Donald Trump divides Arizona’s crucial Latter-day Saint vote

Mesa, Ariz. • A group of Latter-day Saint men sat around a coffee table at a house in Mesa, Arizona, on one recent September evening, debating a scenario that would have felt implausible just a decade ago: Could thousands of Latter-day Saint voters, disillusioned and disgusted by former President Donald J. Trump, help deliver a key battleground state to Democrats in November?

It’s already happened once. President Joe Biden won 18% of Arizona’s Latter-day Saint voters in 2020, according to exit polls, a small but significant defection from a reliably Republican voting bloc that helped Biden flip the state blue by 10,457 votes. Seeking their support for the third time, Trump appears to be dividing the state’s Latter-day Saints more than ever, according to interviews with more than a dozen Latter-day Saint voters and state political analysts — which could give Vice President Kamala Harris an edge.

“People in my moderate circle of friends are watching and saying, ‘I can no longer do this,’” said Mike Badgett, one of the men in Mesa who was speculating about a greater shift toward Democrats. “I think the wheels are coming off of this agreement.”

Badgett was referring to the uneasy alliance between Trump and deeply religious voters. For years, many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supported Trump, often reluctantly. They were turned off by his vulgarity, his disdain for women and his attacks on immigrants, anathema to the Utah-based church’s pro-immigrant, pro-refugee message.

But they had been Republicans for generations, driven by a shared belief in traditional family values and Christian conservatism, and they were encouraged by his pledge to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices who they hoped would overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutional right to abortion.

It was one segment of a tacit understanding between Christian voters and Trump: They would ignore his character defects, and he would advance their policy priorities.

Since 2020, though, Latter-day Saints say members of their religion have grown even more skeptical of the former president, an idea supported by surveys and other data.

They were disturbed by Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and his criminal indictments and felony conviction, which seemed to validate their long-standing concerns about his character. And traditional Latter-day Saint attitudes are changing, spurred by a younger and more diverse generation of millennial and Generation Z churchgoers who are more open-minded about issues like LGBTQ rights and divorce.

“There’s new ideas coming into the house,” said Brittany Romanello, a faculty associate of anthropology at Arizona State University who studies Mormon culture and politics. “I think that is a huge reason older Mormons are changing their voting patterns.”

Even on abortion, long a bedrock issue for churchgoers, there are signs that some Latter-day Saint women are having second thoughts. The church officially opposes abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, but some Latter-day Saint women said the new abortion restrictions that some states passed after the overturning of Roe v. Wade ran contrary to their religious principles that emphasize autonomy and agency. (Earlier this year, Arizona’s Supreme Court reinstated a near-total ban on abortion, before the Legislature repealed it, reverting to a 15-week restriction.)

Will LDS women back Harris?

Allison Jones, a photographer who lives in Gilbert, east of Phoenix, said she thought a wave of Latter-day Saint women would cast their votes for Harris this November — silently — while their husbands would continue to support Trump.

“It’s on the D.L.,” Jones, 59, said, meaning on the down-low. “There are going to be a lot of women that are going to get their mail-in ballots, they’re going to walk into that booth, and their husbands are never going to know what they did.”

Sherry Macnab, 47, a Mesa resident and corporate event manager, said she knew of women who had placed Post-it notes in women’s restrooms in churches, reminding them that their husbands would not know for whom they voted.

“There’s a big discrepancy,” Macnab said, “between male and female voters right now.”

To be sure, many Latter-day Saints remain firmly anti-abortion, and a majority will most likely stick with Trump in November.

Jared Taylor, the chief executive of the Heritage Academy Schools, which are private Christian schools, said he knew of fellow Latter-day Saints who voted for Biden in 2020 and were sheepishly returning to Trump’s side, fueled by Republican advocacy for religious liberty.

“President Trump has been very vocal, very supportive,” Taylor, 52, said. “Biden and Harris have been mute” and haven’t spoken out on what he sees as the persecution of Christians.

Halee Dobbins, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign in Arizona, offered a long list of examples of Trump siding with Christian groups during his presidency, and expressed confidence that the Latter-day Saint community was behind him.

Tara Fischbeck, 44, of Mesa, said she supported Trump because he was strong on the border, would protect freedom of speech and “believes in the nuclear family.”

“His family is stalwart; they’re amazing,” she said. “I think that tells a lot about him as a person.”

Still, Democrats believe that many Latter-day Saints are persuadable. There are nearly 500,000 Latter-day Saints in Arizona — or about 7% of the population — according to the church, though that number includes children.

Latter-day Saints for Harris-Walz

A grassroots group called Latter-day Saints for Harris-Walz that works with the campaign held a video call in August to generate enthusiasm, and plans to begin in-person events this fall, according to Rob Taber, an organizer.

And, on Thursday, about 50 people, many of them Latter-day Saints, met at a home in Gilbert to listen to a campaign speech from Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate against Republican Kari Lake. Such a gathering might have been unlikely not long ago, but GOP attendees said they felt some of their party’s candidates were no longer people they could support.

“My religion helps to guide my moral compass,” said Hillary Webster, 51, a preschool teacher. She said she wrote in her husband’s name for president in 2016, and then supported Biden. She now supports Harris. “Being raised Mormon, I know that the power’s within myself to make good choices.”

Arizona’s most prominent pro-Harris Latter-day Saint is John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa. Giles spoke at the Democratic convention in Chicago last month, and he shared a slideshow of photos from his trip at the meeting of the Latter-day Saint men in Mesa.

Trump presented an “interesting dilemma” for Latter-day Saints, Giles said. “His lifestyle is so abhorrent to ours. Yes, he’s a Republican, but he’s not like us in any other way.”

After, Giles and the others debated whether Latter-day Saints voters would feel the church had given them the permission they felt they needed to potentially flip to Harris.

A letter from the church’s top leaders last year warned against blindly voting down the ballot for one party without carefully considering candidates and issues, calling such an act a “threat to democracy.” Some interpreted this as a nudge not to reflexively vote for Trump.

Brian Dille, of Gilbert, said he thought the notice might make a difference for Latter-day Saints who had grown sick of Trump but were struggling to break free of a tradition of Republican support.

“It provides an exit door,” he said. “Being a Mormon Democrat in the Intermountain West is lonely — people won’t talk to me. But that’s changed.”

What might Romney do?

Democrats may not succeed in turning an enormous number of Latter-day Saints into outright supporters of Harris, with whom they still have substantial policy differences. Even Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah and a prominent Latter-day Saint critic of Trump, has not said whether he voted for Biden in 2020 — only that he did not vote for Trump. On Wednesday, he declined to tell reporters in Washington if he would back Harris.

But there is a sense that a growing number may at least choose not to vote for Trump, instead selecting a third-party candidate or abstaining.

Walking to a church in Mesa on a recent afternoon, Braeden and Amanda Lee said they had traditionally voted for Republicans, but remained undecided this year.

“I’m not super enthused about either party,” Lee said.

Others remain loyal to Trump.

David Filbrun, who owns a trampoline store in Mesa, said that under Biden, he had to raise the price of his largest trampoline to $2,400 from $1,600 over the past four years, because the cost of materials had increased so much. Homelessness near his store is on the rise, he added, and he believed Trump’s policies would improve the country.

“To me, it’s really whatever or whoever is pro-America,” Filbrun said.

But he acknowledged not everyone shared his view.

“The LDS community is divided,” Filbrun said, “which is the first time I’ve ever really thought that.”

— Nicole Ludden contributed reporting from Gilbert, Arizona.

This story originally appears in The New York Times.