In the Arizona battleground, one group of voters could help swing the race for Vice President Kamala Harris: members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Mormons have been one of the most loyal Republican voting blocs until Donald Trump took over the GOP. The Trump campaign struggled to win over LDS voters in 2016 and 2020, and polls show more than half have a negative view of Trump.
President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by about 10,000 votes. The result among the Saints in Arizona is likely to be around 18,000 votes, according to a poll by Y2 Analytics.
With more than 440,000 Saints in Arizona, their votes could help Harris secure 11 Electoral College votes in Arizona in November.
A group called Latter-day Saints for Harris-Walz has been ramping up efforts to elect Harris and her mate, Minnesota Gov. Team Walz.
“We carried out various activities: outreach through social media, organized online events like the August national call that attracted an audience of more than 1,400 people, and personal meetings in important states such as Arizona and Nevada to volunteer for the campaign. “Rob Taber , the group’s national director, told Newsweek.
Taber described Latter-day Saints for Harris-Walz as “a big camp made up of Republicans, independents, and Democrats” who saw Harris “as a breath of fresh air.”
Many Latter-day Saints are “ready to turn the page on the Trump era,” he said. Harris “means for pro-family policies, especially on housing costs, protecting in vitro fertilization, and reducing the number of women who die in or shortly after childbirth. His willingness to deal with price increases while promoting entrepreneurship.”
But “most fundamentally, they respect the Constitution, including accepting the results of our elections—essential to the creation of the American experiment.”
Speakers on an Aug. 6 organizer’s call — the day Harris announced Walz as his running mate — talked about how his faith compelled him to vote for the Democratic presidential ticket in November.
Among them is an Arizona Republican who recently endorsed Harris for president: John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, a city that was once the most conservative in the country.
Trump “is more than willing to compromise the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States to further his own gains,” Giles said on the phone. “I think we have a certain mission as Latter-day Saints to raise and direct these things to our friends inside the church and outside as well.”
He urged people to help “our mission to duplicate what happened four years ago and achieve a Democratic victory in Arizona in the presidential election.”
Giles had urged fellow Arizona Republicans to “put country over party” and reject Trump in an op-ed for The Arizona Republican in late July. “This year it’s overwhelming to vote Republican at the top of the ticket,” he wrote.
Jacob Rugh, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at church-run Brigham Young University, said the data showed LDS voters would back the Harris-Walz ticket “more than any other presidential ticket in 60 years.”
The surge in support may be especially important in Arizona, where the Maricopa County area with the most LDS chapels will swing to Democrats in 2020, Rugh said. Newsweek.
“If the trends we’re seeing in 2020 in the LDS East Valley in Maricopa County (the greater Phoenix area) continue, more Phoenix suburbs will turn blue and more votes will come for Harris in what will surely be another. A close election – where every vote counts,” he said.
Rugh noted that LDS women have been very active in organizing on the ground to oppose Trump.
“This is just one of many groups,” he said. “Many manage online and offline.”
The January 6 attack on the US Capitol was “a breaking point for LDS voters who believe the American Constitution is divinely inspired and that the Capitol attack was an illegal attempt to undermine our highly revered constitution,” added Rugh.
“We know from a detailed audit that more than 100,000 Arizona Republican voters voted directly on the GOP ticket in 2020 with the exception of not voting for Trump. That number will increase after January 6.”
