SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 8, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — It didn’t take long for Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to shift his focus from a contentious U.S. Senate race to the job that still awaits him in Washington, D.C.
Lee, who held a 55.8% to 40.8% lead over independent candidate Evan McMullin in his bid for a third term, outlined his plans for the upcoming days upon returning to the nation’s capital during his victory speech Tuesday night.
“I’m so grateful to you, to the people of Utah, for the trust that you’ve placed in me, and the fact that you’ve given me the opportunity to represent you in the United States Senate,” Lee told supporters gathered at the Hyatt Regency in Salt Lake City.
“This is a charge that is both … daunting and humbling, and it becomes even more so as the threats to life, liberty, property, prosperity, the American dream, the pursuit of happiness, appear to be mounting every single day,” he said. “But you know what I think? I think we’re up to the challenge. And I think we’re going to take care of this. We’re going to make tomorrow a better place.”
Preliminary results as of midnight from the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office showed Lee with 384,043 votes to McMullin’s 280,444 in a Senate race that some polls predicted would be neck-and-neck.
McMullin, a former undercover CIA officer who previously ran as an independent candidate for president against Donald Trump in 2016, said he conceded the race to Lee in a phone call Tuesday night.
“I truly hope that he upholds his oath to the Constitution during his upcoming term,” he told supporters at the Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center in Taylorsville. “In this room and all across Utah, independents, Republicans, Democrats and members of third parties are gathered together, standing side by side in a cross-partisan coalition.
“Our coalition has come together to reject the politics of division and extremism. We have come together around the idea that the people should come first, not party bosses and not special interests. We’ve come together in a historic way. And this effort, our effort, has shown the country that there is another way forward, a more constructive way forward for our politics and our nation.”
Lee says he’s hoping to return to a Washington, D.C., where Republicans have control of both the Senate and House.
“I look forward to getting back to work and meeting up with my Republican colleagues back in Washington in the next few days,” he told supporters.
“Now, I still think … we will have the majority. And when we get the majority, the first thing that we need to do — before we do anything else, before we even hold leadership elections — we need to sit down and come up with a two-year legislative plan, a plan that includes overhauling the spending process, bringing about regulatory reform, and a plan to bring about aggressive oversight and accountability to this out-of-control administration.”
Lee said Utah stands as “an example to America, just as America has long stood as an example to the rest of the world.”
“You see, the American dream, it works here,” he said. “It works here perhaps better than in any other part of this great land of ours. That’s for one simple reason: Here in Utah, we know that our rights, like our blessings, come from God and not from government, and we know the difference between those two things.
“Here in Utah, we know and we understand that the Constitution is there to keep government in its place. … We like our independence here. It’s been earned through hard work and preserved tirelessly. We understand that strong communities and families are essential not only to our survival, but to our freedom itself. The best is yet to come for Utah and for America.”
All four Utah incumbents in the U.S. House of Representatives also held leads Tuesday night and appear headed for re-election:
- District 1: Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, leads Rick Jones, a Democrat, 70% to 30%.
- District 2: Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, leads Nick Mitchell, a Democrat, 64% to 30%.
- District 3: Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, leads Glenn Wright, a Democrat, 68% to 26%.
- District 4: Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, leads Darlene McDonald, a Democrat, 62% to 32%.
