Utah House speak­er enters crowd­ed pri­ma­ry field to replace Rom­ney in Sen­ate

Utah House Speak­er Brad Wil­son launched his cam­paign to replace Sen. Mitt Rom­ney (R‑UT) in the Sen­ate, enter­ing a crowd­ed field of pri­ma­ry chal­lengers vying for the seat in the Bee­hive State.
Rumors of Wilson’s expect­ed Sen­ate run first cir­cu­lat­ed ear­li­er this year after the state Repub­li­can leader cre­at­ed an explorato­ry com­mit­tee to raise mon­ey and gauge the inter­est of GOP vot­ers in the state. How­ev­er, Wil­son quick­ly jumped into action short­ly after Rom­ney con­firmed his retire­ment in mid-Sep­tem­ber, announc­ing he would step down as state speak­er lat­er this year.
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“I’m run­ning for the Unit­ed States Sen­ate because our nation is at a cross­roads and we need a fear­less con­ser­v­a­tive fight­er with the back­bone to get things done,” Wil­son said. “The stakes are too high to set­tle for anoth­er go-along-to-get-along politi­cian that’ll cut and run around and light the path to a brighter future.”
Wil­son has an ear­ly advan­tage after rais­ing rough­ly $2.2 mil­lion dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter, a record-break­ing fundrais­ing haul for the most mon­ey raised by a GOP Sen …