Independent McMullin outraises Sen. Mike Lee in Utah

Independent Senate candidate Evan McMullin’s campaign announced on Tuesday that he outraised incumbent Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) in his first quarter fundraising.

McMullin’s campaign said that the Independent candidate — a former third-party hopeful in the 2016 presidential election — had raised more than $1,030,000 in the first three months of his campaign.

In comparison, Lee raised $523,142 during that stretch. However, Lee still has about $2.17 million in cash on hand, according to OpenSecrets.

McMullin’s campaign noted that most of his campaign donations come from Utah. 

“There is only one candidate running who can defeat Senator Mike Lee and bring Utah values to the United States Senate, and that’s Evan McMullin,” Kelsey Koenen Witt, a spokeswoman for McMullin’s campaign, said in a statement.

“These numbers are a direct result of the growing coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents who support Evan’s campaign and know Lee must be defeated,” she added.

The Cook Political Report’s latest 2022 Senate race ratings rate Lee’s seat as “solidly Republican,” and the incumbent received more than 60 percent of the vote in Utah in both his 2010 and 2016 Senate elections.  

McMullin’s campaign is touting his CIA service following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and partisan reformist approach to politics. 

“Our politics are broken,” McMullin said in a statement upon the announcement of his Senate bid in October.  “And it’s putting our country in danger. We need leaders who will unite rather than divide. Washington has left us so polarized that we’re failing to overcome major problems facing the nation and it has to change.” 

Updated at 5:29 p.m.