2016 Could Evan McMullin tip the election? It’s a far-fetched scenario, but not an impossible one, the independent candidate told POLITICO in an interview.

Evan McMullin — a quiet former CIA operative with a shot at being the first candidate in 48 years to win electoral votes without being a major-party nominee — is having enough of an effect on this wild, potentially close race that Donald Trump has started attacking him.

Though he’s raised only $1 million, well short of his original hopes, McMullin could have an outsize impact on the final tally not only due to his strength in Utah, but also because his few percentage points could flip Arizona — a traditional Republican stronghold that is about 5 percent Mormon — from Trump to Hillary Clinton.


His dream is to block both major-party nominees from getting the 270 electoral votes needed to win — mathematically possible if he steals Utah’s six electoral votes.

Trump, talking to Fox’s Bret Baier about the threat McMullin poses in Utah, recently taunted the veteran of counterterrorism operations in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia as “this character that’s running all over the state … going from coffee shop to coffee shop.”

“He can’t do anything, but he hurts us in Utah,” Trump complained. “If for some reason we lose Utah, that could have a very devastating impact on the overall.”

McMullin, a Utah native, promptly tweeted: “@realDonaldTrump, Yes you’ve never heard of me because while you were harassing women at beauty pageants, I was fighting terrorists abroad.”

In an interview for POLITICO’s “Open Mike” video series, McMullin, 40 — a practicing Mormon who went to Brigham Young University and on a Mormon mission to Brazil — needled Trump again.

“The funny thing is a lot of people in Utah are Mormons, and they don't drink coffee,” he said, sitting down over hummus and ice water at the Hawk ’n’ Dove on Capitol Hill. “So, we've done zero campaigning in coffee shops. If Donald Trump were truly interested in the state and in the voters, he might know a thing or two about that.”

McMullin added with a smile that dessert is “what we do in Utah. We have a lot of desserts, a lot of sugar-infused treats, and that's what we do instead of coffee.”

If McMullin wins Utah’s six electoral votes, he would be the first candidate who wasn’t a major-party nominee to win electoral votes since George Wallace won five Southern states for the American Independent Party in 1968.

“You go back even longer for a truly independent candidate,” McMullin pointed out proudly. “Even Wallace had a party. We have no party. … We’re a truly independent ticket, so it's been quite some time.”

After leaving the CIA in 2011, McMullin — who has an MBA from Wharton — became an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in San Francisco.

McMullin moved to Capitol Hill in 2013, first as senior adviser on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, then policy director of the House Republican Conference. He resigned from that job in August as he launched his campaign.

Comparing himself to “Uber disrupting taxicab companies,” he said the country has “two major parties that are stuck in the past, sort of like a company that becomes very big and successful and has more to protect than it does to gain. … People are looking for something else.”

In the “Meet the Press” green room on Sunday, McMullin ran into Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, who had joined in mocking the Utahan in the joint interview with Baier, saying: “Nobody ever heard of him.” In person, it was all different. McMullin recalled: “He said it was truly nice to meet me, and I reciprocated, and we wished each other well.”

McMullin, who is concentrating his campaigning in the Mountain West, is on the ballot in 11 states and registered as a write-in in others. So, he says that on Election Day, “the total number of states in which votes can be counted for me is 43.”

The RealClearPolitics average for Arizona is a statistical tie, with Clinton up less than 1 point.

In Utah, the RealClearPolitics average has Trump up 6, with McMullin polling at 20 points to 31 points in six polls in October, including one from Emerson College in Boston that he won by 4 points.

Chris Krueger, a well-wired Washington analyst for the investment bank Cowen and Co., wrote in his “DC Download” newsletter on Tuesday that McMullin is the key player in one of two “not-impossible scenarios” that would throw the election into the House. Under what Krueger calls “The Utah Scenario,” if McMullin takes Utah’s six electoral votes, Clinton could wind up with 267 and Trump with 265, both short of 270.

“[T]here are multiple ways that Utah's six Electoral Votes could scramble the arithmetic if McMullin wins the state,” Krueger writes. “As of 2007, 60.7% of Utahans are counted as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormons). … The LDS Church-owned Deseret News wrote a jaw-dropping editorial in October calling for Trump to resign his candidacy, which essentially outlines why Trump is the antithesis of Mormonism.” Krueger goes on to note McMullin’s surprising strength in Utah’s polls.

Looking past November, McMullin would love to be the leader of a “new conservative movement” that includes state and local offices. “I think both of the two major parties will be disrupted in the years to come,” he said. “You're already seeing it on the Democratic side with Bernie Sanders. Clearly, you're seeing it on the Republican side.”

“I think the Republican/conservative side is actually further along in the path, and that means it's messier right now,” McMullin continued. “That means the Republican Party is headed more quickly to problems than perhaps the Democratic Party is. But it also means the conservative movement can emerge anew in a more viable way.”

One of the candidate’s quirks is a love of hummus. “I studied abroad in the Middle East when I was in school, and … I found out that I could get freshly baked flatbread in a town I was living in, and homemade hummus and olive oil made from olive trees in the immediate vicinity,” he recalled. “I would grab a bottle of Diet Coke. And that's what I would eat constantly, and I gained a ton of weight eating lots of hummus, fresh olives with fresh olive oil.

“I think it was the hummus and the olive oil that produced the weight gain, but yeah, there's no better meal than a nice, cold Diet Coke — freshly made hummus with fresh olive oil, olives,” he continued. “And if you have some pine nuts to roast and put on the hummus, well, then you've got something special.”

The Evan McMullin Diet?

“Yeah, that's right,” he said. “It will help you gain weight.”