Republican Burgess Owens Maintains Lead Over Rep. Ben McAdams In Critical Utah Race

Republican Burgess Owens maintained his lead over Democratic House Rep. Ben McAdams for the fifth day in a row in Utah in a critical race that would help Republicans get closer to the majority in the branch of Congress.

Owens spoke at the Republican National Convention in August and told his life story, took a jab at then-Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden and House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and encouraged Black Americans to support President Donald Trump.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Owens now has a 1,697 vote advantage over McAdams, down from 1,780 the day before, with 47.50% of the vote to the Salt Lake City Democrat’s 47.03%, but it may not be clear who’s won the closely-watched race until the final canvass on Nov. 17.

McAdams, the former Salt Lake County mayor, took an early lead in the close race on Election Day and held onto it for much of last week, but Owens pulled ahead Saturday and has remained in the lead since then.

Owens is a former NFL player who played safety for the Oakland Raiders and frequent Fox News commentator and his campaign spokesman, Jesse Ranney, said in a written statement, “We’re confident when the race is called that Burgess Owens will be representing the 4th district in Washington.”

Andrew Roberts, McAdams’ campaign manager, however, noted in a statement that there are “still many thousands of ballots to be counted” and that “Congressman McAdams was behind at this same point during the 2018 election and ended up as the winner.”

Owens’ campaign recently sent out fundraising emails which said that Democrats are attempting to “steal the election” away from Republicans.

Utah Director of Elections Justin Lee tried to downplay the concerns and claimed, “No complaints with any real substance to them. We’ve received a handful of calls from people worried about fraud in general, but nothing specific.”

Burgess Owens RNC Speech: