Utah emerges as wild card in battle for the Senate
by Alexander Bolton - 10/17/22 6:00 AM ET
The Utah Senate race between conservative Republican Sen. Mike Lee and Independent Evan McMullin has emerged as a potential wild card in the battle for the Senate.
Recent polls show the race is close, with McMullin trailing Lee by only a few points in a state where Republican victories are usually all but guaranteed.
Lee, a conservative who supported then-President Trump’s effort to challenge the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, is a star among many members of Utah’s Republican base, but his unpopularity among moderates and Democrats has driven his approval rating down to the low 40s.
“This is within the margin of error,” said Richard Davis, an emeritus professor of political science at Brigham Young University, citing recent polls by Deseret News and the Hinckley Institute of Politics. “It could go either way. It’s basically neck and neck.”
If McMullin manages to pull off an upset, his pledge to not caucus with either Democrats or Republicans could throw the battle for control of the Senate into turmoil.
If Republicans wind up keeping retiring Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R) Pennsylvania seat in GOP hands and defeating the Democratic incumbent in Nevada or Georgia, McMullin could still keep the Senate under Democratic control by voting for Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) as majority leader.
Conversely, he could swing it to Republicans by affiliating with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) or simply not affiliating with either party, which would give Republicans a 50-to-49 seat majority with one unaffiliated senator in the chamber.
“He’s in the catbird seat because as an Independent both sides are going to want to give him something” to get his vote for determining the Senate majority in an evenly split chamber, Davis said.
“I can’t imagine that he’s going to caucus with the Republicans, but he had to say that he wasn’t going to caucus with the Democrats to win over the very people he’s trying to win over right now,” Davis said of the moderate Republicans who aren’t thrilled about voting for Lee but wouldn’t consider voting for a Democrat, either.
“He could be in an extremely powerful situation if he gets to determine which way the Senate is organized, which party gets the majority,” he added. “I think what he’s going to do is negotiate on Utah’s behalf, get things for Utah out of this.”
The latest Deseret-Hinckley poll shows Lee leading McMullin by four points, 41 percent to 37 percent, with 12 percent of Utah voters undecided.
The poll found that 40 percent of respondents had a favorable view of Lee, while 47 percent had an unfavorable view.
Lee’s allies, however, argue that the Deseret poll put too much weight on registered instead of likely voters, skewing the results in favor of McMullin.
Lee’s allies think it’s more likely that the incumbent wins by a healthy margin of 10 or more points.
The poll, however, found the numbers stay largely the same among likely voters and the race tightens among those who say they will definitely vote, with Lee leading McMullin 42-40 percent.
“Mike Lee is leading this race. Every reliable poll shows Sen. Lee with a significant lead and our internal polling gives us even greater confidence in the strong support he has across the state,” said Matt Lusty, an adviser to the Lee campaign.
Utah Democrats helped McMullin significantly by declining to endorse one of their own members and instead backing McMullin at their state convention in April. The Deseret poll found 68 percent of Democrats backing McMullin, and he leads with unaffiliated voters as well.
Davis said if McMullin can win over more Republican moderates who see themselves more in the same camp as Utah’s centrist Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who voted twice to convict Trump on impeachment charges, he could wind up winning.
McMullin ran as an Independent for president in 2016 and turned in his best performance in Utah, where he won 21 percent of the vote in the general election — trailing the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by only 6 points. Trump carried the state with 45 percent of the vote.
Boyd Matheson, a prominent Utah radio host who formerly served as Lee’s chief of staff, said McMullin would find himself under tremendous pressure to pick a side if he manages to defy the odds and win election to an evenly divided Senate.
The Senate’s two current Independents — Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) — both caucus with Democrats. Neither, however, had to defeat a sitting senator to win their seats.
“He would be under immense pressure from both Democrats and Republicans and picking a side at this point matters because if you look at someone like a [Sen.] Joe Manchin [D-W.Va.], the reason Manchin has power because he’s in the room,” Matheson said.
He said if McMullin refuses to caucus with either party, he won’t have any way to sit on a committee without getting a special deal from one of the party leaders.
“That’s going to be the challenge for McMullin. If he wins, can he have any influence without any committee assignment without being in the Republican lunch or the Democratic caucus lunch?” he said.
The race was largely overlooked until Lee went on Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show Tuesday to plead for Romney’s endorsement, a surprising move since Romney made clear early in the race that he would stay neutral.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3689083-utah-emerges-as-wildcard-in-battle-for-the-senate/
