When Sen. Mitt Romney ran for president in 2012, many called it the Mormon moment. But Romney’s candidacy did not define Latter-day Saints as a people. This November might.
Sign up for Shifts, an illustrated newsletter series about the future of work
Mormon voters in two important counties — Maricopa in Arizona and Clark in Nevada — might hold the keys to the White House. As roughly 5 percent of the population in suburban Phoenix and Las Vegas, these civically engaged, Constitution-loving Latter-day Saints can hasten the rescue of the Republican Party from Donald Trump and restore dignity to the republic.
Latter-day Saints have been a reliably Republican voting bloc for the better part of a century — which gives them potentially decisive power this year. Arizona and Nevada are closely divided swing states, and the GOP nominee can scarcely afford to lose votes from party loyalists. Trump put those votes at risk on Jan. 6, 2021, and in speeches since then by flouting the Constitution.
Even before Trump directly attacked the Constitution, his rise in the GOP drove a wedge through Utah’s Republican electorate, leaving the state’s two Mormon senators on opposite sides of a widening chasm. Romney, who twice voted for Trump’s impeachment, stands for traditional values of his party, state and church, while Sen. Mike Lee has reversed his early anti-Trump stance to fall in line with the MAGA movement.
🎤
Follow Opinions on the news
Lee’s side will surely carry the day in deep-red Utah, but polls indicate that Arizona and Nevada are up for grabs. So the question is how many Latter-day Saints in those states follow Romney’s example as a voice of reason in a party full of Trump’s enablers.
The evolution of Romney’s reputation reflects shifts in the broader Republican Party. As the party’s presidential nominee, Romney was the political darling of a unified coalition of Western Mormons. But when Romney refused to bend a knee to Trump, many Mormons turned on him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...c_magnet-op2024elections_inline_collection_16
Trump wants to make deterrence and (really) legal immigration great again
Given Romney’s reputation for political gymnastics on health care and other issues as he rose from governor of liberal Massachusetts to standard-bearer of the conservative GOP, it is ironic that Lee has proved to be the greater flip-flopper. Despite his insistence that he never compromises on principle, Lee reversed his call for Trump to drop out of the race in 2016 and by 2020 was comparing Trump with a hero from the Book of Mormon.
Lee and other like-minded Mormons believe the Constitution was divinely inspired and lament that it now “hangs by a thread.” Yet when Trump tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into blocking the constitutionally mandated certification of the 2020 election, Lee schemed with Trump’s aides as they plotted strategy.
Such blatant hypocrisy has raised doubts among some MAGA Mormons — like Rusty Bowers, a Latter-day Saint from the Phoenix suburbs. An ardent Trump supporter in 2020, Bowers — who was then speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives — refused to join efforts to steal Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani led a pressure campaign to break Bowers, and Trump joined multiple phone calls to insist that Bowers throw out Biden’s electors and send an alternate Trump slate to Congress. Though it would cost him his seat in the next primary, Bowers stood firm for the Constitution.
He has no regrets. Bowers has said he blocked Trump’s scheme because it is “a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired.” He couldn’t believe his own party would threaten democracy. “The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart. That we would be the people who would surrender the Constitution in order to win an election — that just blows my mind.”
In this election, lifelong Republicans will have to decide whether their Mormon faith in the Constitution supersedes their loyalty to the party’s current leader. One such Mormon, former senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, recently faced that choice and announced his support for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Romney, who will retire from the Senate in January, holds out hope for the party he has always called home. “If it can change in the direction of a populist it can change back in the direction of my wing of the Republican Party,” he said in announcing his retirement from the Senate.
That restoration will likely take time, but it can start now with Western Mormons erecting the ultimate blockade to Trump’s attempted return to the White House. In the process, they can send the signal that Lee is a black eye of yesteryear rather than a future symbol of Mormon political identity.
This is the Mormon moment, and Latter-day Saints in Arizona and Nevada can seize it by rejecting Trump and protecting the Constitution they believe to be divinely inspired.
Sign up for Shifts, an illustrated newsletter series about the future of work
Mormon voters in two important counties — Maricopa in Arizona and Clark in Nevada — might hold the keys to the White House. As roughly 5 percent of the population in suburban Phoenix and Las Vegas, these civically engaged, Constitution-loving Latter-day Saints can hasten the rescue of the Republican Party from Donald Trump and restore dignity to the republic.
Latter-day Saints have been a reliably Republican voting bloc for the better part of a century — which gives them potentially decisive power this year. Arizona and Nevada are closely divided swing states, and the GOP nominee can scarcely afford to lose votes from party loyalists. Trump put those votes at risk on Jan. 6, 2021, and in speeches since then by flouting the Constitution.
Even before Trump directly attacked the Constitution, his rise in the GOP drove a wedge through Utah’s Republican electorate, leaving the state’s two Mormon senators on opposite sides of a widening chasm. Romney, who twice voted for Trump’s impeachment, stands for traditional values of his party, state and church, while Sen. Mike Lee has reversed his early anti-Trump stance to fall in line with the MAGA movement.
🎤
Follow Opinions on the news
Lee’s side will surely carry the day in deep-red Utah, but polls indicate that Arizona and Nevada are up for grabs. So the question is how many Latter-day Saints in those states follow Romney’s example as a voice of reason in a party full of Trump’s enablers.
The evolution of Romney’s reputation reflects shifts in the broader Republican Party. As the party’s presidential nominee, Romney was the political darling of a unified coalition of Western Mormons. But when Romney refused to bend a knee to Trump, many Mormons turned on him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...c_magnet-op2024elections_inline_collection_16
Trump wants to make deterrence and (really) legal immigration great again
Given Romney’s reputation for political gymnastics on health care and other issues as he rose from governor of liberal Massachusetts to standard-bearer of the conservative GOP, it is ironic that Lee has proved to be the greater flip-flopper. Despite his insistence that he never compromises on principle, Lee reversed his call for Trump to drop out of the race in 2016 and by 2020 was comparing Trump with a hero from the Book of Mormon.
Lee and other like-minded Mormons believe the Constitution was divinely inspired and lament that it now “hangs by a thread.” Yet when Trump tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into blocking the constitutionally mandated certification of the 2020 election, Lee schemed with Trump’s aides as they plotted strategy.
Such blatant hypocrisy has raised doubts among some MAGA Mormons — like Rusty Bowers, a Latter-day Saint from the Phoenix suburbs. An ardent Trump supporter in 2020, Bowers — who was then speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives — refused to join efforts to steal Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani led a pressure campaign to break Bowers, and Trump joined multiple phone calls to insist that Bowers throw out Biden’s electors and send an alternate Trump slate to Congress. Though it would cost him his seat in the next primary, Bowers stood firm for the Constitution.
He has no regrets. Bowers has said he blocked Trump’s scheme because it is “a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired.” He couldn’t believe his own party would threaten democracy. “The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart. That we would be the people who would surrender the Constitution in order to win an election — that just blows my mind.”
In this election, lifelong Republicans will have to decide whether their Mormon faith in the Constitution supersedes their loyalty to the party’s current leader. One such Mormon, former senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, recently faced that choice and announced his support for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Romney, who will retire from the Senate in January, holds out hope for the party he has always called home. “If it can change in the direction of a populist it can change back in the direction of my wing of the Republican Party,” he said in announcing his retirement from the Senate.
That restoration will likely take time, but it can start now with Western Mormons erecting the ultimate blockade to Trump’s attempted return to the White House. In the process, they can send the signal that Lee is a black eye of yesteryear rather than a future symbol of Mormon political identity.
This is the Mormon moment, and Latter-day Saints in Arizona and Nevada can seize it by rejecting Trump and protecting the Constitution they believe to be divinely inspired.
