The independent conservative is showing strongly in the rock-solid red state. He thinks winning it can springboard him into the White House

Quinn Cowan, age 10, put his hamburger down long enough to frame the presidential race in Utah, the most unlikely battleground state.



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“Have you met Donald Trump?” he asked Evan McMullin, the independent presidential candidate who is siphoning votes from both Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton in this traditional Republican stronghold.



“I have met Donald Trump,” replied McMullin from his seat beside the boy at Little Wonder Cafe, in rural Richfield.



“Did he yell at you?”



“No, he didn’t yell at me,” McMullin said. “But he’s not a very nice man either.”



In August, McMullin said the toxic nature of the 2016 campaign pushed him to declare his quixotic candidacy, which has upended the race in a state that hasn’t voted Democratic in more than half a century. The former CIA operative is second in the polls behind Trump and insists he can win Utah’s six electoral votes and push his way into the White House. More about that in a moment.



McMullin’s candidacy has introduced enough uncertainty into Beehive State politics that, for the first time in modern memory, Utah voters are witnessing an actual presidential campaign. Clinton has six paid staffers and maintains a busy headquarters in a Salt Lake City suburb. “How Utah could decide who wins the presidency”, blared a page one headline on Sunday in the Salt Lake Tribune.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supporters of Evan McMullin in Utah. Photograph: Maria La Ganga/The Guardian

On this final weekend before election day, all three campaigns were scrambling. Clinton volunteers manned the phones. On Saturday, McMullin ate his way south from Salt Lake City: barbacoa beef tacos at a stop in Ephraim, a chocolate milkshake and some of Cowan’s french fries in Richfield and a burger (without cheese) in Cedar City.

Trump supporters were out in force too, protesting at McMullin’s final rally of the day, outside the Dixie convention center in St George, with “Make America Great Again” signs and heckles for the candidate inside. “He’s a spoiler!” yelled a straw-hatted voter. “He’s got no chance of winning!”

Chris Karpowitz, co-director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, said it is “extraordinary how well [McMullin] seems to be doing”, given that he does not have the support of a major party.



“Trump is likely to eke out a narrow victory, but it’s still competitive and we’re at the last weekend,” Karpowitz said. “That in itself is a headline for Utah,” he said. “It’s more competitive than anyone could have anticipated.”



McMullin, a devout Mormon, was senior adviser to the committee on foreign affairs in the US House of Representative and later became House Republicans’ chief policy director. When he looks at Trump, he says, he sees a profane and mean-spirited candidate who has turned his back on core Republican values. Clinton, he says, is corrupt and untrustworthy.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump called McMullin a ‘puppet of a loser’. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

“We’re in this race because we felt that the two major party candidates, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, were unfit for the office that they seek, the responsibilities they seek,” he told supporters over and over on Saturday. “I believe that they personify a leadership crisis that we’re having in this country.



“And it’s not just them. It’s many of our other leaders who lack the courage to stand up to Hillary Clinton and her corruption or to Donald Trump and his authoritarianism and his attacks on people based on their gender, based on their race, or based on their religion.”



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McMullin’s candidacy has struck a nerve. Trump’s multiple marriages, infidelity and boasts about forcing himself on unwilling women have alienated even loyal Republicans.



Trump and his supporters have gone on the attack. Last week Trump led the charge, calling McMullin a “puppet”. His allies at Fox News and Fox Business promptly joined in, host Lou Dobbs calling McMullin a “Mormon Mafia tool” and Sean Hannity tweeting: “Who’s this idiot that’s running third party that’s killing Trump out in Utah?”



But the worst was a robocall to Utah voters from William Johnson, a white nationalist and Trump supporter who questioned McMullin’s sexual orientation, verbally attacked his mother and called him “an open borders amnesty supporter”. Johnson has since apologized.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Volunteers at Hillary Clinton’s Utah office. Photograph: Maria La Ganga/The Guardian

Talking to reporters outside his penultimate campaign stop on Saturday, McMullin said he was not surprised. He dismissed the attack as an emblem of “who we’re dealing with”.



“Donald Trump has encouraged the white supremacist movement in this country,” he said. “He’s encouraged a range of religious and racial bigotry, misogyny, even bragging about his sexual assaults of women. This is the kind of person he is. This is the kind of campaign he’s running. And it’s the kind of campaign that the Republican party has supported.



“So it’s not a surprise that now, as we stand up for equality and liberty, that we would find the white supremacist movement, the white nationalist movement, attacking us for our faith, attacking us for whatever they can find. They spread some nasty rumors about us. It’s a sad commentary about what our politics are like in this country.”



This is the McMullin White House strategy: win Utah, and when Clinton and Trump can’t reach the necessary 270 electoral votes, the election will go to the House of Representatives. That’s where McMullin believes he has a chance to be elected leader of the free world.



It’s not a scenario that has the Clinton campaign sweating. On Sunday, the Democrat’s Utah headquarters buzzed with phone bankers urging the faithful to fill out their ballots and get them in the mail, or better yet, stick them in a nearby drop box.



Cellphones beeped. “Hi, this is Angela.” “Hi, this is Kristin.” “Hi, this is Brenda.” “Is Pedro there?” “Is Kevin there?” “Hey, is this Ashley?”



“You support Hillary Clinton, is that correct? Awesome!” said a smiling young woman in a green t-shirt. “Are you planning to return your ballot this year? Oh, it already has been sent in? That’s awesome. Thank you so much for voting. Awesome. Have a great day.”



She hung up her phone and pumped her fist. “Yes!”