Former President Donald Trump's campaign is fighting to prop up its numbers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — but it's been one blunder after another, wrote McKay Coppins for The Atlantic.
Mormons, who have relatively large populations of voters in the key Western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, have typically been a reliably Republican voting bloc, and they are still expected to back the GOP overall in this election, but Republicans have been bleeding support from them for years, as the LDS church has broken with them on key issues like immigration, and as former President Donald Trump's personal vices have repelled some of the more socially conservative in the faith.
"Almost immediately, Latter-day Saints for Trump devolved into a Veep-like comedy of errors," wrote Coppins. "The official website went live on October 7 with a photo of Russell M. Nelson, the president of the Church and a man considered by its members to be a prophet of God. When a reporter for the Church-owned Deseret News asked if the campaign had gotten permission to feature the image, given the Church’s neutrality in partisan politics, the campaign quickly scrubbed the photo from its homepage."
One of the other more high-profile blunders came when the Trump campaign started selling "LDS for Trump" branded coffee mugs and beer koozies — apparently with no thought for the fact that observant Mormons don't drink coffee or liquor.
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But all that was just the beginning, Coppins continued: "Mormon-targeted campaign events have been scheduled with an odd indifference to Latter-day Saint religious practice. A canvassing event in Nevada, for example, was held the same weekend as General Conference, a semiannual series of Church broadcasts in which senior leaders deliver sermons and spiritual counsel ... And when Trump held a rally in Prescott, Arizona, with an array of MAGA-Mormon luminaries — including Senator Mike Lee of Utah and the right-wing media personality Glenn Beck — it took place on a Sunday, which Latter-day Saints traditionally set apart for worship, service, and rest, not political events."
To cap all of this, Doug Quezada, who heads up the LDS for Trump initiative, is now "being sued for fraud over an alleged scheme involving a cannabis company," according to the report.
These blunders are probably not going to prevent Trump from winning a majority of Mormon voters, concluded Coppins — but if his margin among them declines, that could be the ballgame in some key swing states.
"For the Harris campaign, holding on to those voters this year could be the difference between losing Arizona and cracking open a celebratory beverage on Election Night," Coppins wrote. "I know a website where they might be able to get some koozies on sale."
