SALT LAKE CITY | A political novice outlasted a three-term U.S. senator and the winner of the GOP state convention to become Utah Republicans’ Senate nominee and the heavy favorite to win the general election.
Alpine lawyer and “tea party” favorite Mike Lee won the Republican nomination over Provo businessman Tim Bridgewater on Tuesday, capping off a meteoric rise to prominence that didn’t start until he declared his candidacy in January.
He earned a nearly 4,000-vote lead with 99 percent of precincts reporting for about 51 percent of the vote to Mr. Bridgewater’s nearly 49 percent.
Mr. Lee, a 38-year-old legal scholar from a family of lawyers, was part of a field of seven Republican challengers who wanted to knock off Sen. Robert F. Bennett at the May convention because they didn’t think Mr. Bennett was conservative enough for one of the country’s reddest states.
Mr. Bridgewater won 57 percent of the convention vote 3 percentage points more and he would have won the Republican nomination outright. He also won Mr. Bennett’s endorsement in the runoff, but it was not enough.
Mr. Lee said he never gave up thinking that he could win, despite never having sought elected office before.
“We had an army of really hard-fighting, hard-campaigning volunteers, and they just refused to quit because they believed in a message and a 223-year-old document,” he said, referring to the Constitution.
Mr. Lee, 38, is a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. He will be the clear favorite to win against Democratic nominee Sam Granato. A Democrat hasn’t won a U.S. Senate race in Utah since 1970.
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