Michael Shumway Lee (born June 4, 1971) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Utah, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, Lee has been Utah's senior senator since 2019 and the dean of Utah's congressional delegation since 2021.
The son of U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee and brother of Utah Supreme Court justice Thomas Rex Lee, Lee began his career as a clerk for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah before clerking for Samuel Alito, who was then a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. From 2002 to 2005, Lee was an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Utah. He joined the administration of Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr., serving as the general counsel in the governor's office from 2005 to 2006. Lee again clerked for Alito after he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lee was first elected to the Senate in 2010 after defeating incumbent senator Bob Bennett in the Republican primary. Although he refused to endorse Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and voted for Evan McMullin in the general election, Lee eventually became a Trump ally. He endorsed Trump in 2020 and 2024, and supported the Trump administration's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, though he did not sign the Texas v. Pennsylvania amicus brief and ultimately voted to certify the outcome.
Lee has been reelected twice, in 2016 and 2022, the latter victory over McMullin. Lee also chaired the Joint Economic Committee from 2019 to 2021.
Lee was born in Mesa, Arizona on June 4, 1971, the son of Janet (née Griffin) and Rex E. Lee, who was solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan. Lee's older brother, Thomas Rex Lee, is a former justice of the Utah Supreme Court.
Lee's family moved to Provo, Utah, one year later, when his father became the founding dean of Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School. While Lee spent about half of his childhood years in Utah, he spent the other half in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. His father served first as the assistant U.S. attorney general for the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1975 to 1976, and then as the solicitor general of the United States from 1981 to 1985. Lee is of English, Swiss, and Danish descent.
After graduating from Timpview High School in 1989, Lee attended Brigham Young University. He was elected president of the students' association, BYUSA, while his father was president of the university. He graduated in 1994 with a bachelor of arts in political science. Lee then attended BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School, where he was a member of the BYU Law Review and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1997.
After law school, Lee clerked for Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah from 1997 to 1998, then for Judge (later Supreme Court Justice) Samuel Alito of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1998 to 1999. Lee then entered private practice at the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm Sidley Austin, specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation. In 2002, Lee left Sidley and returned to Utah to serve as an assistant U.S. attorney in Salt Lake City, preparing briefs and arguing cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He served as general counsel to Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman Jr. from 2005 to 2006. From 2006 to 2007, Lee again clerked for Alito, who had recently been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Afterward, Lee returned to private practice in Utah, joining the Salt Lake City office of the law firm Howrey LLP.
As an attorney, Lee also represented Class A low-level radioactive waste facility provider EnergySolutions Inc. in a highly publicized dispute between the company and the Utah public and public officials that caused controversy during his first Senate election. Utah's government had allowed the company to store radioactive waste in Utah as long as it was low-grade "Class A" material. When the company arranged to store waste from Italy, many objected that the waste was foreign and could be more radioactive than permitted. Lee argued that the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution allowed the company to accept foreign waste and that the waste could be reduced in grade by mixing it with lower-grade materials, while the state government sought to ban the importation of foreign waste using a radioactive waste interstate compact. EnergySolutions eventually abandoned its plans to store Italian radioactive waste in Utah, ending the dispute, with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court later ruling that the compact had the power to block foreign radioactive waste from being stored in Utah.
Lee ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010. When campaigning, he focused on the size of the federal government. He said the U.S. Constitution needed to be amended to create a flat-tax system and impose term limits on members of Congress. Senators would be allowed up to two terms and representatives up to six terms under the proposal.
At the Republican State Convention, he received 982 votes (28.75%) on the first ballot, to Tim Bridgewater's 26.84% and incumbent U.S. senator Bob Bennett's 25.91%. Bridgewater won the second and third ballots to win the party endorsement. Both Bridgewater and Lee received enough support to have their names placed on the primary ballot.
In the June 22 primary election, Lee won the Republican nomination with 51% of the vote to Bridgewater's 49%.
Lee won the November 2 general election with 62% of the vote to Democratic nominee Sam Granato's 33% and Constitution Party nominee Scott Bradley's 6%.
Lee was reelected in 2016. He was endorsed by the Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Lee defeated Becky Edwards and Ally Isom in the Republican primary election. Isom criticized Lee for seeking a third term after he had supported legislation to limit senators to two terms.
In the general election, Lee was challenged by independent Evan McMullin, for whom Lee voted for president in 2016. The Utah Democratic Party backed McMullin instead of nominating a candidate. Polling in September showed Lee with 36% support and McMullin with 34%, with the rest undecided or choosing another candidate. According to Jason Perry, the director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah, Utah had "not seen a Senate race this competitive in decades". Lee won the election 53% to 43%.
In 2011, Club for Growth gave Lee a 100% score. He also received a 100% Conservative voting record for 2011 from the American Conservative Union. The Heritage Foundation gave him a 99% score, tied for first with Jim DeMint. He received a Liberal Action score of 38%.
In March 2016, Lee endorsed Ted Cruz over Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary. He was the first senator to do so. At the time, he said, "I expect I'll be the first of many Republican senators who will endorse Ted Cruz. I'm confident more are on the way, and I welcome others to join." By June, after Trump had become the presumptive nominee, Lee had still not endorsed him, saying he needed "assurances" that Trump would not act as an "authoritarian" or "autocrat" and expressing frustration that Trump had "accused my best friend's father of conspiring to kill JFK"; at several points during the 2016 primary, Trump publicly implied that Ted Cruz's father Rafael had consorted with Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Lee voted for Independent Evan McMullin.