with then Sen. Kamala Harris (a Democrat), to remove per-country caps on employment-based green cards and also increase the cap on family-based green cards from 7% to 15%.
But this and similar efforts have stalled in a sharply divided Congress.
This May, the House passed Lee’s two-year extension of the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that provides benefits to downwinders affected by fallout from nuclear weapon testing. Utah Congressman Burgess Owens led the charge on the House side.
Sen. Lee also sponsored a resolution in support of a free trade agreement between the U.S. and the United Kingdom – which the Senate approved last month.
In early April, Lee was one of 47 Republican senators to vote against confirming Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. The 53-47 vote tally came down in her favor.
In July 2019, Lee was one of two senators to vote against the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund that comedian activist Jon Stewart threw his heft behind. At that point, the fund was running dry.
For more information about Lee’s views and record, go to lee.senate.gov.
Entangled with Trump
Burbank reflected on the days in 2016 when Lee was a “never Trumper” – Lee didn’t think Trump was a real conservative. But the former President eventually won Lee over.
“Over time, he became an ardent supporter of Donald Trump, (who) is anything but constitutional or even very conservative,” Burbank said.
In late October 2020, Lee spoke at an Arizona Trump rally where he compared Trump to Captain Moroni, a hero described in the Book of Mormon.
“To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends, think of him as Captain Moroni. He seeks not power, but to pull it down. He seeks not the praise of the world or the fake news, but he seeks the well-being and the peace of the American people,” Lee said as reported by the Deseret News.
Those remarks roused significant pushback on social media from some within the faith who found them offensive. Lee explained that he learned at the last minute that he’d be speaking at the rally
In April, a series of text messages surfaced between Lee and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows regarding the 2020 election and the run-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
Lee’s close ties to the Trump White House became evident, but he ultimately refused to subvert the established electoral college process unless some states submitted alternate electors.
“We need something from state legislatures to make this legitimate and to have any hope of winning,” Lee had texted.
Later, as reported by The Salt Lake Tribune, Lee described it as nothing more than idle chatter between friends: “Mark Meadows is a friend of mine. He and I talk all the time.”
So many dollars!
This year’s April 30 campaign finance statements to the Federal Election Commission show Lee received almost $6.3 million in contributions and had spent just over $4.2 million.
The two-term incumbent had far surpassed his challengers in fundraising. Edwards raised $1.2 million and spent $922,375, while Isom trailed behind both, taking in $642,422 and disbursing $544,760.
According to opensecrets.com, Lee’s top 10 contributors in 2022 came from PACs and individuals connected to Club for Growth, Microsoft Corp, Senate Conservatives Fund, Comcast Corp, Brownstein Hyatt et al, Blackstone Group, 4life Research, Peloton, Yancey Brothers and Young Living Independent Brand Partner.
According to clubforgrowth.org, their PAC endorsement identifies top limited-government, pro-growth economic conservative candidates. This year, Lee and five other senators received contributions from their PAC.
Blackstone Group advocates for sustainability as a core business value, and touts Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles as part of being strong, resilient and able to deliver long-term value to investors.
During Wednesday’s debate in Draper, Lee slammed ESG as “starting out as a horrible idea – and it’s gotten horribly horrible since then.”
“It’s one thing if they want to get together and give each other awards, to talk about who is best on the environment or the most socially woke or who has the best governance strategies appealing to the leftist mob out there,” Lee said. But he objects to efforts to force the government to mandate ESG reporting through the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“That’s what we can’t afford to have happen,” Lee said, adding that he’s supporting legislation to “make sure that our federal regulators never ever get the power to enforce ESG.”
The winner of the June 28 primary will face off against independent Evan McMullin. In a surprising move at their April state convention, Utah Democratic delegates chose to back McMullin rather than put forward a nominee of their own.
