Utah’s junior senator is Republican Mike Lee, who toppled 18-year Senate veteran Robert Bennett in Utah’s GOP convention in 2010, and went on to win the seat in the fall general election. His primary upset was a harbinger of potency of the tea party movement in that year’s midterm elections. Read More
Utah’s junior senator is Republican Mike Lee, who toppled 18-year Senate veteran Robert Bennett in Utah’s GOP convention in 2010, and went on to win the seat in the fall general election. His primary upset was a harbinger of potency of the tea party movement in that year’s midterm elections.
Lee grew up in Provo, where his father, Rex Lee, was the founding dean of the Brigham Young University Law School. He also lived part of the time in McLean, Va., when Rex Lee served as an assistant attorney general from 1975 to 1976 and as solicitor general from 1981 to 1985. Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia lived three doors down from the Lees in McLean, a wealthy Washington, D.C. suburb. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., then a House member, was his LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) “home teacher” and he was schoolmates with children of Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo. As a teenager, Lee remembers watching his father argue cases before the Supreme Court. “It took me a while before I realized it wasn’t entirely an ordinary experience to get to do that frequently,” he recalled.
Lee returned to Provo at age 14, and later entered Brigham Young University, where he ran for student body president on a platform that the university should end the practice of vetting candidates for student government. “There were a number of people who called me a radical because of that. It’s hardly radical to say students ought to be able to conduct their own elections,” he said. He graduated from college and law school at Brigham Young, and then served as a law clerk to District Judge Dee Benson in Utah and Third Circuit Appeals Court Judge Samuel Alito in New Jersey. He then practiced law in Washington, D.C. and in Utah. In 2005, he was appointed legal counsel to Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman and in 2006, after Alito was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Lee returned to Washington to clerk for him once again.
Lee had joined a Utah law firm by the time the 2010 election rolled around. He said he decided to challenge Bennett after Congress passed the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry and President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill. “The Republican Party had in so many ways deviated from what it professes,” he said. Bennett was in his third term and regarded as a solid conservative. But he had voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program for the financial industry, and he had been a chief supporter of a bipartisan approach to health care legislation with Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden. Their bill would have removed the tax preference for employer-provided health insurance.
Bennett was endorsed by Mitt Romney and fellow Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch. But to get on the primary ballot, he had to finish first or second at the Utah Republican convention in May 2010. In the meantime, Lee had caught the fancy of tea party activists, who were beginning to make inroads with their attacks on government spending and the expanded reach of government into the health care system. He was endorsed by Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who was trying to influence the selection of a more conservative crop of GOP candidates in 2010.
At the convention, involving roughly 3,500 delegates from around the state, Bennett survived a first round of balloting, but was eliminated on the second round: Lee won 35% of the delegates; business consultant Tim Bridgewater came in first with 37 % and Bennett got 27%. The outcome ended Bennett’s 18-year Senate career. In a third round of voting, neither Lee nor Bridgewater met the 60% threshold to win outright, and as a result, the contest went to a primary election. Bennett endorsed Bridgewater in his one-on-one primary match-up with Lee. But Lee prevailed, 51%-49%. Of the state’s two most populous counties—Salt Lake and Utah—Bridgewater carried Salt Lake County, where relatively less conservative voters live, but Lee won in Utah County. The general election was anticlimactic in this heavily Republican state; Lee beat Democrat Sam Granato, 62%-33%.
At age 38, Lee was the youngest senator when he took office in January 2011. One of his first moves was to introduce a bill in February for a balanced budget amendment that would require a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to override the limitation on spending. It was not expected to go far in the Democratically-controlled Senate. Lee got some notice when he was one of the few Republicans to vote against extending the USA PATRIOT Act, the country’s main terrorism investigation law, after expressing concern that it did not sufficiently protect civil liberties and privacy. He also sponsored a bill putting a two-year hold on the caps on fees that banks can charge for processing debit transactions, to the irritation of retailers.
Lee has returned to the balanced budget amendment again and again, even penning a 2011 book titled The Freedom Agenda: Why a Balanced Budget Amendment is Necessary to Restore Constitutional Government. During the summer 2011 standoff over raising the debt ceiling, Lee tried to push the balanced budget amendment to be included as part of a deal. But the Senate eventually approved a plan with more modest deficit reduction. Though Lee did vote against the deal, he chose not to exercise his power by placing a legislative hold on it. In December 2011, he and colleague Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. offered a balanced budget amendment that was voted down, 47-53. In May 2012, Lee offered a budget blueprint to balance the budget in five years, implement a flat tax, and reform health care coverage. The Senate rejected this as well, 17-82.
He also has flexed his muscles on judicial nominations. Outraged over President Obama’s four recess appointments, Lee voted in committee against Utah lawyer Robert Shelby for a federal judgeship in April 2012. Lee made it clear that he supported Shelby, but voted “no” as a protest against the recess appointments. Given Lee’s experience as a clerk for Alito, he was quite visible during the week of the challenge to the Obama health care law at the Supreme Court. Lee put out three YouTube videos related to the high court and health care.
With other conservative Republicans, he co-sponsored a bill declaring that the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship is limited to children of citizens, legal residents and members of the military, and does not extend to illegal immigrants. But Lee has also pushed for loosening some immigration restrictions. He crossed party lines in an unusual alliance with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. to push a visa reform bill that included helping foreigners who have invested at least $500,000 in a house in the U.S. Lee got a bill signed into law that transferred land back to the tiny Utah town of Mantua, which had given 32 acres of territory to the Forest Service for $1 in 1941.
On foreign policy, Lee has been less hawkish than some other conservatives. He supported drawing down troops in Afghanistan. In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote in June 2011, Lee also opposed a congressional resolution authorizing U.S. military involvement in Libya.
Like Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., Lee has worked to elect other tea party-backed candidates. In October 2011, Roll Call suggested that Lee could become “the new Jim DeMint.” Lee tried to set up his own super PAC, but was rebuffed by the Federal Election Commission. In 2012, he formed his own conventional political action committee to support like-minded conservative candidates. But the tea party darling was personally impacted by the recent housing slump. In May 2012, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Lee was forced to short sell his $1.1 million home in Alpine at a much lower cost.
