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Bolstered by Mormon voters’ distaste for MAGA politics, the center-right is trying to reassert itself in a ruby-red state.
Feb. 18, 2025Updated 4:19 p.m. ET
A new political-action committee formed by a Republican is endorsing candidates who emphasize problem solving over partisanship. A former Republican governor is trying to root out political trash talk. And a push to redraw a congressional map that could bring back a Democratic House district has been buoyed by a Republican-dominated state Supreme Court.
As President Trump pursues his right-wing agenda at breakneck speed, with Democrats in retreat and “Never Trump” conservatives making themselves scarce, one of the 50 states has remained a redoubt of a kinder, gentler and more civil kind of Republicanism.
Utah.
Traditionally deep red, Utah moved just one percentage point to the right in the 2024 election, the second-smallest statewide shift in the country after Washington. One big reason is that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who make up a vast — and once reliably conservative — segment of the Utah population, have been drifting away from the G.O.P.
The church, headquartered in Utah, counts 2.2 million people there as members — about three in five residents — though other estimates suggest only about 42 percent of Utahns are practicing Mormons.
Repelled by Mr. Trump’s language mocking immigrants and demeaning women, Latter-day Saint voters, who also have a sizable presence in Arizona, played a key role in flipping that swing state blue in 2020. Last year, 31 percent of L.D.S. voters nationwide backed former Vice President Kamala Harris, up from the 23 percent who voted Democratic in 2020, according to a Fox News analysis of Associated Press VoteCast data.
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