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Mike Lee is heading back to Washington for a third term in the U.S. Senate. This time around, can Utahns expect anything different from the Republican who rode the Tea Party wave to becoming a conservative bastion in Congress?
Former politicians and academics from around the state weighed in, and the short answer is: No, but Lee may feel pressure to soften or adjust his approach to some issues.
“I think you’ll get the same old Mike Lee, doing Mike Lee things,” said James Curry, a political science professor at the University of Utah, “with potentially the exception of maybe he responds to having been hit hard on the campaign trail on (former President Donald) Trump and election fraud ... to try to, probably in his hopes, do even better in the next election.”
The incumbent senator was up 13 percentage points on his opponent, independent candidate Evan McMullin, as of Thursday afternoon’s vote tallies. His win comes on the heels of the most competitive election for a U.S. Senate seat that Utah has seen in decades.
McMullin, a self-identified conservative, based much of his campaign on texts Lee sent to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows following the 2020 election, seemingly advising Trump on how to overturn the results. The independent labeled Lee — who is known to carry a pocket Constitution in his suits — a “constitutional con man.”
“Evan McMullin based his entire campaign on that issue, essentially, hit him hard on that issue, and showed that there was potentially some vulnerability there,” Curry said, adding, “And so now we’ll have to see if Mike Lee responds.”
Curry noted that nationwide, political candidates tend to “respond to difficult electoral challenges by adapting their behavior.” Ways that Lee could do that in the wake of his reelection, Curry said, are distancing himself from Trump — who endorsed him — or not be as vocal on issues related to election security.
A spokesperson for the senator did not respond to an interview request for this story.
In an op-ed published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Mitt Romney — who did not endorse Lee or McMullin — wrote, “The world looks to the U.S. as a model of free and fair elections. If we don’t have faith in our own system, how can we expect democracy to work elsewhere? While authoritarians in Russia and China are advertising an alternative to government of, by and for the people, spouting evidence-free claims of election fraud is stupidly self-defeating and despicable.”
Romney declining to endorse Lee has created tension between the two Republican senators from Utah. Lee used his alternative Twitter account, @basedmikelee, to respond to Romney’s congratulatory tweet with snark, saying “Thank you, @MittRomney. Will see you soon,” and tacking on the nail polish emoji.
Former Utah Gov. Gary Herbert backed Lee’s campaign, but acknowledged that his time in the Senate is “certainly not without controversy.”
Herbert has known Lee for half of the senator’s life, but worked most closely with him while he served as lieutenant governor under former Gov. Jon Huntsman, and Lee was the governor’s general counsel. Their decadeslong relationship made Herbert confident that Lee will remain “consistently conservative” and wield influence, he said.
“What I think is important about Sen. Lee is he’s been there,” Herbert said. “This is not his first rodeo, and he has position.”
Lee serves on the Joint Economic Committee; the Senate Judiciary Committee; the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation; and the Senate Special Committee on Aging. He is also the senior member of Utah’s congressional delegation.
Holding those positions gives Lee the responsibility to “uniquely help solve some of Utah’s pressing problems,” Herbert said, later adding, “I think he will.”
To do that, Herbert hopes Lee will unite the delegation in tackling issues that impact Utah. “By working together we will be that much more influential than if we were working separately.”
Ben McAdams, a former Democratic congressman from Utah who was one of McMullin’s most ardent supporters, echoed that sentiment.
“A lot of the work of Congress is mundane and detail-oriented, and Utah needs our delegation to care about those issues and to show leadership,” McAdams said. “Utah needs leaders who can roll up their sleeves and get the job done.”
Both Herbert and McAdams said one of the biggest issues the state needs Lee’s leadership on is finding ways the federal government can help the state address its water shortage. And the latter said he hopes Lee will listen to diverse stakeholders on that issue.
In the last year, all members of Utah’s congressional delegation, except Lee, introduced legislation pertaining to the Great Salt Lake. Lee did, however, vote in support of a larger bill that wrapped in the Great Salt Lake Recover Act, sponsored by Romney in the Senate, and Utah Reps. Chris Stewart, John Curtis and Burgess Owens in the House.
Lee hasn’t campaigned on any specific policy issues, instead focusing on reminding voters of his conservative values, and that he’ll vote in line with those. That’s standard for incumbent candidates in his circumstance, Curry noted, pointing out that getting into the weeds of specific policies could alienate some voters.
To achieve any of his small-government legislative goals, though, Lee will likely have to reach out beyond his Republican colleagues from Utah to secure bipartisan support.
The degree to which that’s necessary depends on which party wins control of the Senate. As of Thursday afternoon, races in Arizona and Nevada had not yet been called, and Georgia’s Senate race is heading to a runoff.
Regardless of which party ultimately ends up controlling the Senate, Derek Monson, the vice president of policy at the conservative think tank Sutherland Institute, said that enacting legislation from either side of the aisle is going to “require a high level of political savvy and statesmanship.”
“Anyone trying to get something done in this narrowly divided Congress is going to have to transcend the divides on the issue in some fashion,” Monson said, adding that they’ll have to legislate differently than is “portrayed on TV.”
In his Thursday op-ed, Romney appealed to members of both parties to work together to find solutions to inflation, immigration, climate change and to dispel doubts about the integrity of America’s elections.
“This election showed that Mike Lee does not have a mandate to continue being a partisan warrior, who divides and blames,” McAdams said. “Utahns want a constructive leader who can chart a new path forward, and that’s what I hope Mike Lee takes away from the election.”
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