McMullin acknowledges issues like inflation and abortion rights are focal points in Senate races nationwide. “People in Utah feel strongly about the horrible state of affairs that Joe Biden has brought and the horrible conditions that we’re now facing with inflation and all that goes along with it.” This one is not about him,” Lee said as he walked through a cattle corral talking about the effects of inflation on feed and fuel prices. Lee, a one-time critic of the former president who even voted for McMullin in protest of Trump in the 2016 election, dismisses McMullin’s alarm bells about extremism and says their race has less to do with Trump than Biden. In response to questions about prominent midterm election issues, Lee repeatedly prefaces his answers by circling back to a reminder that McMullin has been “embraced and endorsed and funded by the Democratic Party." Mingling with voters amid the the sound of squealing hogs after purchasing a sheep at the auction, he acknowledges the race defies traditional two-party dynamics yet hews closely to conventional Republican talking points: government spending, inflation and polling showing widespread disapproval of President Joe Biden.
#Beyond wonderland after party skin#
“But he did good for the country.”Įighty miles (129 kilometers) north at a junior livestock auction in Ogden, Lee wears ostrich skin cowboy boots and sits cross-legged on a folding chair. “With Trump and everything, we were like, ‘What do we do?’” Kemp said after speaking to McMullin in Provo. Both caucus with the Democrats, though McMullin has said he wouldn't caucus with either party.īoth Lee and McMullin are vying for voters like Cindy Kemp of Lehi, who credits Trump for the country’s thriving pre-pandemic economy but was often fed up with his public persona. If McMullin were to win in November, he would become the Senate's third independent, joining Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Conservative groups like Club for Growth are spending millions to defend Lee. “They never solve problems.”Īs both parties jockey for control of the evenly split Senate, the peculiar Republican-versus-independent contest has transformed Utah from an electoral afterthought into a possible spoiler. “Authoritarians serve themselves and the small cadres that surround them,” McMullin, an ex-CIA officer, said.
6 House committee that show Lee discussing legally dubious schemes to keep Trump in power, before shifting course, backing away and voting to certify the election results. McMullin has cast both Trump and Lee as threats to democracy, noting text messages obtained by the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents. McMullin warned in a New York Times op-ed after Trump's election that he was an authoritarian who “undermined critical democratic norms including peaceful debate and transitions of power.” This year, McMullin is hitting that message even harder, denouncing his role in the Jan. McMullin won 21.5% of the vote in Utah in 2016, the most of any third-party candidate in the country. It’s been six years since McMullin, a soft-spoken former Republican congressional staffer, emerged as a third-party candidate as a conservative alternative to Donald Trump.
To defeat Lee, McMullin's idealized call for cross-party unity will have to do a lot more than just win over Democrats and a few disgruntled conservatives.
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