Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday launched a campaign coalition aimed at winning over Mormons in Arizona for President Trump.
Pence at an event in Mesa touted the Trump administration’s record on abortion, judicial appointments, and the coronavirus pandemic. Pence also addressed former Vice President Joe Biden’s pick of California Sen. Kamala Harris as his vice presidential pick, criticizing her positions on abortion, as well as a raft of other issues.
“I’ll see you in Salt Lake City,” Pence said, joking that he expects a strong crowd when he and Harris debate in the majority Mormon city.
Arizona in 2020 has become a battleground state for Republicans, drawing recent visits from both Trump and Pence. The state, which boasts a significant Mormon population, has moved leftward in the past few years. In 2018, it elected Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the first Senate win for the party since 1988. Sen. Martha McSally, who, in 2019, filled the Senate seat left vacant because of John McCain’s death, faces a strong challenger in former astronaut Mark Kelly, who leads her by a wide margin.
Pitching Trump to various religious sects has become a hallmark of the Trump campaign’s strategy, but directly aiming at Mormons is a new move. Tyler Bowyer, the incoming Republican national committeeman in Arizona, said that the point of launching in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, is to play for Mormon votes in what are proving to be crucial states for Republicans in 2020.
Bowyer, who is a member of the coalition, told the Washington Examiner that locking in the “Mormon corridor” in Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and the Las Vegas suburbs of Nevada is essential to winning those states for Trump. Of all of them, he said, Arizona is proving the toughest to keep red.
“If there’s a state that we have to win, it’s Arizona,” he said. “This is going to be one of the biggest challenges we’ve had as a state in recent presidential election cycles.”
Part of that challenge is the personal ambivalence many Mormons feel toward the president. In 2016, third-party challenger Evan McMullin, who is a Mormon, scored significant support in Utah after criticizing Trump’s personal character. McMullin won 20% of the vote, the first third-party candidate to do so since Ross Perot’s 1992 run.
McMullin told the Washington Examiner last year that many Mormons still are uncomfortable with Trump’s personal conduct because they “expect honor in their leaders.”
Some of Trump’s top critics in the Republican Party have been Mormons, most prominent among them Sen. Mitt Romney, who in February voted to convict Trump in one of the impeachment articles put before the Senate. Former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a fellow Mormon, was also an outspoken critic of the president before his retirement in 2018.
There’s also the issue that younger people of faith — not just Mormons, but evangelicals and other religious sects as well — are not as reliably conservative as their parents. But, by courting Mormons specifically, the Trump campaign hopes not to take their support for granted and “get ahead of the curve” on keeping Mormons Republican, Bowyer said.
Especially as Trump makes religion as a defense of its practice a central campaign issue, Bowyer added, the campaign feels the need to reach out to all religious voting blocks individually.
“When the Left is in attack mode on religion, it’s such an obvious thing for Republicans and conservatives to be making the rallying cry with the various religious voting groups,” he said.
Biden’s campaign also reached out to Mormon voters in the state, in reaction to Pence’s visit. Ron Taber, co-chairman of Latter-day Saint Democrats of America, told supporters during an online event Tuesday that Trump’s policies on immigration and his response to the coronavirus are inimical to the Mormon faith.
“Donald Trump’s actions as president time and again have gone against these most basic tenants of our faith: caring for the poor and less fortunate, leading with compassion and empathy, and helping families and individuals thrive and build self-reliance,” Taber said.
The play for Mormons comes as both campaigns increasingly look to religious blocs in key battleground states. Both campaigns have been aggressively courting Catholics in the Upper Midwest, as each attempts to pin down Wisconsin and Michigan.
Trump last week launched a direct attack on Biden, saying that, if elected, he would “hurt God” and “hurt the Bible.”
