LDS in politics an uphill battle for 164 years

Mitt Romney's strategies in dealing with the "Mormon question" had their first test in the Iowa caucuses with mixed results as rival Mike Huckabee harvested most of the support from evangelical Christians in an evangelical state.

But the "Mormon question" is nothing new for LDS presidential candidates, who have wrestled with it for 164 years. Their Mormonism was a campaign issue to varying degrees in the elections of 1844, 1968, 1976, 1992 and 2000. LDS candidates in each of those years chose very different methods to address concerns about their religion, with none bringing much success.

On one hand, Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, literally sent missionaries to campaign for him nationwide in 1844. Quite differently, Mo Udall chose to distance himself in 1976 from LDS policies that then banned blacks from the priesthood.

Somewhere between those extremes, George Romney — Mitt Romney's father — had to argue in 1968 that being a Mormon did not make him racist (because of its policy then on blacks and the priesthood). Orrin Hatch gave his own "JFK-style" speech to evangelicals in 2000.

And which LDS candidate actually received the most presidential votes in a general election?

It appears to have been Populist Party candidate Bo Gritz in 1992 (because most other LDS candidates have disappeared in primary election seasons). He still received less than 1 percent of the vote, showing how very short LDS candidates have fallen in their quest for the presidency.

So Mitt Romney's decision this year to give a speech to address head-on concerns about his faith merely adds another chapter to a long-running quandary for LDS politicians trying, essentially, to show America that they are not too weird to be president.

Here is a look at those past campaigns:

• Joseph Smith, 1844. Smith was not only the first Mormon presidential candidate, he was the first Mormon. He taught that Jesus Christ restored his church to the earth through Smith as a prophet. The church was heavily persecuted in Smith's time and driven by mobs from state to state on the then-western frontier.

Historian Richard Poll wrote an academic paper about Smith's 1844 campaign that said Smith likely developed the idea to run after church leaders wrote to other likely candidates inquiring how they might help Mormons if elected.