Mormons and the Presidency

June 27, 1844: Joseph Smith is killed while running for President

Audio Podcast: Greg Guma on Mormon History and the Presidency
Mormons, the Presidency and the Bilderberg Way by Ronin Wolfe

Of the major religions – other than Muslim – people in the US are least comfortable with the prospect of a Mormon president, says a new Pew Research Center study. Even evangelical Christians, a core constituency for many a Republican hopeful, tend to see the Church of Jesus of Latter-Day Saints as a secretive, possibly heretical cult. Thus, if Mitt Romney does become the GOP’s nominee in 2012, this could be a tougher obstacle than his association with health care reform or his oft-discussed absence of authenticity.

On the other hand, there are a number of Mormon political heavy-weights, notably US Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, Jon Huntsman – one of Romney’s rivals for the nomination, and five other senators, including both from Utah, Michael S. Lee and Orrin Hatch, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Tom Udall of New Mexico, and Dean Heller, who replaced John Ensign to join Reid in representing Nevada.

Romney’s ties to the Church are among the deepest. A fifth-generation Mormon whose ancestors were involved from the mid-1850s, he is a former lay bishop of Massachusetts' temple. But he isn’t the first Mormon to seek the presidency. That honor goes to founder Joseph Smith, a Vermonter by birth who struck out for the west in revival days.

The enthusiasm of 19^th century revival movements was contagious. Part of an evangelical surge known as the Second Great Awakening, many centered on Christian prophecies of impending doom. The prophecies faded but the righteous attitude and enthusiasm gave energy to diverse movements, from abolition to temperance and opposition to Masonic influence.

Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont on December 23, 1805 but moved to New York before founding the Church in 1831. He began by announcing that an angel had given him a book of golden plates inscribed with a religious history of ancient peoples. Once “translated” by Smith their contents became The Book of Mormon.

Believers flocked to the new religion, but hostile neighbors forced Smith and his followers to keep moving, first to Ohio and then Missouri and Illinois. In Missouri the tensions broke into outright war. Hostile Missourians thought the Mormons were planning an insurrection and the governor said they should be "exterminated” or driven out. Smith next led them to Illinois, where they built a town on some Mississippi River swampland. There Smith became the mayor of a town he named Nauvoo and commanded an impressive militia.

He announced for President as candidate of the National Reform Party in early 1844. It was a long shot, since former President Andrew Jackson was engineering the nomination of Tennessee farmer, lawyer and political “dark horse” James Polk. The Whigs were backing Henry Clay, and the big issue was expansion – specifically the takeover of Texas and Oregon.

Smith’s party had emerged from the National Reform Association, a coalition of unionists, locofocos (a radical Democratic faction combining unionists and libertarians) and the Workingman’s Party, united in their concern about depression and “social degradation of the laborer.” What especially attracted Smith, however, was the Party’s policy focus – homesteading rights. National Reformers wanted legislation allowing workers and others to acquire public lands free of charge, state laws exempting farm land from seizure to collect debts, and restrictions on ownership of large swathes by the wealthy. Their slogan was “Vote the Land Free.”

Unfortunately, like many candidates before and since, Smith had some personal baggage. In his case it came in the form of romantic overtures he had made to the wife of a convert, William Law, a Canadian who quit the Church and publicly attacked the Mormon practice of polygamy in a newsletter. “We are earnestly seeking to explode the vicious principles of Joseph Smith, and those who practice the same abominations and whoredoms,” wrote Law. Accompanied by the Nauvoo city marshal, Smith responded by destroying his accuser’s printing press. The governor charged him with inciting a riot and had him jailed.

On June 27, 1844, while Smith was drinking wine with his brother and some friends in a spacious cell in Carthage, Illinois, a mob surrounded the building. The prophet had a gun, a six shot “pepper-box” pistol, but a gang with blackened faces charged into his cell and opened fire, immediately killing his brother and the others. Smith almost escaped out the window. With shots coming at him from behind and below he plummeted two stories to the ground and then died.

Five men were tried for his murder. All were acquitted. But the Mormon church soon recovered when a new prophet emerged – a 43-year-old former housepainter and carpenter from Vermont named Brigham Young.

Thirty-seven years after Smith’s fateful race Chester Arthur succeeded where he had fallen short, becoming the first president from Vermont upon the assassination of President James Garfield. But Arthur was the Episcopalian son of a Baptist minister, and public attitudes had turned less tolerant in the intervening years. In his first Annual Message to Congress on December 6, 1881, Arthur called Mormon polygamy an “odious crime” and a “barbarous system,” urging legislation to stop its spread. By then Mormons were well established in Utah, Idaho, Arizona and other Western Territories. Attacks on polygamy peppered Arthur’s speeches throughout his presidency.

More than a century later, the Pew Research Center has concluded that 25 percent of American would be less likely to vote for a Mormon presidential candidate. The responses from white evangelicals are even less encouraging. More than a third reacted negatively to the idea of a Mormon in the White House. Among those, 63 percent said there is no way they will vote for Romney. University of Akron political scientist John Green claims that distrust among Christian evangelicals contributed to his 2008 loss in the Iowa caucuses.

During Romney’s 2008 presidential run he tried to defuse the issue and dispel doubts with a speech, a strategy used with success by John F. Kennedy when he spoke publicly about Catholicism and politics during his presidential run. But Romney's "Faith in America" talk in Texas mentioned his Mormon faith just once, raising questions about whether he was as comfortable with the issue as he suggested.

This time, he moved to preempt attacks by announcing on CNN that he is “not a spokesman” for the Church. Whether it will work remains to be seen.

This article is the third in a series adapted from The Vermont Way, a new study by Greg Guma to be released in 2012.

Voting Equality and the Hoff Effect

May 14, 1965: “One-Man One-Vote” reapportions legislative power

For Phil Hoff, one of Vermont’s breakthrough governors in the 20^th century, the main job of an elected leader is to push the envelope of change. “You have to stand up for things,” he once told me, “and if that results in you being defeated, it’s a risk you take.”

Hoff was speaking from experience, the sweet and the bitter. After three terms as governor in the tumultuous 1960s, he was trounced in a 1970 run for the US Senate by incumbent Republican Winston Prouty. The main reason, as he saw it, was his civil rights activism, particularly sponsorship of the Vermont-New York Youth Project, which brought Black teenagers up from New York to work and play with White Vermonters. “It was enormously successful for the participants,” he said. “But it wasn’t well understood, and all the latent racism began to emerge. There’s no question it defeated me in the Senate race.”

Civil rights activism wasn’t the only thing that made Hoff’s years as governor special. To start, he was the first Democrat elected in a century – after just one term in the House. It was rough going at first. Facing an overwhelmingly Republican legislature, he thought there was little chance he would be re-elected. “So, why not damn the torpedoes, which I did,” he said. “They (voters) wanted us to shake up the establishment.”

The Democratic Party had been gaining strength since 1952, when Burlington City Attorney Robert Larrow ran for governor. His 39 percent showing against an incumbent demonstrated the potential to attract moderate Republicans and win not only in urban areas but statewide. Frank Branon, a Franklin County senator, built on that base in subsequent elections.

The 1958 race between Bernard Leddy and Republican Robert Stafford was close enough for a recount, while William Meyer, a forester who ran a grassroots campaign, became the first Democratic Congressman in a century. But Meyer was soon tarred as a “commie lover” for supporting non-intervention in the affairs of China and defeated after a single term by Stafford, who spent the next two decades in the House and Senate.

Hoff was part of a bipartisan group of legislators known as the “young turks,” an alliance that included Republican Franklin Billings, a Rockefeller-connected lawyer from Woodstock, and Ernest Gibson III, son of a former governor, grandson of a Senator. Hoff claimed that the state had been damaged by a century of one-party rule. The endorsement of Republicans like A. Luke Crispe, a former Gibson law partner from Brattleboro, and T. Garry Buckley helped him to victory. They and other dissident Republicans had joined with Democrats to form the Vermont Independent Party, a strategy for wooing voters away from F. Ray Keyser, the Republican incumbent.

Larrow, who ran for attorney general in 1962, was pushing for redistricting of Burlington and, more crucially, reapportionment of the state legislature based on population. Since the founding of Vermont representation in its legislature had been based on the principle of one town-one vote; in other words, a town with only a thousand residents had the same legislative weight as a growing city.

Basing legislative seats in the House of Representatives on population instead would clearly increase representation from urban, Democratic communities like Burlington and Brattleboro. At this point Democrats were winning about 40 percent of the popular vote statewide but had only 20 percent of the legislative seats.

On January 23, 1963, Crispe filed a lawsuit arguing that representation on the basis of towns and counties violated the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment to the US Constitution. When it reached US District Court the name on the lawsuit was renegade Republican Garry Buckley. One problem the reformers had was the solidly GOP legislature. But they had a friend who was perfect for the job of House Speaker. Just as Crispe filed the reapportionment lawsuit in Brattleboro, Republican Franklin Billings was elected House Speaker with every Democratic vote.

The US Supreme Court eventually agreed with the arguments of Larrow, Crispe and Buckley and ordered the state legislature to make the change. The transition officially began on May 14, 1965 when the House of Representatives voted to reduce its size from 245 to 150 seats and elect each member based on population rather than geography. Traditionalists warned that small towns would no longer have much influence on the state’s direction.

In 1966, Hoff appointed Larrow and Billings to the Superior Court. In the 1970s another Democratic Governor, Thomas Salmon, elevated both to the state Supreme Court. Buckley eventually became Lieutenant Governor.

During Hoff’s three terms, the nature and scope of state government dramatically changed. Those years brought a major expansion of the state college system, the state’s takeover of welfare, urban renewal projects, the first rehabilitation programs at Vermont prisons, and reluctant acceptance that a regional approach to planning was needed. As Joe Sherman put it in Fast Lane on a Dirt Road, “Vermonters seemed willing, at least for a while, to go with the irresistible tug of the American century. They were just climbing on board 60 years late.”

Hoff also pushed for a statewide development plan. “It probably wasn’t very good,” he admitted later, “but no one had ever done it before.” Acknowledging “uncontrolled” growth, he argued that dependence on local tax revenues to support schools was one of the main culprits.

Historic moments like the one Hoff seized are few and far between, at least he thought so. “But I also like to believe that we’re closer to one now than a lot of people think.”

This is the second in a series of excerpts from The Vermont Way: Restless Spirits and Popular Movements, a new study of the state by Greg Guma that will be published in 2012.

The Path to Marriage Equality

April 7, 2009: Vermont legalizes same-sex marriage

The idea that Vermont is exceptional has long influenced its self-image. The landscape is certainly extraordinary and, in historical terms, there is some basis for the claim. After all, it was an Independent Republic for almost 15 years and the first state to ban slavery.

Once anti-slavery activism opened the door for the Republican Party, Vermont stayed solidly Republican for a century. Its population was small and predominantly white, but its political system has featured the direct democracy of Town Meeting, short terms for officials, strong environmental laws, and, as of April 2009, same-sex marriage.

Vermont’s legislature was the first in the nation to legalize gay marriage, another in a series of breaks with conventional political thinking that contribute to the state’s iconoclastic brand. Here is a brief look at how it happened, and the role played by Howard Dean.

Although there was debate for years, the first legal turning point came on December 10, 1999, when the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Vermont that gay couples had a right to the same benefits provided to straight couples and told the legislature to come up with the appropriate implementation.

At the time same-gender couples could not be legally married anywhere in the US. Some states had passed laws forbidding or declining to recognize such marriages. The federal government had enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which said states need not recognize same-sex unions from other places.

Sensing a political landmine, Governor Dean initially expressed some discomfort with gay marriage. But the legislature moved forward, making Vermont the first state to legalize civil unions. Dean signed the bill, but without a public ceremony. He was hoping to cool down a tense atmosphere. It didn’t work. Gay rights activists felt cheated and an anti-gay backlash almost cost him re-election in 2000.

Depending on the poll, at that point Vermonters were either equally divided on the issue, or opposed to same-sex marriage by about two-to-one. However, the surveys also showed that many people had open minds. Vermont had been the first state to allow both adults in same-gender couples to be legally recognized as parents. Still, endorsing the right to marry was politically risky.

In retrospect, Dean insisted that he was committed to equality for all. “That’s why I knew I had to work for civil unions,” he wrote in his 2003 memoir, released in the midst of a campaign for president. “I never viewed the bill as a gay rights issue. I signed it out of a commitment to human rights, and because every single American has the same right to equality and justice under the law that I have.”

Whatever the reasons Dean benefited in the long run: Wealthy gay supporters in the Fire Island beach community became early and generous contributors to his presidential campaign. By the time civil unions became state law in 2000, he was already considering a run. But he passed that year, and waited until the end of his final term as governor to begin building an organization.

Early on, Dean tapped into an Internet-based strategy, using “meetups” to organize supporters across the country. He also discovered a new way to raise money. By June 30, 2003, he had $8 million, beating his rivals and advancing to the top candidate tier. By August he was the hottest political story in the country, the wild card of the upcoming presidential race.

Back in Vermont, people were perplexed. This sounded like a different Howard Dean, no longer the moderate who had frustrated progressives and equivocated on gay marriage. Now he was, as Jonathan Alter wrote in a cover story for Newsweek, “the fire-breathing neopopulist” calling on liberals to “Take your country back.”

Groups like the Club for Growth had something else in mind. In an ad released by the conservative group shortly before the crucial Iowa caucuses, two actors, playing an elderly couple, were asked to describe the threat looming over the country. Responding to the camera, the “husband” said, “Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times reading…” Then the “wife” jumped in with, “body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.” Gay marriage wasn’t mentioned but lingered between the lines.

It was strong stuff, a blend of dark comedy and cultural hate speech, so effective that the Club didn’t have to pay much for airtime. News networks were more than willing to provide free play, for this and other bad press.

In the end, Dean’s incandescent sprint became a cautionary tale. By winning the so-called “invisible primary” – the fundraising and organization race before votes were cast – he looked like a “frontrunner” too early. His support turned out to be demographically thin and easy to undermine. In early 2004 he went from “hot” to “not” in a month.

Back in Vermont, Republican James Douglas replaced Dean as governor. A moderate and pragmatic bureaucrat, Douglas did what he could to stop what began to look inevitable without picking a fight. On April 7, 2009, over his veto, the Vermont legislature became the nation’s first to allow marriage for same-sex couples. There was no big backlash and a study forecasted that it would boost the state’s economy by more than $30 million over three years, create 700 jobs and generate $3.3 million in fees and taxes.

For several decades Vermont has been known for independent thinking. But the maverick spirit actually dates to the American Revolution, as settlers broke free of British rule and exploitation by land speculators. It continued with the jailhouse re-election of Congressman Matthew Lyon – a critic of President John Adams – in defiance of the Alien and Sedition Acts, resistance to the War of 1812, rejection of Masonic secrecy, and defeat of a Green Mountain Parkway during the New Deal. The pattern reflects a libertarian streak that has frequently resisted the pull of modern liberalism.

Despite geographical isolation, early Vermonters also expressed a belief in equality and tolerance that made it fertile ground for revival-era experiments and leadership in the fight to end slavery. Although the state was sometimes slow to respond, as with extending voting rights to women, its traditional values have often re-asserted themselves – in the expansion of social services in the 1940s, assimilation of newcomers in the late 1960s and, two years ago, the landmark decision to make same-sex marriage state law.

This is the first in a series of excerpts from The Vermont Way, a new study of the state by Greg Guma that will be released in 2012. Check this site for future previews.