Monday’s televised U.S. Senate debate between Republican Mike Lee and independent Evan McMullin has added importance. The two men meet at Utah Valley University at 6:00 pm on the same day election officials start sending mail-in ballots to voters.
That means this debate will be their last chance to sway some voters — literally their closing arguments.
And while it’s hard to gauge where the race stands with three weeks left until Election Day, it appears to have tightened significantly.
Publicly available polling is scattershot and shows no clear trajectory for either candidate. A survey from the pro-McMullin Center Street PAC has Lee with a 12-point lead over McMullin among likely voters, while another pro-McMullin group has McMullin with a four- or six-point advantage. Lee’s campaign insists their internal polling shows the Republican incumbent with a substantial lead.
McMullin and Lee, along with their supporters, act like the race could go either way. Earlier this week, Lee appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program to plead with Mitt Romney for his help against McMullin — a move you would never see from a campaign that believes they have a solid lead.
Outside groups have poured more than $8 million into the contest. The conservative Club for Growth has spent more than $3.1 million in the race, mostly to attack McMullin. Last week they pledged to spend even more over the final midterm stretch. The Put Utah First PAC, which backs McMullin, has dropped more than $2.6 million to boost his chances.
All of that certainly suggests that Monday’s debate could be critical in determining the outcome. Lee is undoubtedly taking the debate seriously. His campaign finance disclosures show he spent $13,000 to hire Washington, D.C. debate coach Mari Maseng Will’s firm Maseng Communications for “debate preparation services.”
So what can we expect from the two candidates? It depends on who you ask.
Mike Murphy, a veteran political consultant who has advised several high-profile Republicans like Mitt Romney and John McCain, is advising the pro-McMullin Put Utah First PAC. He says Lee will have to defend his record to voters.
“Mike Lee is going to have to stand at that podium and explain why he is one of the only guys in the Senate who thinks Putin is doing just fine in Ukraine, why he was texting away as part of the plot to overthrow a legal election. He’s got a lot of questions to answer,” Murphy says.
Murphy is referring to Lee’s 2019 trip to Moscow, where he discussed loosening sanctions against Russia, as well as his text messages with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that revealed he was a player in the plot to keep Donald Trump in power.
On the other side, McMullin’s critics have complained that he has gotten by without having to go into detail about his policy proposals. Former Utah congressman and current Fox News host Jason Chaffetz is eager to see Lee try to pin McMullin down.
“Nobody has ever really flushed out a policy position with Evan McMullin. He’s been able to hide and spout platitudes and never actually have to talk about an individual policy of any substance,” Chaffetz says.
Those wishes for a policy-dense discussion may not come to fruition. Televised debate formats are often too rigid, asking candidates to shoehorn answers to questions about complex issues into 30- and 60-second timeframes.
It used to be that a candidate couldn’t win an election with a good debate performance, but they certainly could lose with a poor one. That may not be possible anymore in our hyper-polarized and tribal political environment where voters are dug in. Although, Murphy disagrees with that thinking and believes Monday’s debate could move the needle.
“There is some truth to the thought that everybody is dug in. Swing voters haven’t been outlawed. There are just fewer of them,” Murphy explains. “In a close election, four or five percent can swing the outcome.”
For better or worse, the moments voters remember most from debates are gaffes or well-timed zingers.
There was Gerald Ford’s monumental blunder in 1976 when he insisted that there was “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” In 1988, Democrat Lloyd Bentsen devastated Republican Dan Quayle for comparing himself to President Kennedy. Bentsen replied: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy; I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.”
Perhaps the most famous debate zinger was Ronald Reagan’s “There you go again” reply to then-President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Carter was attacking Reagan for shifting his position on Medicare during the debate when Reagan delivered his retort. As author Rick Perlstein recounts in his book Reaganland, Carter’s team “high-fived one another” backstage when Reagan delivered the line because they thought the press would hammer Reagan for lying about his position on Medicare. Instead, people only remember Reagan’s snappy comeback from that debate.
At the end of Monday’s one-hour faceoff, you can expect both campaigns to declare victory, no matter what happens on stage. So what would a win look like for either candidate?
Chaffetz says if Lee can press the attack against McMullin as an unknown entity, he’ll be successful.
“I think McMullin is an unknown chameleon, and he’s going to have to get past the platitudes. If Mike Lee can flush that out, then I think that’s the clear victory for him,” Chaffetz says.
Murphy says he’ll be looking for three specific things on Monday.
“Which candidate framed the choice of the election most effectively? Which candidate seemed most at ease and connected best with voters? And which candidate made a terrible mistake we’ll hear about all week?” Murphy said.
