Independent Utah Senate hopeful Evan McMullin knocked his Republican opponent, Sen. Mike Lee, during a debate on Monday after Lee held up a pocket Constitution.
“This document written by the hands of wise men raised up by God to that very purpose — I followed it, I studied it and I defended it to a T,” Lee said as he held up the pocket Constitution. “For you to suggest otherwise looks right in the face of truth and in the face of the Constitution. How dare you, sir.”
“Look, Sen. Lee has been doing this thing with his pocket Constitution for the last several years,” McMullin responded. “Sen. Lee, it is not a prop, it is not a prop. Sen. Lee, the Constitution is not a prop for you to wave about and then when it’s convenient for your pursuit of power to abandon without a thought.”
The two candidates met on Monday evening for a televised debate at Utah Valley University just over three weeks before the midterm elections. A recent Deseret News-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll shows Lee leading McMullin 41 percent to 37 percent.
The candidates at times sparred over Congress’s certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol.
“This is not a prop, and I don’t carry it as a prop,” Lee rebutted. “This is a reference manual.”
During Friday’s Georgia Senate debate, Republican nominee Herschel Walker was chastised for breaking the debate rules against props by brandishing what appeared to be a police badge.
Walker has since defended the item as a “legit badge,” saying it was given to him by a police officer while acknowledging it was “honorary.”
“But they can call me whenever they want me and I have the authority to do things for them,” Walker told NBC News’s Kristen Welker.