The Utah Democratic Party endorsed Evan McMullin, a former presidential candidate, as an independent candidate to challenge GOP Sen. Mike Lee on Saturday.
The decision to support McMullin might help boost his Senate campaign at a time when Lee is under fire over newly released text messages that show he engaged with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows for weeks about the plot to overturn the 2020 election.
At their convention in Murray, Utah, delegates decided 57 percent to 43 percent not to nominate a candidate of their own. Kael Weston, a former State Department staffer, was seeking Democratic support for a Senate seat in the United States.
“Utah Democrats agreed today to join Evan McMullin’s cross-partisan coalition and not to select a candidate for the 2022 midterm US Senate contest,” McMullin’s team said in a statement Saturday. “This is the first time in Utah history that the Democratic Party has not fielded a statewide candidate, opting instead to prioritize country over party.”
Weston expressed his admiration for the choice. “Let’s all work together to elect more Democrats this year.” And let’s all work together to defeat Mike Lee as quickly as possible,” he remarked on Twitter.
In deep-red Utah, where Trump won by more than 20 points in 2020, Lee, who is seeking a third term in November, remains the frontrunner. In Utah, Democrats have never won a US Senate election since 1970.
According to their most recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, Lee has a significant cash-on-hand edge against McMullin. Former state Rep. Becky Edwards and former state government officer Ally Isom, both Republicans, have qualified on the primary ballot by submitting the minimum amount of signatures.
Former CIA officer and House GOP staffer McMullin campaigned for president in 2016 as an anti-Trump conservative. While he received less than 1% of the popular vote, his candidacy in Utah received roughly 22% of the vote, his greatest showing of any state.