The Utah feminist taking down Mike Lee
Rosie Card's viral campaign to remove the disgraced MAGA senator.
Right now in NYC, all eyes are on Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year old progressive who just pulled off a stunning primary defeat against Andrew Cuomo. The mood in NYC is HYPED.
This is the kind of upset we barely hoped could happen. Former governor Andrew Cuomo has a raft of scandals and corruption charges, and resigned as governor four years ago because he sexually harassed (at least) seven women who worked for him. And yet! He was still poised to make the comeback that no one asked for in NYC’s mayoral primary.
Cuomo is the poster boy for what we all collectively think of as This F*cking Guy—as the great Rebecca Traister aptly dubbed him. We are all stuck with seemingly historic levels of TFG’s right now—guys who are objectively the worst, and yet, we can’t seem to get rid of them or get them out of office.
And yet—with Zohran’s upset there’s a beam of hope. Could it be done again??
This brings us to a TFG not from my current home city of New York, but the home state where I grew up—Utah. Many Utahns have long despised Sen. Mike Lee for years, but now everyone knows Mike Lee.
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As you’ve likely heard, Mike Lee made national headlines in recent days when he posted tweets from his personal X/Twitter account that mocked the horrific shooting in Minnesota that murdered one state lawmaker and her spouse, and left a state Senator and his wife severely injured.
Since then, he has been widely condemned from everyone from Jon Stewart to the ladies of The View for mocking the victims, and spreading misinformation about the alleged shooter.
In one now-deleted post, Lee captioned a photo of the alleged shooter wearing a latex mask, "This is what happens when Marxists don't get their way."
Spoiler—Lee’s assertions were false: Lance Boelter, who law enforcement officials have charged in the shooting, is said to be an avid supporter of President Donald Trump—SHOCKER. Wired reports he ran an evangelical ministry with his wife. (Lee has since deleted three tweets, but has issued no apology).
When Lee made national headlines, Utah entrepreneur and influencer-turned-activist Rosie Card was furious, and she also saw an opportunity. So she started an ingenious campaign to expose Lee that’s gone viral.
Needless to say, I have been delighted to watch this development. Mike Lee has been a TFG for many Utahns for years, and for Card in particular—who has chronicled his many, many heinous actions over the years on her popular Instagram account—from when Lee worked to overturn the 2020 election results, to the times when dude has posted or reposted Russian propaganda, a fake video by a January 6 rioter, and alt-right conspiracy theories to social media, just to name a few.
Card’s new campaign uses her significant social media presence—especially among Utah women—to turn one of Lee’s favorite tools against him. Lee has weaponized social media to spread hate and misinformation to tens of thousands, but interestingly, many Utah women like Card are also famously good at using social media (See: dozens of celebrity female Utah influencers/TV personalities). Why not use women’s social media clout against guys like Lee?
I was especially interested in Rosie Card’s point of view because she is a former conservative (and former Mormon) who previously owned a popular dress company that catered to Mormon women and dress standards. Over the last several years, she has evolved into an outspoken activist for women’s rights and politics, including LGBTQ+ rights and minority rights, while maintaining many moderate and conservative followers.
I wanted to ask Card about how the heck TFGs like Mike Lee stay in office in places like Utah where people are famously nice and have high religious standards. And can women—including moderate and conservative women who deeply disapprove of these guys and MAGA in general—be brought into solidarity to oust these guys?
Rosie Card writes on Substack here, and you can find her activism on her Instagram account here, and her merch and clothing shop Card Wear, here. Check it out!
Lane: Tell us about your campaign to unseat Mike Lee—what are you doing, and why now?
Two days after Mike Lee’s now-infamous tweets mocking murder, I was driving home when a thought came to me: I wonder if Mike Lee owns all the domains that he should. For years, Toby Morton has been trolling politicians and “deserving” individuals by scooping up important (to them) domains and creating spoof websites. Since trolling Mike Lee has long been a reluctant pastime of mine, I thought maybe a spoof website could be a way to help build momentum.
It turns out that electmikelee.com was available for purchase for only $18.99.
Just like that, www.electmikelee.com was born.
I scooped up the domain and made a simple website to keep a record of his actions, make it as easy as possible for people to contact him, and mess with his SEO. While I was at it, I bought some other domain names with his name in them for the same price, and put them on auto-renew forever. For the most part, it’s been incredibly successful. www.electmikelee.com is climbing the SEO charts and thousands are sharing content to get the Life Laugh Love Vote-out Mike Lee word out.
Mike has done a lot over the years. By “done a lot” I mean tweeted and not created productive legislation. He tweeted 9,310 times in the first three months of this year. That’s more than 100 tweets a day. Once he tweeted 340 times in a single day. (The Salt Lake Tribune). For context, he has passed less than 10 pieces of legislation in 14.5 years he’s been a senator. A handful of the legislation he has passed simply renamed buildings.
Right now, Mike is trying to put 250+ million acres of Utah public lands up for sale. Once they are gone, they’re gone. This is not something that can be undone.
As someone who has despised Mike Lee for a long time, it’s extremely cathartic to see Americans collectively turn against him for being so…himself. Utah has turned a blind eye to a lot of bad behavior, putting it lightly, from Mike. I’m hopeful that one of these times, they will have had enough.
I’m also trying to get a billboard campaign in Utah up, but my designs keep getting denied for being “too negative.” Please note that being told I’m being “too negative” for attempting to hold a man accountable for his vile actions is possibly the most classic and telling Utah woman experience.
Mike was a Jan. 6th co-conspirator and Utah still re-elected him, so the odds aren’t in my favor. But my gosh, I am determined to do whatever I can to destroy even just an ounce of his peace and or confidence. The last decade of political downslide has done so much to desensitize us. We shrug off things today that would have made our heads spin just a few years ago. My goal is to use creativity to help my fellow Utahns and community see him for who he really is.
I’m not surprised that Mike would be the kind of person to mock the murder of an innocent couple before their bodies were cold. I am surprised that he felt comfortable doing so publicly. I think the difference right now is that more people nationwide are seeing Mike for who he is, rather than just those in Utah who follow politics.
Right! And also it doesn’t seem surprising at all in a way, because Trump gets away with this kind of behavior publicly all the time. So it seems as though guys like Lee are just repeating and taking advantage of what is being normalized by the president, which is alarming.
Why is it that Lee has been able to stay elected, do you think, in a state like Utah, despite his bad behavior and Mormons having certain values? This reflects larger trends of the MAGA movement that concern people—where people and some men in particular with harmful and bullying behavior have become popular, sometimes especially with religious groups.
What’s happening with guys like Mike Lee that they have appeal and get re-elected, especially in communities that are highly religious?
Mike is a pretty classic case of a man who gets fussy about DEI, while benefitting from preferential treatment based on his race, gender, and even religion in many ways. He is the ultimate Utah Mormon nepo baby. The BYU law school he graduated from is named after his dad. [Note from Lane: Mike Lee is the son of former U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee, who BYU’s law school is named after—Lee leveraged his father’s reputation to help secure a clerkship at the Supreme Court and launch his political career.)
He’s a male leader in a state that, on top of the standard layers of misogyny, is heavily influenced by a church that believes women don’t have jurisdiction over boys once they turn 12. That kind of conditioning doesn’t wash off easily. Utah’s legislature is 91% white, 76% male, and roughly 90% identify as Mormon.
Though the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not explicitly endorsed a political party, there has long been a cultural alignment with the Republican Party. Past top church leaders have been outspokenly conservative. In 1993, Boyd K. Packer, one of the top three leaders of the church at that time, warned that the greatest threats to the Church were “feminists, homosexuals, and intellectuals.” When you believe a group of men are the direct mouthpieces of God, it’s hard not to allow their words to influence your political leanings.
Recently, the church has made attempts to encourage less devotion to a certain party, but they’re going to have to do a lot more than make a couple of statements to undo the generations of unofficial alignment. There is a large demographic in Utah that feels unsure if they are “spiritually” allowed to vote Democrat.
All of this is to say, despite there being wonderful female and male leaders available in Utah, unless they are male Republicans, they are fighting a serious uphill battle. Despite Mike’s repeatedly bad behavior, the Utah Republican party continues to back him. Even though in action, he represents so much that would seem to be counter to the LDS church’s doctrine, Utah continues to vote for him because he promises them power. Somehow, that has become more important than anything the Mormon church and Utah in general claim to value.
Why do you think trying to oust Mike Lee might work right now? A lot of cynical people feel like these guys keep getting elected no matter what they do. What makes you feel like right now might be different—what do you see on the ground in Utah, and maybe especially women in Utah, that feels different that the rest of us might not know?
Again, the odds aren’t in our favor here, but I have to hope. Even though Utah has a very rich history of women being heavily involved in politics, it’s become pretty normal for women to be completely disengaged from politics. I hope to help women like me (white, relatively financially secure, on the Mormon spectrum, and privileged) realize the potential power they hold to do some serious good. Sometimes I want to scream when I think about the size of the collective audience Utah influencers hold and the power they could wield. If they wanted to, they could effect massive change.
Change has been slow, but more and more women are getting involved. More and more women are sharing political content or even just nods to political content.
For the last decade or so, there has been a pretty massive exodus of women from the LDS church. When women leave, their families leave with them. LDS women are finding their voices in a new way and that influences their engagement in politics. Where in the past they may have been more prone to simply voting however their husband votes and not paying attention to politics, more and more women are making their own choices and vocalizing them online.
It is slow, but change is happening. It is so exciting to watch.
One thing I think about a lot is how to build solidarity among women in this critical political moment—because to me MAGA is clearly a “men’s” movement, and an anti-woman movement.
My sense is that there are a lot of centrist or even conservative women, like many Mormon women, who deeply disapprove of Trump and Mike Lee and MAGA in general. Do you think this is true? Do you think these women can be brought into solidarity on women’s rights with, say, liberal feminists who are also anti-MAGA? What are the obstacles to women’s solidarity that liberal women may not be aware of?
Unfortunately, Mormon women have been trained since birth to dedicate their lives to and defend an anti-woman movement. They have learned to be grateful for table scraps and hollow pedestals. So, in some ways, they are very primed to fall in line with the MAGA movement.
However, most Mormon women I know, not all but most, find Trump repugnant. They can’t stand him, but they still vote for him. I can’t make sense of it.
I think one of the barriers that keeps LDS women from fully aligning themselves with feminism is the propaganda that feminism is anti-mom or anti-stay-at-home mom. I saw this a lot during one of the recent Ballerina Farm PR/media scandals. Women felt like feminism was attacking motherhood, and they came out in full force against it.
We still have a lot of work to do in our community to counteract the anti-feminist rhetoric. The good news is that these women are smart. I’ve found that honest and common-sense conversations about things like abortion and feminism have really positive effects.
I have so much hope for Utah thanks to the women of my state. Utah politics are what they are in large part due to the lack of women’s involvement. It’s changing every day. It’s going to be a hard and long fight, but I have so much hope.
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Matriarchy Report is written by Lane Anderson and Allison Lichter.
Lane Anderson is a writer, journalist, and Clinical Professor at one of those universities for coastal elites. She has won fellowships and many SPJ awards for her writing on inequality and family social issues. She has an MFA from Columbia University. She was raised in Utah, and lives in New York City with her partner and young daughter.
Allison Lichter is associate dean at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. She has been a writer, producer and editor at New York Public Radio and the Wall Street Journal. She was born and raised in Queens, and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
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Honored. Thank you for having me!
When I feel like there is just nothing to be done, I will remember this interview! It's incredibly inspiring to hear about this work. Loved this bit: "For the last decade or so, there has been a pretty massive exodus of women from the LDS church. When women leave, their families leave with them. LDS women are finding their voices in a new way and that influences their engagement in politics."