Trump Targeting Mormon Vote in Arizona, Nevada

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Former President Donald Trump is looking for some Latter-day Saints to help put Arizona and Nevada in his column on Election Day, according to a report from Deseret.

Following Vice President Kamala Harris’ launch of an advisory committee to court Latter-day Saints in Arizona, Trump quietly met with a group of Mormon influencers and political operatives at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Tuesday night, the outlet reported, citing an individual with knowledge of the meeting.

The purpose of the meeting, the source said, was to “to strategize how to coalesce and motivate the LDS vote.”

Deseret reported that Dave Sparks and David Kiley, the Utah-based stars of the reality TV show “Diesel Brothers,” and former State Department official Marlon Bateman attended the meeting, with Bateman being tasked by Trump to lead a “Latter-day Saints for Trump” coalition during a Salt Lake City fundraising event later this month.

According to the Washington Examiner, Mormons have historically been a strong Republican voting bloc, but Democrats have made some inroads in recent years.

Last month, Harris announced “Latter-day Saints for Harris-Walz” to specifically go after the Mormon vote in Arizona and Nevada.

During the 2020 election cycle, the Trump campaign sent both then-Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr. to Arizona for rallies and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who is a Mormon, spoke at those events.

This time around, Trump’s camp is reportedly entertaining the idea of a similar, Mormon-targeted rally in Arizona, featuring Mormon influencers.

The former president has already received the endorsement of every sitting Latter-day Saint in Congress, with the exception of Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who said he would not support Trump.

“I know for some people, character is not the No. 1 issue” when selecting a president, Romney said in May. “It is for me. When someone has been, well, determined by a jury to have committed sexual assault, that’s not someone who I want my kids and grandkids to see as president of the United States.”

Romney’s view apparently once was shared by many in the Mormon community, as evidenced by Trump’s lackluster performance in Utah in 2016. That cycle, then-candidate Trump garnered less than 50% of the vote after a number of prominent Mormon officials called for him to exit the race over his comments about sexually assaulting women. It was the worst performance by a Republican in the red state in decades.

Since then, many of Trump’s former critics, including current Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, have changed their mind about the former president.

“When I got to know him, I realized there’s good in him,” Lee told The Dispatch in July. “He has genuine compassion for people, for what they go through.”