Does Mike Lee's GOP Senate primary win signal another Utah political dynasty?

SALT LAKE CITY — Add the name Lee to the list of Utah political dynasties.

Only hours after clinching the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate, Mike Lee stood by Wednesday as his older brother, Tom, secured his spot as a justice of the Utah Supreme Court.

Afterward, state lawmakers crowded around to congratulate the Lees. But most of the legislators' attention was focused on Mike Lee, who is already being seen as the state's next U.S. senator now that he's won his party's primary.

Not only is Lee, a 39-year-old attorney making his first bid for public office, the GOP candidate in one of the most Republican states in the nation, but he also comes from a prominent family.

His father, the late Rex Lee, was the U.S. solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan and, later, head of the Mormon Church-owned Brigham Young University.

The elder Lee's religious talks still appear on the campus' public television station.

Tom Lee, a law professor at BYU and a well-known attorney himself, was nominated last month by Gov. Gary Herbert to fill the top court vacancy and was unanimously confirmed Wednesday by the Utah Senate.

"There's no doubt that Mike Lee's path to the U.S. Senate was aided by his family connections," said Quin Monson, associate director of BYU's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.

Mike Lee said he didn't know how much his father's name contributed to his win over businessman Tim Bridgewater. Lee and Bridgewater had advanced to the primary by defeating Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, at the party's state convention in May.

"He's been gone 14 years," Mike Lee said of his father, noting many voters may not even remember him. "People who know him certainly love him."

He just laughed when asked if the Lees were joining the ranks of such well-known Utah political families as the Bennetts, Mathesons, Leavitts and Huntsmans.

"We're not billionaires, you know," he said of a comparison with the Huntsman family. Mike Lee served as general counsel to former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., son of wealthy industrialist and philanthropist Jon Huntsman Sr.

Rather than his family ties, Mike Lee attributed his victory to his campaign's effort to get voters to the polls. In the end, he won with 51.1 percent of the ballots cast to Bridgewater's 48.9 percent, a difference of less than 4,000 votes.