Six years and one day ago, I posted about why I was voting for Evan McMullin for President. Today, I’m going to explain why I’m voting for him for Senator.
In 2016, I happily cast my vote in the Senate race for Mike Lee. He and I shared a lot of political positions. Not only that, Senator Lee had worked hard against Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination because, like me, he believed that Trump was unfit for the office of the Presidency.
When the Access Hollywood tapes were released, showing further proof of Trump’s demeaning and degrading attitude toward women, Lee called for Trump to drop out of the race:
“It’s occurred to me on countless occasions today that if anyone spoke to my wife or my daughter or my mother or any of my five sisters the way Mr. Trump has spoken to women, I wouldn’t hire that person. I wouldn’t hire that person, wouldn’t want to be associated with that person. And I certainly don’t think I’d feel comfortable hiring that person to be the leader of the free world,” Lee said.
“The fact is, we have been asked to settle on matters of great principle with our candidate for President of the United States,” Lee said. “It’s for precisely that reason, Mr. Trump, that I respectfully ask you, with all due respect, to step aside. Step down. Allow someone else to carry the banner of these principles.”
I admired Senator Lee for being willing to stand up for principles of good character against the leader of his own party. So I had no problem voting for Mike Lee for Senator as I was voting for Evan McMullin for President.
Fast-forward to the 2020 election. I could understand Mike Lee’s willingness to work with President Trump on issues where they agreed. That’s a very reasonable stance. I could even understand if Lee reluctantly supported Trump’s re-election as preferable to the alternative. But I was shocked when I heard that he had said:
“To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends, think of him as Captain Moroni!”
For those of you not familiar with Captain Moroni, he is an important figure in the Book of Mormon. Among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Captain Moroni is generally considered a paragon of virtue. The prophet Mormon said, “Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men.”
So this endorsement of Trump by Lee went far beyond a pro forma show of support for the party leader. He was asking us to consider Trump as equivalent to a paragon of virtue.
Apparently Lee had changed his mind: even if Trump said horrible things to Lee’s wife, or daughters, or mother, or sisters, he would still be comfortable to hire that person as the leader of the free world. OK, maybe not if said directly to Lee’s relatives. But other people’s wives, daughters, mothers or sisters being demeaned by Trump was no longer disqualifying in Lee’s mind.
It was at that point I lost all respect for Mike Lee.
And that was before he attempted to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election by getting Republican-controlled state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of electors. He denied doing so in the debate last night:
There is absolutely nothing to the idea that I would have ever supported, or ever did support, the fake electors plot — nothing, not a scintilla of evidence suggesting that. [Source]
But here’s a . . . scintillating . . . text from him to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff:
It’s not your fault. But I’ve been calling state legislators for hours today, and am going to spend hours doing the same tomorrow. I’m trying to figure out a path that I can persuasively defend, and this won’t make it any easier, especially if others now think I’m doing this because he went after me. This just makes it a lot more complicated. And it was complicated already. We need something from state legislatures to make this legitimate and to have any hope of winning. Even if they can’t convene, it might be enough if a majority of them are willing to sign a statement indicating how they would vote. [Source]
Fortunately, Lee’s efforts failed, so he ended up voting to certify Biden’s election. But that’s only because enough Republicans in state legislatures resisted his efforts to have them appoint new electors. You don’t deserve much credit for doing the right thing only because you failed in doing the wrong thing.
Given his Trump sycophancy and willingness to try to overturn a legitimate election, there was no way I could support Mike Lee for re-election.
I grew up Republican. I still consider myself a Republican — I now call myself a Mitt Romney Republican. During the Republican primary for Senate this year, I supported Ally Isom. If she had won the nomination, I would happily be voting for the Republican in this race. But the Utah GOP has followed Mike Lee into Trump-worship, and so they selected Mike Lee as their candidate. They had their chance to earn my vote, and they failed.
That’s why I am supporting Evan McMullin’s independent candidacy for Senate. I heard him speak a couple of weeks ago at an event, and I believe he can be a good senator. He talked a lot about wanting to emulate Senator Romney. For some, of course, that’s a mark against him, but for me it’s a positive. I believe our growing political polarization is one of the greatest threats to our nation, and so I would like to see more moderate voices in D.C.
In the cesspit that is Twitter political discourse, I’ve seen a bunch of people on the right claim McMullin is a socialist through and through, and a bunch of people on the left claim McMullin is a hard-core conservative. I think that puts him closer to the middle than to either extreme — which is actually where a lot of people are.
Is he as conservative as I would prefer? No.
Is he so liberal I can’t bring myself to vote for him? Also no.
If you’re still a Mike Lee supporter, I doubt I can say anything to change your mind. But if you’re not, please consider voting for Evan McMullin so we can get Mike Lee out of office.
Utah is still a pretty staunchly Republican state, so it’s going to be tough for McMullin to win. But not impossible — an incumbent candidate with a negative approval rating and less than 50% support is often vulnerable, and most of the undecideds are moderates. One poll released last week even showed McMullin ahead, although the polling average shows Lee is probably ahead.
However, it would be pretty much impossible for McMullin to win if the Utah Democratic Party hadn’t decided to not field a candidate of their own and instead endorse McMullin’s independent bid. Some say that’s proof that McMullin is actually a liberal Democrat masquerading as an independent. But I think it’s merely a concession to the reality that it’s been years since the Democrats have been able to run a competitive statewide race in such a Republican state. From their point of view, it’s better to elect a moderate independent than get another six years of Mike Lee.