Mormons for Harris set on making an impact in Arizona

While members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have historically voted for Republicans by and large, some Mormons ' distaste for former President Donald Trump ’s rhetoric has peeled back the once reliably Republican voting bloc.

As of 2022, there are over 439,000 Mormons living in Arizona , a key swing state that both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are courting. In 2020, President Joe Biden flipped the state blue by a little under 11,000 votes, marking the first time since 1996 that Arizona awarded its electoral votes to a Democrat.

“For me, integrity matters in our church. They teach us to live our life in a way that we would be reflective of the teachings of the Savior, Jesus Christ,” Yasser Sanchez, an Arizona voter living in Maricopa County, told the Washington Examiner.

"So when I look at the Sermon on the Mount, where Christ literally told us how to live, I apply that," Sanchez continued. "And you look at Donald Trump, he literally goes against everything we teach, as far as how we are to behave, how we are to interact, how we are to treat others, how we are to treat those that are weak."

Latter-day Saints for Harris, which was previously Latter-day Saints for Biden, saw its volunteers double within days of Biden suspending his campaign for reelection, according to Axios .

Brittany Romanello , a professor at Arizona State University who studies Mormon Latina immigrants, told the Washington Examiner that some of the trend to the Left can be attributed to younger Mormons who are more open to discussing social issues within their families and even Church.

"[There’s] a cultural change of the way we respect authority or assert our values. It's just very different than, I would say ... my parents’ generation even was very 'you don't bring up these points of conflict in church,'" Romanello said.

She said there is more room for millennials or Gen Z Mormons to push back on the Church and say, “I disagree with the Church's stance on gay marriage, or I disagree with how we've culturally adopted this, like the pro-life stance, when the church's actual stance is very pro-choice in some ways.”

“The youth are much more willing to have these difficult conversations with their families and disagree with the church openly,” Romanello added.

John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, endorsed Harris earlier this year. Mesa is the state’s third-largest city and has a large Mormon population. In his op-ed endorsement, he pointed to the 2020 false claims of a stolen election, immigration, and Trump’s personality as reasons for endorsing his opponent, all of which are commonalities among anti-Trump Mormon voters.

“A lot of us in Republicans for Harris and the LDS for Harris both kind of initially were drawn to the campaign because we're anti-Trump,” Giles told the Washington Examiner.

“Certainly, that sentiment has always been part of what people are saying is ‘he's disqualified’ because of his character and his disregard for the rule of law,” he continued. Giles added that for those in the Mormon faith, as well as former and current Republicans, Harris's “positions are more closely aligned with positions that they're comfortable with.”

Giles, who still identifies as a Republican, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, an action he said he could have never predicted in his political career.

“I felt so fortunate to get that opportunity,” Giles said. “Never aspired to do that, or never imagined I'd do that. But when they extended the invitation, and I really understood what it was, I realized if you take a position, and if you feel strongly enough to take the position, you really need to say yes to opportunities to amplify your voice if people give it to you.”

During the 2020 election, Mormons doubled the support they gave Biden over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Nine percent of Mormons voted for Clinton, as compared to the 18% that voted for Biden in 2020. Mormon support for the Republican ticket overall dropped from 80% in 2004 to 61% in 2016, while most other Christian denominations moved further to the Right.

It should be noted, however, that in the 2016 election, the presence of independent Evan McMullin swayed some voters to vote for McMullin over Trump or Clinton that election. In Utah, the center of the U.S. Mormon population and McMullin’s home state, he received over 21% of the vote in 2016.

Sanchez said he is conservative and was a member of the Republican Party until Trump’s rise in 2016. He voted for McMullin in 2016, Biden in 2020, and plans to vote for Harris this election.

“I was pushed out of the Republican Party because there was no longer room for conservative Latino values that weren't willing to undermine everything you believe in,” Sanchez said. He said former Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain (who died in 2018) and Jeff Flake, a Mormon who also endorsed Harris , “basically got pushed out of the Republican Party.”

“They lost the seat because of that,” Sanchez noted. The Arizona GOP, which held on to both of Arizona’s seats in the Senate for over two decades, has not won a Senate race since 2018, with there being a Senate race in every Arizona election since 2018.

Still, the majority of those in the Mormon faith still vote largely Republican , but with an election as close as the 2024 election is shaped to be, any movement with a large group, such as the Latter-Day Saints, counts.

Rob Taber, a national organizer with the Latter-Day Saints for Harris movement, told the Washington Examiner that Mormons are centrist in nature. He said some Arizona Republicans get “turned off” about election denialism, which has plagued Arizona elections since 2020.

“I don't believe that we can have a president that every time he goes on TV, I have to mute it because I don't want my kids to hear the lies, the nonsense, the vilifying,” Sanchez, the Maricopa County voter, said.

Speaking with Mormon Harris supporters, two main reasons came up as to why they would not be supporting the Republican ticket: Jan. 6 and immigration.

“He's the first sitting president in the history of our country to not support peaceful transfer of power. If you look back, there have been people who have felt that an election, you know, was not handled correctly in some way,” Claudia Walters, a former Republican Mesa councilwoman and a co-chairwoman of the Latter-Day Saints for Harris movement told the Washington Examiner.

She pointed to the 2000 election, in which Democrat Al Gore conceded his loss and urged the country to get behind George W. Bush as the rightful president. Walters said she believes “the foundation of our country is the Constitution, and [Trump] seems to disregard the Constitution.”

“He wants loyalty to himself, not to the nation, not to the Constitution,” Sanchez said.

“In the Republican Party that I've identified with, there was loyalty to principals,” Giles said. “And the Republican Party today has abandoned that and in lieu of just being loyal to an individual.”

Immigration was another key disagreement Latter-Day Saint Harris supporters had with the former president. They mentioned Trump’s history of harsh rhetoric toward immigrants , notably his 2015 comment that Mexico was sending rapists to the U.S. All of those interviewed stressed that in the Mormon faith, immigrants and refugees are not demonized.

“One of the strong tenets of our faith is that we take care of our brothers and sisters in the world, and that is all of us. We are all children of heavenly parents, and so we aren't better than someone else,” Walters said. “And so the denigration of immigrants is very disturbing to me.”

When they reach adulthood, Mormon men typically embark on a “ mission ,” in which they are sent to a location domestically or overseas with the intention of inviting others to come to their religion and focus on their own study of the faith. Taber said he served a mission partly in Haiti and partly in South Carolina, where he worked “directly with immigrant communities in the United States.”

“The rhetoric is bad, but also just creating the stories really turns off a lot of Latter-Day Saints, where honesty is really valued,” Taber said in a nod to Trump’s unfounded claim that legal Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Trump, now in his third presidential race, launched a “Latter-Day Saints for Trump” push earlier this month.

“What I find notable about this year's effort is how late it got started,” Taber said, noting that in comparison, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., was in Utah in July 2020 for a campaign event. “And the former president called in, he was audio only, and gave some remarks about things, but I mean, it's notable that the Republican Party is realizing, ‘Oh, we do have to step up our campaign.’”

The Trump campaign released some merchandise , including a coffee mug and beer can holder, which many on social media noted was ironic due to the fact that Mormons are taught not to drink alcohol or coffee.

Taber said he believes part of the movement from Mormons toward the Democratic Party stems from the Mormon belief in religious freedom. He said there have been evolutions on how religious freedom is “interpreted, especially with the rise of Christian nationalism within the GOP.” He argued that the “Republican Party's religious freedom rhetoric” does not include Latter-Day Saints as they are seen as outsiders to Christianity.

“The better approach to religious freedom, or freedom from religion, is what we see on the Democratic side of, ‘hey, this is something that's supposed to protect everyone,’” Taber said.

“It's not just about enshrining particular interpretations of Christianity into the law, but also protecting the religious freedom of our Jewish neighbors, of our Muslim neighbors,” he continued. “Our neighbors who are sick, who are wearing turbans can [continue to] do so.”

At a Republicans for Harris event that the vice president recently held in Scottsdale, Arizona , she took time out to mention that her pastor, Rev. Amos C. Brown, spoke at the 100th birthday party of Russell Nelson, the president of the Mormon Church.

Sanchez said that acknowledgment of the Mormon community meant a great deal to him, as well as others of the Mormon faith.

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“That was kind of cool. And she's like, ‘Hey, even though we might be of different faith. We have a lot of things in common,’” Sanchez said.

“I don't have a religious test for people when they run for office, but you at least have to be a person of value, a person of integrity, a person with a core set of beliefs,” Sanchez said. “And [Trump's] core set of beliefs is whatever isn't good for him is not good, and if you're not good for him, you're his enemy. And that's about the most non-American thing ever heard.”