Romney's campaign isn't catching fire in Nauvoo

NAUVOO, Ill. — Mitt Romney's campaign for president hasn't exactly caught fire in the little river town that many Mormons consider a touchstone for their religion.

The "Mitt Rocks" T-shirts are selling pretty well at the Art Needlework Shop, but they can't compete with the "I Like Mormon Boys" shirts. Romney yard signs are practically nonexistent. Neighbors are chatting about sports and hunting, not Republican politics.

Durell Nelson is pleased to have a fellow church member running for president, but he hasn't decided whether to vote for Romney and he didn't attend when Romney held a rally just across the river in Iowa.

Nelson said some of his neighbors, like voters across the country, have doubts about Romney.

"I think the biggest fear among people I know is that church leadership would have a heavy sway in his life," said Nelson, 57, a landscape architect at LDS historic sites. "That's a misconception."

It's one Romney tackled head-on on Thursday. Losing ground as Iowa's leadoff caucuses approach, his speech in Texas described the American values all faiths share, including seeing liberty as "a gift of God, not an indulgence of government."

Nauvoo — it's pronounced nah-VOO — sits on the Mississippi River just across from the southeast corner of Iowa. A five-story white limestone building topped with a golden statue dominates the town — a LDS temple matching the one that church leaders built here more than 160 years ago.

The town has fewer than 1,100 permanent residents, about one-third of whom are LDS. But tens of thousands of Mormons visit Nauvoo each year to see the temple and the spot a few miles away where church founder Joseph Smith was murdered by an anti-Mormon mob.

That was in 1844. Violent clashes continued, and in early 1846 thousands of Mormons fled Nauvoo and began the trip to Salt Lake City, where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now based.

Residents say some ill-will remains today, magnified by the normal friction in a small town dealing with waves of tourists. There's even a Nauvoo Christian Visitors Center dedicated to telling people that members of the LDS Church are not true Christians and are controlled almost totally by church officials.

"There's some feelings against the Mormons here," acknowledged Lee Ourth, a member of the City Council. "Some say, 'We ran them out once, we can do it again."'

"Now, that's not from our brightest residents," he added quickly.