No protests expected during Reid's BYU visit

PROVO — Brigham Young University's reputation as a conservative bastion was relatively new when Democratic presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy visited campus in 1968, two months before his assassination.

The 15,000 people who packed the Smith Fieldhouse certainly weren't put off by their liberal guest. One student said the anticipation made it seem like the crowd was waiting for a rock star.

At the start of his speech, Kennedy referred to BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, a stridently conservative Republican who once took a leave of absence to run as a GOP candidate himself.

"I had a very nice conversation with Dr. Wilkinson," Kennedy said, then paused for laughter. "And I promised him that all Democrats would be off the campus by sundown."

Similar self-deprecation probably would be well-received when U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., speaks today at BYU, where an apparently welcoming, though probably smaller, audience is expected at a University Forum in the Marriott Center at 11 a.m.

That Reid is a Democrat and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presents a duality considered unusual at BYU and in Utah County, where most vote Republican and many associate the church's values with the Republican Party — despite numerous statements by the church that it is politically neutral and values both political parties.

There is irony, then, in the fact Reid is the first Mormon to lead his party in Congress and therefore is the highest-ranking Mormon in American political history.

That fact, and Reid's place in the tumult that surrounded Vice President Cheney's controversial visit to BYU six months ago, raised some expectations for fireworks prior to Reid's visit.

Reid's role as one of the Democratic Party's chief critics of the Bush administration is also considered polarizing by many at BYU and in Utah, where support for the president remains among the strongest in the nation.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff furnished a good example of that in April, when he spoke at a rally supporting Cheney the day the vice president spoke at BYU's graduation. Reid had just declared that the United States was losing the war in Iraq. Shurtleff responded by dubbing Reid "Hezbollah Harry."

Reid has criticized Bush on other issues, as well. Last week, he used the word "heartless" to describe Bush's veto of a bill to increase funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program.