Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, facing a tough challenge from independent Evan McMullin, got himself a great headline in The Salt Lake Tribune: “Mike Lee has earned a reputation as principled conservative.” So why is he being widely mocked for the piece attached to the glowing headline? It comes down to the byline.

Here’s the opening paragraph: “Mike Lee serves as a United States senator representing the state of Utah. Since taking office, Senator Lee has earned a reputation as a principled conservative. He believes elected officials are responsible for keeping the federal government within its constitutionally limited role.”

While that paragraph might read like a child’s book report, the byline is … Mike Lee. Or, it was. After a lot of jokes about Lee writing about himself in the third person, and questions about why the newspaper had run something by Lee reading as if it was an outside assessment of him, the Tribune simply removed the byline. Real transparency there.

It appears that Lee and McMullin had each been given the chance to make the case for themselves in an op-ed. McMullin did it in the format of the typical politician’s op-ed, writing in the first person and focusing on why he was running and how his experience was relevant to the job.

Lee submitted a stilted biographical sketch of himself in the third person. If knowing what year someone got their undergraduate and law degrees from Brigham Young University is important to Utah voters (which, maybe?), then Lee made the case for himself. He also made sure they know that he “serves on various committees important to Utah.”

It’s basically a version of the biography on his Senate website, only less well written. And also, it’s an op-ed written in the third person! The weirdness was duly noted:

Again, the response from the Tribune was to remove the byline. It would be interesting to learn exactly how all this went down, but as of now, the newspaper does not appear to be planning to inform readers about it.

As some of those tweets point out, Lee’s most recent foray into the headlines was when he used a Tucker Carlson appearance to publicly beg Sen. Mitt Romney to endorse him, despite Romney having made clear he would not be endorsing in the race. Lee is definitely nervous about this race, and if the main way he’s getting his name out there involves looking like a buffoon (and not in an intentional, Trumpian kind of way), it’s probably not helpful.

Lee and McMullin will debate on Monday night.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.