U.S. Sen. Mike Lee wasn’t on the ballot this year, but he’s still losing a seat after a wave of Democratic victories.

Lee, Utah’s most senior federal delegate, currently chairs the influential Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, overseeing oil, gas and water resources as well as public lands and territorial policy.

Now, with a Democratic majority set to control the Senate beginning next January, Lee will lose his chairmanship — and some staff and policymaking power in the process.

“Committees are a central part of the way Congress gets its business done,” Utah State University political science professor Damon Cann said in an interview Wednesday.

They have “a lot of influence on the flow of legislation,” Cann said, making a position as committee chair “an important source of power.”

Committee chairs also get additional staff to support their work. For Lee, Cann said, the incoming Democratic majority means “a decrease to some extent in resources and a little bit of a decrease in prestige.”

A spokesperson for Lee did not respond to a request for comment from The Salt Lake Tribune.

The surprising wave of Democratic Senate victories comes after Lee’s name was being floated in Washington for another even more powerful chairmanship. Politico reported in September that Lee was in talks to become the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now, both his current and potential future chairmanships are in jeopardy.

As the chair of the Natural Resources Committee, Lee sponsored legislation last year that would have allowed for the sale of millions of acres of public land, but the bill became the source of significant public outcry and never passed.

In light of that backlash, losing his chairmanship “might be the best thing to happen to Mike Lee,” Gabi Finlayson, a founding partner at Democratic consulting firm Elevate Strategies, said with a laugh Wednesday morning.

“This is one of those things that everyone is mad about when it comes to him,” she said of Lee’s attempt to sell off public lands.

It’s an issue his opponents have been organizing around for years, and Finlayson said she’s found that it’s one of the main things voters have come to remember Lee for.

Lee being on the ballot in 2028, Finlayson said, could be a major opportunity for Utah Democrats if they can capitalize on the wave of victories in red states.

“This is a very important time for Utah Democrats to not just show people what it’s like when Democrats win, but also to put in the work on the ground — like we have seen in places like Texas and in Kansas for so many years — so that we are ready for the opportunity in 2028,” she said.

But Utah Sen. Todd Weiler, a Republican representing the Woods Cross area in the state Legislature and a law school classmate of Lee’s, said he isn’t convinced that Lee will be on the ballot in 2028.

“I don’t think he’s running,” Weiler said in an interview Wednesday. “If you look at his Twitter account over the last three years … I don’t think he’s running again.”

Lee’s public tone, Weiler added, has shifted significantly since he was last reelected, particularly on his notorious personal X account, @BasedMikeLee. (It was on this account that Lee joked about the assassination of a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota.)

Weiler thinks Lee may pursue work related to politics, such as with a conservative think tank or consulting firm, rather than pursuing reelection to office in a difficult campaign environment.

It’s undeniable, the state lawmaker said, that voters in Utah and around the country are frustrated with Republican leadership. The state Legislature, he said, has “lost the trust of the public,” and voters across the country are clearly frustrated with President Donald Trump.

“I think a lot of Republicans thought, ‘Oh, we’re on cruise control now,’ and, you know, Trump didn’t keep all of his promises,” Weiler said. “He didn’t end the war in Ukraine in one day, and he didn’t win the war in Iran in two weeks, and he didn’t stop inflation. He didn’t make prices go down.”

That creates a difficult environment for Trump loyalists like Lee, Weiler said.

“I never agreed 100% with Mike Lee, and I never will,” Weiler said. “But I think he’s a good husband, a good father, a good family man. All of that said, I’m not wishing [that he will retire], I’m just reading the tea leaves.”

Until then, Lee will remain in an elevated position on the Natural Resources Committee despite being in the minority, likely becoming the ranking member — a title afforded to minority party leaders on committees — next year. The current ranking member, Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, will likely become the committee’s new chair once the Democratic majority is sworn in.

The senator’s only public comment since election results began rolling in was on X Tuesday evening, where he shared an AI-generated video of the Titanic sinking and wrote, “Current vibes.”