In the first twenty years of Utah’s statehood, our politics devolved from genuine contest to orchestrated performance. By 1916, the Republican Party — guided by Reed Smoot, who was both U.S. Senator and LDS apostle — was in absolute control of every facet of state government. The Salt Lake Tribune and other newspapers bemoaned the fact that elections were a foregone conclusion, with candidates handpicked behind closed doors. Any political upsets occurred at the Republican state convention, and Utah’s voters merely rubber-stamped the convention’s proceedings at the polls.
But that year, the convention didn’t go smoothly, especially for the headliner. With Smoot’s blessing, Nephi Morris got the nomination for governor — rather than the incumbent, William Spry. Spry’s supporters were slow to rally to the newcomer’s extremist positions, even when Morris toned them down on the campaign trail. The Democrats, by contrast, united strongly behind their candidates and attracted large crowds to exuberant rallies. But their presidential candidate, the incumbent Woodrow Wilson, wasn’t doing well in national polls, which favored Republican Charles Hughes. Heading into the election, the feeling that Republicans still owned the state was palpable.
And then, suddenly, everything was different. On Nov. 7, 1916, Utahns rejected every single Republican candidate and voted in Democrats across the board. The new governor-elect, Simon Bamberger, was a well-known mining magnate who had built the state’s first electric interurban railroad and the state’s finest amusement park, Lagoon. A self-made millionaire, he had a reputation for being witty, generous, and kind. He was also Jewish, and Republican attacks on his ethnicity and religion had been as unrelenting as they were nasty.
That tactic backfired. As Bamberger himself predicted, the people of Utah rejected what we now call the politics of hate. In 2024, will Utahns rise to the occasion again?
Stephanie Thompson Lundeen, Sandy
