Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and his independent challenger, Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer, met Monday evening for their only debate, a largely genteel affair that showed flashes of tension mainly around Lee’s role in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep Donald Trump in the presidency.
Here are five takeaways from an unusual debate in an unusual Senate race.
Jan. 6, 2021, remains center stage.
No race in the country has spotlighted the events after the 2020 election quite so much as the Senate contest in Utah. In part, that’s because McMullin and Lee agree on so many other issues. But it’s primarily because of the prominent role Lee played in cheerleading various efforts to use legal battles to keep Trump in power. Much of that cheerleading surfaced in text messages the senator sent to the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
McMullin called Lee’s actions “the most egregious betrayal of our nation’s constitution in its history by a U.S. senator,” adding: “It will be your legacy.”
Lee did ultimately vote to affirm President Joe Biden’s election, and he fell back on the language that many Republicans have used when asked if the president was fairly elected. “Joe Biden is our president,” he said. “He was chosen in the only election that matters, the election held by the Electoral College.”
But he strongly denied any wrongdoing before his vote to certify the election, saying his discussions about a search for “alternative” electors who would deny the election result was merely an exploration of rumors of such electors — rumors, he said, that proved to be untrue. He accused McMullin of “a cavalier, reckless disregard for the truth” and demanded an apology.
The advantage of independence.
McMullin took full advantage of his status as an independent running in a conservative state, agreeing with his Republican opponent on limiting abortion, castigating Biden for stoking inflation and saying the White House’s student debt relief program would only worsen inflation. And he vowed that he would not be a “bootlicker” for Biden or Trump.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. Mike Lee flips through notes during a debate at Utah Valley University, Oct. 17, 2022, ahead of the November midterm election.
That caught Lee’s ear: “The suggestion that I’m beholden to either party, that I’ve been a bootlicker for either party, is folly,” he protested.
McMullin was also free to embrace the most popular elements of the Democrats’ achievements, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.
He portrayed Lee — largely accurately — as an outlier in the Senate for his consistent votes against bills, even those with broad bipartisan support, and put himself forward as a problem-solver in the mold of the Utahn he hopes to join in the Senate, Mitt Romney.
“If we prevail, it will make Utah the most influential state in the nation, because nothing will get through the Senate without Utah’s support,” McMullin said.
But there is a problem with his vow to be a true independent who would not caucus with either party: Without choosing sides at all, he might not be able to get any committee assignments, severely limiting his ability to wield influence.
Lee was cutting in his dismissal of his opponent’s independent bid: “Supporting an opportunistic gadfly who is supported by the Democrat Party might make for interesting dinner party conversation,” he argued, but in such trying times, it made no sense for the people of Utah.
Searching for distinctions on abortion.
In virtually every other contested race this year, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has elevated abortion to the top of the agenda, especially for the Democrat in the race. The Senate contest in Utah has no Democrat, and no abortion-rights candidate.
In conservative Utah, that allowed Lee to openly proclaim his joy over the end of Roe v. Wade and his support for allowing the states to decide whether abortion should be legal. “Roe v. Wade,” Lee said, “was a legal fiction.”
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Evan McMullin, the independent challenger in Utah's 2022 U.S. Senate race, participates in a debate at Utah Valley University, Oct. 17, 2022, ahead of the November midterm election.
McMullin said he, too, was “pro-life” and struggled to distinguish himself from his opponent, saying he opposed politicians at the extremes of both parties on the issue, those who would ban all abortions without exceptions and those who oppose all restrictions. But he did not say when he thought abortion should be legal or at what point in a pregnancy his opposition to abortion would kick in.
Russia, Russia, Russia.
Given McMullin’s CIA background, Russia seemed like a fruitful avenue to pursue his prosecution of Lee as an extremist outlier, even in right-leaning Utah. He said the senator was the only member of Utah’s all-Republican congressional delegation not to be blacklisted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and he castigated Lee for going to Moscow in 2019 to discuss relaxing some sanctions on the Putin regime.
But Lee deftly eluded the attack, saying he had gone to Russia at the invitation of the nation’s ambassador to Moscow at the time, Jon Huntsman Jr. — a popular former Utah governor.
Closing the gap? Not likely.
McMullin has waged a surprisingly effective campaign against Lee in a state that gave Trump 58% of the vote in 2020. But to beat Lee, he must win over the state’s Democrats, most of its independents and every disaffected Republican he can find. And no one is sure such a coalition will add up to 50% of the vote.
It is also not clear Monday night’s debate will advance McMullin’s cause. The audience was stacked with supporters of Lee, who booed McMullin’s jabs, especially about Jan. 6 and the 2020 election, and cheered on the incumbent. At times, McMullin seemed flustered that he was not getting traction with his most practiced lines of attack, especially his appeals to the Mormon faithful whose ancestors “trekked across the plains and the Rockies to achieve freedom here.”
“I think about all the men and women, the 14 generations of Americans who have sacrificed for this grand experiment in freedom,” he said. “They trusted you, we trusted you, and with that trust and with your knowledge of the Constitution, Sen. Lee, you sought to find a weakness in our system” to “overturn the will of the people.”
But the Utahns who Hillary Rodham Clinton thought would recoil in 2016 from Trump’s immoralities did not come to her aid. And they were even less in evidence for Biden in 2020.
Ultimately, Lee may have had the most effective attack line, one he used often: McMullin voted for Biden.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.