80% of Utahns in poll favor liquor reforms lawmakers OK'd

An astrological event or just good, hard political work?

"Let's say the stars were aligned on this issue," Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Friday when told of a new Deseret News/KSL-TV poll that shows 80 percent of Utahns approve of alcohol reforms made by the 2009 Legislature.

"Wow, I'm glad to hear that," said Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper, who pushed Huntsman's private club fee repeal bill and worked hard on various compromises that brought it and other liquor law reforms to consensus.

An astounding 49 percent "strongly" approve and another 31 percent "somewhat" approve of doing away with private club membership fees, increasing DUI penalties and other liquor measures passed in the annual general session, a new poll conducted by Dan Jones & Associates shows.

Jones found that only 13 percent of adults surveyed disapprove of adopting what amounts to liquor-by-the-drink — something Utahns haven't seen in generations.

"This is an issue whose time had come," said Huntsman, who decided last year to push doing away with club membership, a subject he originally raised after he was first elected in 2004.

Huntsman won a record-setting re-election victory in November. And since he has already said he won't run for re-election again, many wondered if he would take advantage of his huge political capital to push new, and perhaps controversial, programs over the next four years, like liquor-by-the-drink.

But few would have guessed that Huntsman's efforts would have paid off so quickly, and with such a large public approval rating.

"Citizens are usually ahead of politicians" on many issues, said Huntsman. "This is a common-sense state, and people support common-sense solutions" like alcohol reform.

Considering that 80 percent of legislators are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, few dispute that if church leaders had opposed the liquor reforms, they wouldn't have passed the Legislature.

Officially, LDS Church leaders didn't oppose the half-dozen liquor bills that made up the package. Church leaders "were a stakeholder" in the process, said Huntsman.

Church leaders said they were, as they have been in the past, concerned that any liquor law changes didn't encourage underage drinking, DUI or overconsumption of alcohol.

Church teachings advocate abstention from alcohol and tobacco. Church leaders consider those moral issues and have spoken out on them in the past.