Ignoring Sen. Mile Lee’s GOP challengers, his campaign released two ads over the weekend that attack independent candidate Evan McMullin.

SALT LAKE CITY – Two internet ads released by his campaign over the weekend suggest that Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) isn’t really worried about his two Republican challengers.

Those ads ignored GOP candidates Becky Edwards and Ally Isom, who are facing Lee in the upcoming Republican primary. Instead, they criticized Independent party candidate Evan McMullin.

McMullin is wrong for Utah on issues of the economy and abortion rights, the ads charged.

McMullin is a graduate of Brigham Young University and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

After serving as a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency and an investment banker for Goldman Sachs, he became an advisor to the committee on Foreign Affairs in the House of Representatives in 2013 and chief policy director for the House Republican Conference in 2015.

McMullin quit the Republican Party when Donald Trump was announced as the party’s candidate in the 2016 presidential election and ran for president as an independent candidate.

McMullin became part of the Never Trump movement and his protest campaign gained nearly 22 percent of the vote in Utah.

After his defeat, he remained a staunch critic of Trump and he endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

At the state Democratic nominating convention in April, McMullin convinced delegates to ignore presumptive candidate Kael Weston and endorse his candidacy against Lee in the U.S. Senate race.

Assuming that Lee gets past the primary hurtle on June 28, McMullin will become the “great white hope” of efforts to unseat the incumbent senator.

In the first of two ads released over the weekend, Lee’s campaign said that McMullin is supporting the Democrats’ destructive agenda in Washington.

“Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have created a mess in Washington and Evan McMullin would keep them in power,” the ad proclaims. “Thankfully we can always count on Sen. Mike Lee to hold them accountable …”

The second ad focuses on the question of overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Count ruling granting a constitutional right to abortion.

A leaked draft opinion of conservative justices on the High Court suggests that that they may overturn Roe V. Wade in this term.

The ad claims that “ … Utah defends life, McMullin doesn’t.”

In reality, McMullin’s position on abortion appears to be considerably more nuanced.

In 2016, McMullin supported overturning Roe V. Wade, but he has now seemingly changed his mind in order to court the votes of Democrats.

In a recent interview, McMullin said that he does not believe that overturning Roe v. Wade is not the way for the country “to move forward on the issue.”

While McMullin described himself as “pro-life,” he added that he would oppose “extreme laws” that states might enact if the Supreme Court overturns Roe V. Wade.

That statement is a far cry from the Lee campaign’s ad alleging that McMullin supports the entire Democratic agenda on abortion rights, including codifying Roe v. Wade; abortion until birth; teen abortion without parental consent; and, taxpayer funded abortions.







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