The man who may take Utah from Trump, Clinton
Presidential run capitalizes on antipathy
SALT LAKE CITY • As Interstate 15 slices through the Rocky Mountains near Salt Lake City, there sits a billboard posted by an enterprising real estate agent.
It features caricatures of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton with the tagline, “Moving to Canada? We’ll sell your house!”
A mention of either major party candidate in this majority-Mormon and deeply conservative state is likely to elicit a shake of the head.
That antipathy for both candidates is unparalleled elsewhere in the U.S., and has propelled Utah into a three-way race, turning a reliably Republican stronghold into an unlikely swing state.
“If Mormons are not the exact opposite of Trump, they would at least aspire to be,” says Quin Monson, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University, citing Trump’s 73 per cent disapproval rate among Mormons.
Mormons are a historically persecuted minority for whom rhetoric about banning Muslims and deporting Mexicans rings all too familiar, Monson says.
The church-owned Deseret News published a recent editorial urging the businessman to resign the nomination over his “evil” comments about groping women.
Clinton’s policies clash with Mormon orthodoxy at least as much, however, and she is even less popular.
Out of that vacuum has stepped Evan McMullin, a political independent, native Utahn, former CIA operative and, like 85 per cent of the state’s Republicans, a Mor- mon. Virtually anonymous elsewhere, The 40-year-old did not declare for president until August, but has recently passed Clinton in the polls and drawn even with Trump.
McMullin admitted many Americans are “still getting to know us.”
“A three-month presidential campaign is far from ideal, we’re the first to acknowledge that,” he says. “All we can do is engage as much as we can, that’s why we’re depending so much on social media.”
Several hundred of those supporters assembled at a high school gymnasium in Draper, Utah on Friday to hear him speak.
Greeting them was Theresa Valdivia, an erstwhile Clinton supporter now among McMullin’s army of enthusiastic volunteers.
“I just couldn’t take the circus anymore,” she said. “I could not stand the circus that was Hillary and Trump.”
Inside, Robert and Roxanne McKinnon sang the praises of McMullin. “He’s polite, he’s like the neighbour next door,” Robert said.
Roxanne, an immigrant from Hong Kong, said the race between Trump and Clinton had caused her faith in her adoptive country to waver.
“That we as a nation could sink so low as to pick these people, I was in despair,” she said. “When Mr. McMullin came along I thought, ‘Maybe there is some hope for us.’ ”
Howard Stephenson, a state senator, provided a resounding introduction. “Utah has a chance to prove that we put principles above party, we put principles above politics,” he roared, to thunderous applause.
Upon taking the stage, McMullin readily admitted to the bizarre nature of the race in Utah. “You’ve created something that the nation is trying to understand,” he said. “They’re in awe of this. I’m in awe of this.”
Lydia Pipkin, chairman of the Weber County Republican party, is not awestruck, however. Divisions in the party have made it harder to organize volunteers for local campaigns.
“That somebody is willing to support someone after six weeks and they know nothing … you haven’t had time to find any skeletons in the closet, so you assume they don’t have any?”
Clinton has teams of volunteers canvassing Salt Lake City. One of those volunteers, Tami Sablan, said she was working seven days a week to help turn Utah blue for the first time since she was a toddler.
Rick Wilson, the longtime Republican strategist and a leader of the Never Trump movement, attempted to woo Mitt Romney before joining forces with McMullin. He marvels at what has been achieved.
“This is a guy that no one knew six weeks ago,” he says. “No one knew him.”