Long before Hatch became a Senate institution, there was Utah’s Sen. Smoot

(This post was first published at StandardNET in 2010.)

There’s a lot of talk about Sen. Orrin Hatch, who has served 34-plus years in the Senate and intends to go for 42 year in 2012, and former Gov. Mitt Romney, who gets the question of who will he serve if elected president? The Mormon Church or the U.S. nation? What’s interesting is, long ago, Utah Sen. Reed Smoot (seen above) faced some of these questions.


Smoot, who was in the Senate for 30 years, was handpicked, or more or less called to the job, by the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 Apostles of the LDS Church. In fact, the monogamous Smoot was not only a Mormon, he was a member of the 12 Apostles. It’s unthinkable today that an LDS apostle would be elected to that high of an office, let alone sent there by the Brethren. However, there is apostle Ezra Taft Benson becoming President Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture in the 1950s.

Smoot had to fight for years to be accepted into the Senate. It wasn’t so much for his “church calling” as it was to general suspicion about the Mormon Church’s commitment to the federal government and of course, the big issue, polygamy. He won that battle, though, and like Hatch, became a respected member of the U.S Senate. His trademark achievement was the Smoot-Hawley tariff act and Smoot eventually became chairman of the committee on finance.

In the October, 1960 issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly, Dr. Milton R. Merrill, then vice president of Utah State University, praised Smoot, who died in 1941. Despite Smoot’s status as apostle, Merrill says that he regarded himself as a Republican on a mission for the church. But it was more of a political mission, and Smoot loved his job as much as Hatch loves his today. Some positions of Smoot’s: He opposed prohibition; helped get Warren Harding nominated in a smoke-filled room; worked to get non-Mormons in Utah into the Republican Party; and he opposed the League of Nations.

Smoot would have stepped down if LDS Church Presidents Joseph F. Smith and Heber J. Grant had asked him to, but they didn’t. In fact, according to Merrill, the church leaders never requested Smoot vote a certain way. However, just as Hatch may face closure from a nation tired of economic recessions, Smoot’s tenure was prematurely ended in the 1932 Depression-era election, where he was upset by Democratic challenger Elbert D. Thomas. 

Smoot retired to finish his life as an apostle and died in 1941 at age 79. He is buried in Provo.

-- Doug Gibson