United Liberty

Just months after a tough loss in her bid for Utah’s Fourth Congressional District, Mia Love announced this weekend that she would seek a re-match against Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) in 2014:

Saturday, Mia Love announced her second candidacy for the 4th Congressional District.

Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love told the Utah Republican Organizing Convention Saturday she would be running for the 4th District seat in Congress in 2014.

“We have some unfinished business with Jim Matheson,” she said.
[…]
In her announcement Saturday, she said the election showed her what to do next time to be successful.

“I am confident in our country. I am confident in our future. And I have great confidence in the people of Utah and America,” Love said

Love became somewhat of a conservative rock-star in 2012. She gave a great speech at the Republican National Convention last August, during which she talked her upbringing and early sense of personal responsibility and slammed the economic policies pushing by President Barack Obama. Love was articulate in her fiscal conservative views and would have been a great addition to the House.

This was an eventual week in Washington as both chambers each passed their own budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. This shouldn’t be a big deal. The House has done its duty, passing budgets in 2011 and 2012. However, the Senate had not, until yesterday morning, passed a budget since April 29, 2009. And they budget they did finally pass never balances is loaded with $1 trillion in tax hikes.

In the weekly Republican address, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) explains why the Senate’s budget falls short on priorities and defies logic and he also slammed President Barack Obama for not submitting his budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

“This week, the United States Senate finally took up its annual budget,” noted Lee. “This shoudn’t be news, but Senate Democrats haven’t passed a budget in four years. The President has again failed to follow the law requiring him to submit his budget by the first Monday in February.”

Lee added, “In what clearly falls into the category of ‘a day late and a dollar short,’ he announced that he wouldn’t submit his budget until the second week of April.”

“To Republicans, the budget isn’t just about dollars; it’s about sense: common sense,” said Lee. “A budget is the only way to end the non-sense of Washington’s out of control spending. Reckless government spending has laid nearly $17 trillion of debt onto the backs of hardworking Americans.”

In case you missed it, here’s video of Sen. Mike Lee’s from CPAC with the full text below. I sat down with Sen. Lee earlier this week for a discussion about his role in Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster, the push in the Senate to defund ObamaCare, and much more. You can check that out here.

Here’s the full text of Sen. Lee’s speech:

Up in the Pacific Northwest two brothers, Billy and Bobby, decided that they would sell apples. They set up a small fruit stand on the side of a busy road then drove their old pickup out to the farmer’s orchard, where they purchased a truckload of apples at a price of one dollar an apple. They returned to their stand and began selling their apples –for the head-scratching, bargain price of… one dollar an apple.

“[T]he powers of government must be restrained. They’ve got to be restrained in terms of what they do in administering government programs, they need to be restrained as far as how much money they take from the American people, and they need to be restrained in terms of how much they interfere with the liberty of individual Americans.” — Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

Back in 2010, conservatives trained their focus on Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), who had positioned himself over the years as a big government Republican. Bennett had backed billions in corporate welfare for private companies, including the TARP bailout, and supported a healthcare proposal that was considered by some to be worse than ObamaCare.

Bennett was unable to gain enough support during the 2010 Utah GOP convention to win the nomination, setting the stage for a primary between Tim Bridgewater and Mike Lee.

Lee would go on to edge out his primary opponent thanks to his strong constitutional and fiscally conservative message and support from grassroots organizations, and he easily defeated his Democratic opponent in the historic 2010 mid-term election.

During the debate over re-authorization of FISA warrantless wiretapping practices, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) articulately defended the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans.

According to new polling from the Salt Lake Tribune, Mia Love is on her way to becoming the first black Republican woman in Congress. The poll, conducted by Mason-Dixon, shows Love leading Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) by a 12-point margin:

Matheson trails Republican challenger Mia Love 52 percent to 40 percent in a new poll conducted for The Salt Lake Tribune, a large margin in a race where, even a few days ago, both campaigns were predicting a tight finish.
[…]
The Tribune poll, conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, found that the coalition of Democrats, independents, moderate Republicans and women that Matheson has united in past elections is failing to coalesce this time around, with just 9 percent of Republicans crossing over to support him.

Matheson’s poll showed him getting 19 percent of GOP support.

Brad Coker, managing director at Mason-Dixon, said that Matheson may be falling victim to the popularity of Mitt Romney.

“Romney is winning [Utah] by such a big margin and Republican voters are coming out because of Romney,” Coker said. “It’s just not a good year to be a Democrat in Utah.”

Love — with the backing of national groups and fundraising help from prominent national Republicans — has also been able to keep pace with Matheson’s spending and has become a popular figure among national Republicans, Coker said.

It comes as no surprise that Utah will line up solidly in the Republican column this year because, well, they do pretty much every four years. This year perhaps even more so since the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, is a Mormon and spent a significant amount of time in the state salvaging the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Mia Love, who is running against Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT), is hoping to be the beneficiary of Romney’s popularity in the state. In a new ad from her campaign, a voter picks up the phone to hear Mitt Romney’s voice urging them to support Love.

Romney says, “Mia is the only candidate in the race that will fight to reign in reckless spending and to lower taxes,” adding, “I’ll hope you’ll join me in support Mia in the upcoming election so that Utah’s voice can help lead this country back to an economic recovery.”

Here’s the ad: