Mike Lee

Lee ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010. When campaigning, he focused on the size of the federal government. He said the U.S. Constitution needed to be amended to create a flat-tax system and impose term limits on members of Congress. Senators would be allowed up to two terms and representatives up to six terms under the proposal.[9]

At the Republican State Convention, he received 982 votes (28.75%) on the first ballot, to Tim Bridgewater's 26.84% and incumbent U.S. Senator Bob Bennett's 25.91%.[10] Bridgewater won the second and third ballots to win the party endorsement. Both Bridgewater and Lee received enough support to have their names placed on the primary ballot.[10]

In the June 22 primary election, Lee won the Republican nomination with 51% of the vote to Bridgewater's 49%.[11]

Lee won the November 2 general election with 62% of the vote to Democratic nominee Sam Granato's 33% and Constitution Party nominee Scott Bradley's 6%.[12]

Mike Lee speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 26, 2015.

Lee was reelected in 2016. He was endorsed by the Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.[13]

Lee defeated Becky Edwards and Ally Isom in the Republican primary election.

In the general election, independent Evan McMullin challenged Lee. The Utah Democratic Party backed McMullin instead of picking a Democratic candidate. Polling in September showed Lee with 36% support and McMullin with 34%, with the rest undecided or choosing another candidate.[14] According to Jason Perry, the director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah, Utah "has not seen a Senate race this competitive in decades".[15]

In 2011, Club for Growth gave Lee a 100% score.[16] He also received a 100% Conservative voting record for 2011 from the American Conservative Union.[17] The Heritage Foundation gave him a 99% score, tied for first with Jim DeMint.[18] He received a Liberal Action score of 38%.[19]

In March 2016, Lee endorsed Ted Cruz over Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary. He was the first senator to do so. At the time, he said, "I expect I'll be the first of many Republican senators who will endorse Ted Cruz. I'm confident more are on the way, and I welcome others to join."[20] By June, after Trump had become the presumptive nominee, Lee had still not endorsed him, saying he needed "assurances" that Trump would not act as an "authoritarian" or "autocrat" and expressing frustration that Trump had "accused my best friend's father of conspiring to kill JFK".[21][22]

On October 16, 2017, Lee endorsed Roy Moore in the 2017 Alabama special election runoff to fill the seat of U.S. Attorney General and former senator Jeff Sessions.[23] Moore had been removed as the Alabama Supreme Court's chief justice in 2003 for defying a federal order to remove an illegal Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building. He was reelected chief justice in 2012. In May 2016, Moore was once again removed from the bench by the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC), permanently via suspension for the rest of his term, making him ineligible for reelection,[24] for ordering state probate judges to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court decision.[25] In a 50-page opinion, the Court of the Judiciary denied Moore's appeal of the JIC's decision, and said his removal was necessary "to preserve the integrity, independence, impartiality of Alabama's judiciary".[26] Nevertheless, Lee praised Moore for his "reputation of integrity" and said he was essential to getting conservative legislation through the Senate. "That is why I am proudly endorsing Judge Roy Moore. Alabamians have the chance to send a proven, conservative fighter to the United States Senate".[23] On November 9, 2017, Moore was accused of molesting a 14-year-old and other girls under age 18 when he was 32.[27]

On November 10, Lee asked the Moore campaign to stop using Lee's endorsement of Moore in its ads.[28] Lee's spokesperson said of the sexual misconduct allegations, "If these allegations are true, Judge Moore should resign."[29] Later that day, Lee rescinded his endorsement of Moore.[30]

On October 28, 2020, Lee compared President Trump to Captain Moroni, a heroic figure in the Book of Mormon, telling rallygoers in Arizona: "To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends, think of him as Captain Moroni." He said that Trump "seeks not the praise of the world" and wants only "the well-being and peace of the American people".[31] His comparison was met with backlash. The overwhelming majority of responses on Lee's Facebook account characterized his efforts as "shameful" or "blasphemous".[32] In a follow-up Facebook post, Lee wrote that he had praised Trump for his willingness to "threaten the established political order",[33] but that the comparison was "perhaps awkward" and that his "impromptu comments may not have been the best forum for drawing a novel analogy from scripture".[32]

Text messages gathered by the January 6th Commission reveal Lee's close coordination with Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the aftermath of Trump's defeat in the 2020 election.[34][35][36] In the weeks after the election, Lee pursued a series of strategies to overturn the election results, claiming to have been working "14 hours a day" on this effort.[34][36] The strategies included attempts to persuade state legislatures in states Biden won to put forward alternative slates of electors and promoting the efforts of attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman.[34][35] Ultimately, Lee became concerned by what he considered Powell's missteps, the lack of evidence given by her and others of election fraud, state legislatures' failure to convene alternate slates of electors, and what Lee considered the unconstitutional efforts of Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to challenge the election certification in Congress on January 6.[34][35][36]

Lee ultimately voted to certify the election, saying that the effort to block the certification "could all backfire badly".[34][37]

After Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Trump refused to concede, and a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, Lee said Trump should be given a "mulligan" for his inflammatory January 6 speech immediately before the storming of the Capitol.[38] Lee later defended his remarks, saying, "my reference to taking a 'mulligan' was not referring to Trump, but to Democratic politicians whose inflammatory comments had just been played for me on the air [on Fox News]. I used the term...to avoid needlessly inflaming partisan passions."[39] On May 28, 2021, Lee voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the riot.[40] By April 2022, the commission had discovered and released over 100 emails between Lee, Congressman Chip Roy, and Meadows discussing their plans to overturn the election results.[41]

Committee assignments

Committee on the Judiciary

• Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
• Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights (Chair)
• Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

• Subcommittee on Energy
• Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests
• Subcommittee on Water and Power

Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

• Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard
• Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security
• Subcommittee on Communications Technology, Innovation, and the Internet
• Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance and Data Security
• Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness

Special Committee on Aging (2021–present)

Joint Economic Committee

Previous committee assignments

• Committee on Foreign Relations (2011–2013)
• Committee on Armed Services (2013–2017)

On July 17, 2019, Jon Stewart and disabled construction worker John Feal criticized Lee and Rand Paul on Fox News for blocking a bill that provided Victims Compensation Fund support for disabled 9/11 responders. The fund was near exhaustion.[47][48] On the Senate floor, Paul objected to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's request for the bill to be approved by unanimous consent; per Senate rules, such a request is rejected if any senator objects. Lee had placed such a hold on the measure, despite its 73 Senate co-sponsors.

Stewart and Feal, as well as leaders of the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Firefighters, tried to get both senators to withdraw their objections. "The people from the state of Kentucky and the people from the state of Utah deserve better", Feal said. Stewart said, "We have to stand up for the people who have always stood up for us, and maybe cannot stand up for themselves due to their illnesses and their injuries. ... There [are] some things that they have no trouble putting on the credit card, but somehow when it comes to the 9/11 first responder community, the cops, the firefighters, the construction workers, the volunteers, the survivors, all of a sudden ... we gotta go through this."[47] On July 23, 2019, Lee was one of two senators to vote against the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.

In 2013, Lee, Dick Durbin, and Patrick Leahy proposed a bill aiming "to focus limited federal resources on the most serious offenders". The bill would reduce some minimum sentences for drug-related offenses by half.[49]

In November 2018, Lee criticized Senator Tom Cotton for his stance on the proposed First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill Lee supported. Cotton had said that the legislation "gives early release to 'low level, nonviolent' criminals like those convicted of assaulting police, even with deadly weapons". Lee responded that "the First Step Act does not 'give early release' to anyone. Anyone claiming it does does not understand how the bill works."[50] The bipartisan bill, drafted by Chuck Grassley, Lee, and Durbin, passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly, 360–59.[51] The bill intends to improve rehabilitation programs for former prisoners, and to give judges more "wiggle room" when sentencing nonviolent crime offenders.[52] The bill eventually passed the Senate and became law.[53]

In September 2020, during a Senate hearing, Lee took out and waved a pocket-size Constitution published by an anti-government Mormon group founded by conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen.[54][55]

In October 2020, Lee sent a series of tweets declaring that the United States is "not a democracy" and that "democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that."[56] A Maryland economics professor argued Lee fundamentally misunderstood the terms "democracy" and "republic".[57]

In March 2021, Lee said on Fox News that the For the People Act was "rotten to the core" and was "as if written in Hell by the devil himself".[58][59] The act attempts to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, limit partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders.[60][61] It has been criticized by conservatives, including Lee, who believe its provisions improperly take power over elections away from state governments and give it to the federal government.[58][62]

Lee has worked with Senator Amy Klobuchar to use antitrust laws against large technology companies like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.[63] Klobuchar said of collaborating with Lee:

We do find common ground on questions of policy, working out deals and contingencies we want to have. We get along quite well.

In 2017, Lee was one of 22 Republican senators to sign a letter[64] to President Trump urging him to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement.[65] According to OpenSecrets, Lee has received campaign contributions from oil and gas interests amounting to $231,520 and from coal interests in the amount of $21,895, for a total of $253,415 since 2012.[66] At a May 2016 event, Lee rejected the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, calling it "little more than a cheap public-relations ploy" by the Democratic Party.[67] Lee opposes a carbon tax to deal with climate change.[68]

In 2018, Lee defended Jim Bridenstine's nomination to head NASA. Bridenstine's nomination was contentious, given that he rejected the scientific consensus on climate change and had no background in science. In defending Bridenstine, Lee falsely claimed that NASA disputed that there was a scientific consensus on climate change.[69] Since his confirmation, Bridenstine has said that he agrees with the scientific consensus on human contributions to climate change.[70]

On March 26, 2019, the Senate opened debate on the Green New Deal. When Lee took the floor, he called the plan absurd, comparing it to an image of Ronald Reagan riding a velociraptor, and argued that having more babies was the real solution.[71][72][73] He also said that "the authors of the Green New Deal proposal are trying to suggest people should not have babies and I think that's atrocious". According to Deseret News, "The text of the resolution does not address population growth or suggest limiting the number of children people can have."[74]

As part of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2018, Lee, Bernie Sanders, and Chris Murphy co-sponsored a resolution "that would end U.S. military support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen's civil war". Interviewed by The Hill, he said: "regardless of what may have happened with Mr. Khashoggi, we are fighting a war in Yemen that we haven't declared, that has never been declared or authorized by Congress. That's not constitutional."[75] The Senate voted 60–39 to "formally begin debate on the resolution", which would require the President to "withdraw troops in or 'affecting' Yemen within 30 days unless they are fighting al Qaeda".[76]

In April 2018, Lee was one of eight Republican senators to sign a letter to United States Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and acting Secretary of State John Sullivan expressing "deep concern" over a United Nations report exposing "North Korean sanctions evasion involving Russia and China" and asserting that the findings "demonstrate an elaborate and alarming military-venture between rogue, tyrannical states to avoid United States and international sanctions and inflict terror and death upon thousands of innocent people" while calling it "imperative that the United States provides a swift and appropriate response to the continued use of chemical weapons used by President Assad and his forces, and works to address the shortcomings in sanctions enforcement".[77] He criticized Trump for ordering the 2018 missile strikes against Syria in response to the Douma chemical attack, stating that he lacked the constitutional authority to do so without Congress's permission because the U.S. was not in imminent danger.[78] Lee supported Trump's decision to withdraw American troops from Syria in December 2018, saying that American forces should not have been in the country anyway without Congressional authorization. He said that the Obama administration had not made clear American objectives in Syria surrounding Assad's future, and that he believed Trump's claim that the Islamic State had been defeated.[79]

Lee has long been in favor of ending American involvement in Afghanistan. He signed a letter in 2011 urging Obama to withdraw troops from the country. In May 2017, he called into question a proposal from military leaders to send additional troops there, calling to mind previous times when more soldiers were sent to the country but which, according to Lee, failed to make a significant difference. Lee maintained that American involvement in the war has wasted thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.[80][81] In April 2021, President Joe Biden announced plans to withdraw all remaining US troops from Afghanistan by September 11 of that year.[82] At a virtual meeting later that month, Lee stated his support of Biden's plan.[83]

In April 2019, after the House passed the resolution withdrawing American support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, Lee was one of nine lawmakers to sign a letter to Trump requesting a meeting with him and urging him to sign "Senate Joint Resolution 7, which invokes the War Powers Act of 1973 to end unauthorized US military participation in the Saudi-led coalition's armed conflict against Yemen's Houthi forces, initiated in 2015 by the Obama administration." The group of Senators included Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul, and others. Trump was expected to veto the measure.[84]

In June 2019, Lee was one of seven Republicans who voted to block Trump's Saudi arms deal providing weapons to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Jordan.[85]

Lee has been considered a strong supporter of Israel.[86]

Lee was part of the group of 13 senators drafting the Senate version of the AHCA behind closed doors.[87] He eventually came out against the bill, along with Senator Jerry Moran, bringing the "no" vote total among Republicans to four.[88] This effectively stopped any chance of the bill's passage.[89]

In February 2019, Lee was one of 16 senators to vote against legislation preventing a partial government shutdown and containing $1.375 billion in funding for barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border that included 55 miles of fencing.[90] In that same month, he and Senator Kamala Harris removed the per-country cap on employment-based green cards and raised the cap on family-based green cards from 7% to 15%.[91]

In March 2019, Lee was one of 12 Republican senators to vote to block Trump's national emergency declaration that would have granted him access to $3.6 billion in military construction funding to build border barriers.[92]

In 2015, Lee condemned the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that same-sex marriage bans violated the constitution.[93]

In 2018, Lee condemned the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of American States (OAS), for recommending that Costa Rica legalize same-sex marriage. The court's decision was spurred by a petition by Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis, who was working on ways to improve LGBT rights in Costa Rica. Lee suggested that the U.S., a primary funder of the OAS, should use its money more wisely and do more to safeguard religious liberties worldwide.[94]

In May 2019, Lee called the Equality Act "counterproductive" and argued it "unnecessarily pits communities against each other".[95]

In February 2011, Lee was one of two Republicans to vote against extending the three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that deal with roving wiretaps, "lone wolf" terrorism suspects, and the government's ability to seize "any tangible items" in the course of surveillance.[96] He voted in the same manner in May 2011.[97]

In 2017, Lee voted for S.J.Res.34, a joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to "Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services" from taking effect.[98]

In April 2011, Lee and Senators Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul proposed a plan to reform the U.S. Social Security retirement payment system. Workers born after 1969 would have to wait until their 70th birthday to receive full Social Security benefits, rather than age 67 under current law. Furthermore, higher-income earners would receive smaller monthly checks under the plan.[99][100][101]

In December 2020, Lee was the sole vote in the Senate against the ALS Disability Insurance Access Act of 2019, which eliminated the five-month waiting period for those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to receive Social Security benefits.[102]

In September 2018, Lee was among six senators, including Jeff Flake, Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, David Perdue, Ben Sasse, and Bernie Sanders, to vote against a $854 billion spending bill that would avert another government shutdown. The bill included funding for the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor and Education.[103]

In March 2019, Lee was one of 12 senators to cosponsor a resolution that would impose a constitutional amendment limiting the Supreme Court to nine justices. The resolution was introduced after multiple Democratic presidential candidates expressed openness to the idea of increasing the seats on the Supreme Court.[104]

In September 2020, less than two months before that year's presidential election, Lee supported an immediate Senate vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Trump's nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death. In March 2016, eight months before the 2016 election, Lee took the opposite position, declining to consider Obama's Supreme Court nominee during a presidential election year, citing "the contentious presidential election already well underway".[105]

In January 2018, Lee was one of 36 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting that he preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by modernizing it for the economy of the 21st century.[106]

In November 2018, Lee was one of 12 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (the replacement to NAFTA) be submitted to Congress by the end of that month to allow a vote on it before the end of the year as they were concerned "passage of the USMCA as negotiated will become significantly more difficult" if it had to be approved by the incoming 116th United States Congress.[107]