Utah Demos hoping to hook LDS

The Utah Democratic Party will try to go directly after LDS voters — an effort that starts now but may take years to bear fruit, says party Chairman Wayne Holland .

One facet of the Democrats' new Common Values campaign is aimed at LDS voters who may have voted Republican in the past but are willing to look at Utah Democratic candidates.

Holland said the party has conducted 16 focus groups — put together by Democratic Sen. Pat Jones and Utah Policy Research — both inside Utah and in locales just over Utah's borders with surrounding states that have significant LDS populations.

"We've looked at the LDS voter in the (Mountain) West," Holland said Tuesday. "More and more, Democratic values — like stewardship of the land, a healthy environment, family health care, a safer community — are also values of many LDS people."

With some work and a public campaign, hopefully some LDS voters can see that Utah Democratic candidates represent their views, said Holland. "Over 70 percent of our party's candidates belong to the LDS Church. We are part of their communities, part of their lives."

Todd Weiler, GOP vice chairman, said the Utah Republican Party is not tailoring its message to any religious group. "We espouse (political) principles of pro-family, among others, that are not aimed at any one group." Weiler noted that there are active members of both parties who also are active in any number of religious faiths.

Poll after poll has shown over the years that a big bloc of Republican voters are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In his latest poll for the Deseret News and TV station, Dan Jones & Associates found that 59 percent of registered voters who said they are LDS also said they consider themselves Republicans. Eighteen percent of LDS voters said they are independents. So Utah Democrats have a large field in their effort to sway LDS Utahns to consider Democratic candidates.

Church officials take no stands on individual political parties or candidates, annually issuing statements encouraging all church members, inside and outside of Utah, to participate in the political process.

The church does, on occasion, take a stand on what leaders consider a "moral" issue before the public. And this year church leaders have encouraged church members living in California to vote for a proposition that would ban gay marriage.

Holland said that stand may harm the Utah Democratic Party's Common Values program a bit. But that vote will pass, he added, and "by far most Utah Democratic candidates share the same traditional marriage belief (as LDS Utahns), and I don't think that matter in California will be an issue here."