Utah Sen. Mike Lee with Ted Cruz
Tea party-dipped Sen. Mike Lee has plenty of enemies in the GOP, who remain angry with him for his role in the 2013 government shutdown, but they've struggled to find a credible candidate to challenge him for renomination. Still, wealthy businessman Spencer Zwick, a former aide to Mitt Romney, has continued his search (though the Boston-based Zwick won't be running himself) and is
now touting Alex Dunn. Dunn, who also used to work for Romney and now runs his own company, has acknowledged his interest, saying, "I've been having discussions with a group of people who are encouraging me to run for Senate."
Even if Dunn gets in, it's not going to be easy to unseat Lee, especially from the left. Lee has been working hard to turn his former skeptics into supporters, and he's won over some of the wealthy people who were planning to finance his eventual opponent. It's also far from clear if Lee is going to need to face a primary or if he can win renomination at the GOP party convention, where the delegates tend to be even more conservative. Utah recently passed a new law that allows candidates to bypass the convention and move straight to the primary, but the Utah Republican Party is suing to stop it from being implemented. Lee's not out of the woods, but Dunn is going to need a lot to go right if he's going to deny him renomination.