Utah candidates spar over Trump in a close and unusual Senate race

In Utah’s only Senate debate this cycle, two candidates who have at times sought to distinguish themselves from former President Donald Trump clashed on Monday over the extent of their independence, as well as the idea of partisanship itself. The relatively close race could lead to the highly unusual outcome of an independent member in the U.S. Senate who does not give either party an advantage.

“I’m not going to Washington, if we prevail, to be a bootlicker for Donald Trump or Joe Biden,” Evan McMullin, the independent, said at Utah Valley University in Orem. “And that’s a commitment I’ve made to putting Utah first.”

The campaign, which POLITICO labeled in August as “the strangest Senate race in America,” could have pivotal consequences for which party has control of the Senate, particularly if McMullin wins. An independent who ran for president in 2016, McMullin has pledged that he would not caucus with either party, meaning he wouldn’t be counted as a reliable vote for Democrats or Republicans.

“Parties are an important proxy. They’re an important proxy for ideas,” incumbent Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said, making the case against his opponent. Lee added: “You’re asking the people to put faith, blind trust in you. … That’s not how we lead to a good policy outcome.”

The race also marks the first major threat to Lee’s reelection, since he won his previous two general-election campaigns by double-digit margins. In a Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll conducted earlier this month, Lee led McMullin by 4 percentage points among registered Utah voters, nearly within the poll’s margin of sampling error.

Throughout the hourlong debate, moderated by former KSL NewsRadio host Doug Wright, the candidates juggled the influence of Trump, who has endorsed Lee.

Texts that Lee reportedly sent favorably discussing Trump’s legal challenges to the 2020 election will be Lee’s “legacy,” McMullin said — part of a comment for which Lee demanded an apology.

And of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, McMullin said to Lee: “When the barbarians were at the gate, you were happy to let them in.”

“That was an information-free, truth-free statement,” Lee said of his opponent’s characterizations of his behavior in the 2020 election. Lee voted to certify the results of the presidential contest.

For his part, Lee implied that Democrats were McMullin’s “adopted” party. He also brought up his own votes that were not in line with his fellow Senate Republicans.

Suggesting that Lee was “a bootlicker for either party is folly,” the senator said.

McMullin has run a viable campaign after he and his supporters successfully persuaded state Democrats to not nominate anyone from their own party and support him instead. A former Republican, he has said he is open to weakening the filibuster, and that he probably would have supported recent bipartisan bills on infrastructure and gun safety.

Lee voted for McMullin as a protest vote against Trump in the 2016 presidential election, a fact which was brought up positively by McMullin in Monday’s debate.

The current U.S. Senate includes two independents, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who both caucus with Democrats.