Now, six years later, while embroiled in scandal due to text messages he sent to Trump’s chief-of-staff inquiring about how to challenge the 2020 election results, Lee may lose his seat to the man he once voted for.
McMullin, a former Republican, ran in 2016 as an Independent, conservative alternative to Trump. He appeared on the ballot in eleven states, including his native Utah where he received a surprising 21.54% of the vote. By comparison, Gary Johnson, the third-place candidate in 2012, received less than 2% of the vote in Utah.
While Lee was leading comfortably in the polls for most of the election season, things have tightened after his texts were revealed during the House Select Committee investigations into the January 6 riots at the Capitol.
The texts showed Lee discussing ways to challenge the 2020 results, a massive change for the Senator who once urged Trump to step down as the Republican nominee.
After the text messages were revealed, the Democratic party in Utah backed McMullin instead of nominating a candidate. Recent polling has McMullin in a dead heat with Lee. One recent poll shows the candidates virtually tied with registered voters and Lee with an advantage over “likely” voters, while another poll, taken last week, shows McMullin leading both registered and likely voters.
Lee’s campaign is not playing the polls down either, a recent campaign email was titled “I’m losing” and on a recent appearance on Fox News, Lee publicly asked Utah’s other Senator, fellow Republican Mitt Romney to endorse him.
Lee has attempted to paint McMullin as a Democrat, despite Lee’s 2016 vote. McMullin considers himself a conservative and insists that he will not join either party’s caucus if elected to the Senate. “I’m not going to Washington to play the party power game,” McMullin said.
While Utah reliably votes Republican, the state has a growing distaste for Trump. According to the same poll that gave McMullin the lead in the Senatorial race, 57% of Utah voters have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared to 53.7% nationwide according to FiveThirtyEight. Last June, the same poll showed that only 50% of Utah voters had an unfavorable view of Trump.
Trump also failed to gain the majority of votes in Utah in 2016, thanks in part to McMullin's campaign, and Joe Biden performed better in the state in 2020 than any Democrat since 1964.
If McMullin wins in November, it will be the first time a Utah Senator has been something other than a Republican since 1977 when Democrat Frank Moss lost to Republican Orrin Hatch, who held the post until 2019.
His vote could also be crucial to who controls the Senate after the 2022 midterm elections. There are two Independent Senators in Congress currently, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. They both caucus with the Democratic party. If McMullin wins and does not caucus with either party he could be a crucial swing vote on a number of legislative bills.