Sen. Mike Lee says he works for Utahns, not McConnell — and explains why he hugged a Democrat

The senior member of Utah’s federal congressional delegation didn’t bring BasedMikeLee along to a forum in Salt Lake City on Tuesday. Instead, Sen. Mike Lee discarded his X persona and presented a more temperate version of himself at the Sutherland Institute event at the University of Utah, talking about working across party lines and limiting the power of the federal government.

When asked by Sutherland Institute president Rick Larsen whether he has “concerns about the election landscape in 2024,” Lee’s response was measured.

“One of the beauties of our system is that nothing is a sure thing in our system of government,” Lee said. “That’s good for everyone. But the fact that nothing is assured means that the people are in charge, and that people can change their minds and that they frequently do change their minds based on evolving conditions on the ground.”

Lee has not said who he might back for president in the 2024 Republican primary election, if anyone.

After President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in 2020, Lee exchanged texts with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows discussing paths to overturn the election. He ultimately, however, voted to certify the election results along with most other Republican senators.

Trump is running for president again, and although Lee has criticized criminal charges brought against the previous president, he has not endorsed his campaign.

While Lee has mostly stood behind the most recent Republican president, he hasn’t seen eye-to-eye with the Senate’s top Republican. And on Tuesday, he said a trend he finds “disturbing” is members of Congress aligning themselves behind their parties’ congressional leaders, as if they were their subordinates.

“Members are tending more and more to defer to, and behave as if they worked for, the legislative party leaders in their respective houses of Congress. I’m referring of course broadly to [what’s] sometimes described as the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, McCarthy and Jeffries.”

That is, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican; House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican; and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat.

[READ: Donald Trump’s reelection is ‘good for America,’ Mike Lee says — but stops short of 2024 GOP presidential endorsement]

Last November, Lee and three other Republican senators sent a letter to McConnell criticizing a year-end omnibus spending bill — which the Minority Leader celebrated as a victory for Republicans — just weeks after Lee backed an unsuccessful bid to dethrone him. A few months later, Lee was ousted from the powerful Senate Commerce Committee.

On his BasedMikeLee X account, Lee at the time posted, “Mitch happens,” followed by a nail polish emoji.

“Mitch McConnell is my colleague from Kentucky — I don’t work for the senator from Kentucky, I work for the people of Utah,” Lee said Tuesday.

McConnell was also in the Beehive State on Tuesday to accept an award from the foundation of the late Sen. Orrin Hatch.

An example of himself not toeing the line when it comes to McConnell’s priorities, Lee said, are his views on foreign policy — particularly, whether the U.S. should support Ukraine in its war against Ukraine. Lee is among a growing number of Republicans who are speaking out against America extending military aid to some of its foreign allies.

“I don’t know whether to call myself dovish, but I’m not a war hawk, which makes me somewhat anomalous as a Republican,” Lee said.

Lee — who was first elected to the Senate in 2010 as a Tea Party Republican — also said he is concerned about the “consolidation of power” in the federal government, and highlighted the REINS — Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny — Act, which he is cosponsoring in the Senate. The legislation would require congressional approval for some executive branch agency regulations before they are implemented.

A growing federal government, he said, is the source of much of the country’s polarization. Reducing the executive branch’s rule-making power would “take the temperature down,” Lee argued.

“I think most of us can agree that there is too much power in Washington,” he said. “This is what causes so much emotion around us, what causes protests and people behaving in crazy ways every time there’s a presidential election and often when there is just a congressional election.”

For his part, he told the university audience he couldn’t think of a single Democratic colleague he didn’t really like.

“Within the Senate, some of my favorite colleagues are people who I have to struggle a little bit more to find areas where we agree,” Lee said. “There’s a great picture of me and Bernie Sanders hugging in The Washington Post.”

The pair worked together in 2021 on a bill to limit presidential powers.