The man who could take Utah
As Interstate 15 slices through the Rocky Mountains near Salt Lake City, there sits a billboard posted by an enterprising 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 groan, or a shake of the head.
That antipathy 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.
Clinton’s policies clash with Mormon orthodoxy at least as much.
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 Mormon.
Virtually anonymous elsewhere, McMullin, 40, did not declare for president until August but has recently passed Clinton in the polls here and drawn even with Trump.
“All we can do is engage as much as we can, that’s why we’re depending so much on social media,” he said.
McMullin readily admitted to the bizarre nature of the race in Utah.
“You’ve created something that the nation is trying to understand. They’re in awe of this. I’m in awe of this,” he said at a rally in Draper.
In a race where many Utahns feel they know altogether too much about the leading candidates, a dose of anonymity might make all the difference.