Republicans from Salt Lake City to Washington DC were celebrating Friday night, as Republican Rep. Mia Love pulled ahead in the too-close-to-call race in Utah's 4th district. As of late Friday, her lead was 419 votes.
That figure was 0.16 percent of the total vote and the race between Love and Democrat Ben McAdams is almost sure to go to a recount. Under Utah law,there is an automatic recount in any race in which the difference between the candidates is less than 0.25 percent.
Of eleven races that remained undecided after the election November 6, Utah-4 is one of only two in which the lead trended to the Republican. The other is Ga.-7, where Republican Rep. Rob Woodall was finally declared the winner over Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux on Thursday.
Two-termer Love, one of two black Republicans in the House, had been trailing Salt Lake County Mayor McAdams since election night. His initial lead was 6200 votes.
So unlikely was it for Love to rebound that at his post-election press conference, President Trump listed the Beehive State lawmaker as one of several Republicans who distanced themselves from him and lost.
"Mia Love gave me no love and she lost," he said, "Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia." Actually stalwart conservative Love had a record of strong support for the President but had disagreed very publicly with him on a few key issues. She was particularly vocal about Trump's suggestion that he might use an executive order to redefine the citizenship of children born to illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Utah Republicans who spoke to Newsmax under anonymity said that the major reason this race was close was a poor campaign run by the incumbent. As one of them put it, "She kept trying to paint Ben McAdams as an arch-liberal and there was just no hard evidence. He governed in Salt Lake County as a moderate and promised not to vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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