Utah’s first presidential vote was a landslide for the Democrat

Originally published in 2010 but not much has changed.

Utah voters have been reliably Republican in presidential elections for more than 40 years now. In fact, only once since 1948 — Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 — has the Democratic candidate carried the Beehive State.

It seems highly unlikely that President Obama will carry Utah in 2012, but it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, in 1896, the first time Utah voted for president, Democrat William Jennings Bryan (above) carried almost 83 percent of the vote against Republican William McKinley, who won the general election. The fundamentalist Bryan’s appeal was not his faith, but his support of unlimited coinage of silver. Utah and other “silver states,” such as Nevada, went big for the Democrats. However, four years later incumbent McKinley nosed out Bryan in Utah with 50.5 percent of the vote. A better economy helped the Republicans.

In 1916, Utah supported incumbent President Woodrow Wilson over Republican Charles Evans Hughes by an easy 20-point margin. However, beginning in 1920 Utah voted Republican for three state presidential elections.

Democrats longest dominance in Utah presidential politics began in 1932 with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (below) over incumbent Herbert Hoover. The still young Great Depression made Republicans as toxic in Utah as the party was in many other parts of the nation. In fact, 1932 also saw the re-election loss in Utah of famed Republican U.S. Sen.  Reed Smoot. The longtime incumbent Smoot, who was an apostle in the Mormon Church, lost badly to Democratic challenger Elbert Thomas.

Roosevelt would carry Utah in all four of his presidential elections. As an incumbent, Roosevelt’s support never sunk below 60 percent of Utah voters. To provide an idea of Utah Democratic Party dominace during the Roosevelt era, the online Utah History Encyclopedia reports that in the Utah Legislature, there were 45 Democrats and 15 Republicans in the House, and 18 Democrats and 5 Republicans in the Senate.

That was likely the peak of Democrats’ success in Utah but the party continued its presidential success in 1948 with a narrow win by Harry S. Truman over Thomas Dewey. However, the next three presidential elections saw GOP wins in Utah by victor Dwight D. Eisenhower and 1960 loser Richard Nixon.

As mentioned, 1964 was the last presidential win by a Democrat in Utah. President Johnson’s landslide over Republican Barry Goldwater — who at the time was considered an extremist — was echoed in Utah, where Johnson carried almost 55 percent of the vote, or 6 points fewer than his national tally.

The next election started the long slide for Utah Democrats. Nixon swamped Democrat nominee Hubert H. Humphrey and Democrats in the state Legislature lost their majority status. Things have only gotten worse in the last four decades. Even in years where Democrats have won, including 2008, the Democratic Party candidate has stayed mired in the low to mid 30s support.

The issues of the mid 1960s to the early to mid 1970s — the peace movement, gay rights, abortion, the Vietnam War, the Equal Rights Amendment, other women’s rights issues, affirmative action, welfare — probably played a huge role in moving Mormons to the Republican Party. Whereas Utah Mormons had coalesced behind Democratic Party principles of ending the Depression, fighting a World War and providing security for working families, the post-1964 social, secular and extreme liberal shift in focus moved them away permanently.

Abortion, for example, is an issue wedded to the Democratic Party in Utah. No matter how that may frustrate Utah Democrats, it is nevertheless a reality.

Many Democrats compare the recently passed health care reform law to previous Democratic initiatives such as Social Security and Medicare.

It will be interesting to see if these accomplishments by President Obama move some Utah voters back to the party of FDR. Right now, I’d bet against that happening.

The Web sites Utah.media.edu (Allen Kent Powell’s article “Elections in the State of Utah) and uselectionatlas.org were among sources for this article.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published long ago in StandardBlogs

Mormon cinema has evolved into bigger-budgeted, better-produced Sunday School films

I just saw “Ephraim’s Journey,” which is essentially another take on — with a different perspective — of “17 Miracles,” which details the sufferings of one ill-fated handcart company that traveled to Utah; “Ephraim’s Rescue” deals mainly with the other handcart company’s suffering. The movies are very religious, with oft-repeated legends of miraculous healing, a visit by one of the Three Nephites, and the raising of the dead being treated as fact by director T.C. Christensen.

Christensen, who is the new main director of Mormon cinema, is talented. The cinematography, pacing and action moves the film forward. There are moments of mild humor, which humanizes the characters. Although you don’t realize this while watching, virtually all the characters in “Ephraim’s Rescue” look like members of your own LDS ward, or the crowds milling through a BYU football game. (It reminds me of a recent pundit, relating a visit to a Mormon ward, who remarked that the LDS pictures of Jesus Christ remind him of how Jesus was depicted in the 1950s.)

Although I tend toward skepticism on miracles, as an active Mormon, I’ll give “Ephraim’s Rescue” a thumbs up. It does what it seeks to do — raises the testimonies of many of the faithful. It’s moving to see an historical overview of the sufferings of the handcart companies and a review of the desperate efforts to rescue the stranded handcart pioneers. However, let’s be honest, the film is a slick, better-produced reproduction of the filmstrip LDS history movies we’ve seen in Mormon primary and Sunday schools.

In fact, T.C. Christensen’s handcart tragedy films remind me of “The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt,” the martyred Mormon apostle. I love that book and have read it at least a dozen times. It’s full of early Mormon history miracles. In one section, LDS Church member Philo Dibble, left for dead by a bullet wound, is healed instantly. In another anecdote, Parley P. Pratt heals a child of Mr. Wandle Mace, who was in the last stages of brain fever. These are just two of many anecdotes. In “Ephraim’s Rescue,” the title character raises the dead twice and heals many of the sick. In one scene, Ephraim heals the frostbitten-destroyed feet of a major character so effectively that the healed man dances a Jig, lifting the spirits of the handcart company survivors. (This may sound silly in my blog, but you have to see the film.)

This is where Mormon cinema has evolved over the past 13 years. We’ve gone from the gritty missionary drama of Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army” (scenes include a black man mocking a black missionary and an apostate elder leaving a believing elder speechless) to the “correlation-approved” sanitized biographical films of Emma Smith and Joseph Smith, as well as Christensen’s Sunday School historical dramas.

The baker’s dozen years of Mormon cinema’s evolution was dictated chiefly by economics. The vast majority of films released to theaters did not make money. Dutcher’s two follow-ups, “Brigham City,” and “States of Grace,” (desperately pitched as “God’s Army 2″ in Utah) did not make money, although both were excellent films — even better than “God’s Army” — which challenged LDS beliefs and assumptions by deconstructing the doctrine through various situations. In “States of Grace,” there is a powerful analogy to the “burying of weapons” story from the Book of Mormon.

After the gritty era of Mormon cinema, the genre moved mostly toward comedies that riffed off Mormon culture. There was “Singles Ward,” “Church Ball,” “Mobsters and Mormons,” “The RM,” The Home Teachers” and so on. There was also an attempt to make LDS romance films, such as “Charlie” and “Baptists At Our Barbecue,” (both based on books and BTW, “Baptists …” directed by Christian Vuissa, is a great film) and a slew of romantic LDS-themed comedies, including riffs on “Beauty and the Beast” and even “Pride and Prejudice.” There were more serious LDS mission-related films, including “The Best Two Years” and “The Errand of Angels.”

It bears mentioning that there were efforts to produce bigger-budgeted LDS-themed films. “Book of Mormon Movie,” “Passage to Zarahemla,” and three movies from the popular LDS fiction series, “The Work and the Glory” were produced. They just didn’t make money. In fact, the “Work and the Glory” films, financed by the late Larry H. Miller, have likely lost more than $10 million, and that may be a conservative estimate. (In the post-Dutcher era, the most critically acclaimed films may have been the “Saints and Soldiers” World War II-era films, released in 2003 and 2012.)

By 2010 most independent films produced for Mormon audiences were being released directly to DVD with a maybe a token theatrical release in Utah. In 2011, my family saw “Joseph Smith: Plates of Gold,” in a theater but it was shown in a DVD format! (A good site to keep up on Mormon-themed films is http://www.ldsfilm.com/)

Mormon cinema that makes it to theater screens has evolved to meet the needs of its chief audience, active Mormons. That need is faith repetition, or perhaps more optimistically called faith-promoting. As mentioned, I enjoy the films, but I miss the challenges to our assumptions in the earlier films, in which characters who deeply believed in Mormonism sometimes succumbed to the temptations of passion, loneliness, and rage. Even the silly films, “Singles Ward, ” “Home Teachers” or “Church Ball,” have more honesty. They riff on the Mormon culture, which is a safe but tempting target. The only “riffs” in “Ephraim’s Rescue” are a couple of mild jokes on polygamy.

The main events of Mormon-themed cinema have moved into the bowels of the church. It will be interesting to see if there is a serious effort to move part of the genre back into independence.

-- Doug Gibson

-- First published in 2013 at StandardBlogs

Dead on the Corridor blends Mormonism with life along I-15

Review by Doug Gibson

In Dead on the Corridor (Anderson Publishing, 2017), a collection of short stories from Utah writer James Elliott, a deeply troubled woman, barely alive, enters a welfare office in St. George, Utah. In desperate need of help, she is instead ushered out by a worker whose compassion matches cartoon bureaucrats Selma and Patty Bouvier of "The Simpsons."

In blistering heat, the woman returns to a tent outside the city to die. It's an agonizing, lonely death. But she finds peace in her final moments, clutching a small version of the Christus Consolator statue, a saved, treasured relic from her earlier life as an student in Mormon seminary.

That story, with Elliott's dispassionate prose, creates passion for the reader. This particular story has stuck with me, and will for a long time. With other stories in the collection, located in the backdrop of the harsh but beautiful of Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Utah, tales of the least among us, the people who are forced to be survivors, are related.

Besides "The Worth of Souls," which is the name of the above-mentioned story, other tales involve a young boy, fated to die a painful death accidental death in the desert, reunited with a young, lost murder victim. While his parents live the slow agony of losing a child, the boy makes a friend. Another story, told partially in flashback, recounts an elderly, beloved woman, a sort of "mother" to a ward, relate to her bishop how she killed her fanatical, sadistic husband decades ago.

Another story with a particular punch to this reviewer involves two individuals trying their hardest to survive. One is a former missionary with a big testimony of his faith and severe mental problems. The other is a young woman with a child trying to atone for a past and create a happier life for her small family. Their lives will cross tragically and the survivor will make a hard, callous decision that nevertheless is reasonable given the individual's circumstances.

Elliott has a lot of talent, and Dead on the Corridor provides a lot for readers to think about as they move through the short stories. Is everyone our brother and sister? Does having a job, financial comforts, control over our mental faculties, and a comfortable place to sleep every night allow us the right to feel superior over those who are struggling to attain those securities?

Dead on the Corridor merits a lot of readers. Elliott, besides the questions his stories offer us, passes the most important test. He spins a good tale. After you read these stories, do the author a favor and leave a review on Amazon.