As for insider tactics, the Church’s organizational strength enables it to hire full-time government relations personnel who engage in traditional insider lobbying; on issues Church leadership cares about, its lobbyists—jokingly called the “home teachers” within the capitol— can approach legislators directly. One former legislator (and former Mormon), Carl Wimmer, accuses the Church of using lobbying tactics so aggressive they border on “political bullying”: “It killed me to know that this time the ‘bully’ was my own [former] church.” Though conceding that “they rarely want things badly enough to engage openly,” Wimmer claims, “If the Church wants something in Utah politics, they get it.” Another former legislator, Chris Herrod, agrees, though in gentler language, revealing that Church lobbyists would state that their instructions came “directly from the top,” or from “the brethren,” to leverage ecclesiastical authority.

Other legislators push against Wimmer’s “bullying” narrative, arguing that LDS lobbyists have no more influence than other interests. Senator Curt Bramble has said, “I view the LDS Church in the political context as the same as any other interested observer that wants to make their position known.” His colleague, Senator Scott Jenkins, is more direct: “Never has this happened with me.” Former representative Stephen Sandstrom, who passed anti-immigration legislation opposed by the Church, claims LDS lobbyists “made very clear to me that they respected what I was doing as a representative and they wanted me to do what I felt was right.” Except Wimmer, who has disaffiliated from the LDS Church, all these legislators are Mormon.

Regardless of whether LDS lobbyists use tactics that are too heavy-handed, they clearly get results on those occasions when they choose to take a stance. For example, LDS lobbyists have consistently worked against any effort to relax Utah’s famously strict liquor laws; they have resisted sales of liquor-by-the-drink (Magleby 2006) and of alcoholic sweets, or “alcopops.”

As for outsider tactics, the Church can also call on its broad membership to agitate for specific policy changes. Most famously, Mormons responded vigorously to pleas from Church leadership to support California’s Proposition 8 in 2008 to prohibit same- sex marriage, “tipping the scale” toward passage. High-level LDS leaders have issued similar calls to oppose gambling (Campbell and Monson 2007), alcohol liberalization (Magleby 2006), the Equal Rights Amendment (Magleby 1992; Quinn 1997), and other policies (Campbell et al. 2014).

At times the Church combines these insider and outsider strategies. In 2011, as legislators considered punitive anti- immigration bills, the Church lobbied hard for a more compassionate, comprehensive approach. It supplemented this inside lobbying with public statements referencing specific bills. Those statements moved public opinion significantly, particularly among self- identified “very active” Mormons who also identify as “strong Republicans.” Prior to the Church’s statements, a poll asked Utahns to place their support for a particular anti- immigration bill on a 5- point scale. After the Church statements, the same people were polled again; “very active” Mormons who were also “strong Republicans” changed their answers by an average of 1.05 points away from enforcement and toward compassion, a tremendous change for a 5-point scale. When the Church’s favored immigration bill (HB116) eventually passed— a compassionate bill rather than an enforcement bill— Church leaders showed their approval by dispatching a high- level authority, the presiding bishop, to attend the governor’s bill signing.

More often than not, though, LDS leaders need not say anything at all—not publicly, and not through their lobbyists. In recent years around half of legislative Democrats and nearly all legislative Republicans have been Mormon; because the Legislature has been over 80 percent Republican, the net membership is around 90 percent LDS. Moreover many of these legislators have served as lay leaders of their local congregations, making them intimately familiar with official Church teachings. As a result LDS culture alone is sufficient to produce policy outcomes favorable to LDS interests. A study in the 1980s attributed this outcome to “anticipatory decision-making,” with faithful Mormons throughout state government trying to anticipate “how the church would react to a proposed new policy” (Hrebenar et al. 1987, 115).

This “anticipatory decision making,” wherein officials seek to apply Church principles even when they have not been approached directly, arises not only in the Utah Legislature but also among local officials. In 2010 researchers at Brigham Young University and the University of Utah partnered with the Utah League of Cities and Towns and the Utah Association of Counties to field the Utah Elected Officials Survey, a poll administered to hundreds of city and county officeholders. Though this study will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 9, it contained an experiment that bears discussion here. A few months before the survey was fielded, the LDS Church had issued a surprise November 2009 endorsement of a proposed Salt Lake City ordinance that would prohibit housing and employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. After Salt Lake City enacted the ordinance, several other local governments followed suit. In the Utah Elected Officials Survey, one- quarter of respondents were assigned to a control group that received this question: “One issue that some local governments have addressed is an ordinance protecting people against discrimination in housing and employment based on sexual orientation. Would you favor or oppose your local town or city council passing this kind of non- discrimination ordinance?”

Three treatment groups, each consisting of one- quarter of respondents, saw a few additional words added to this question. For the first treatment group, the question asked, “Would you favor or oppose your local town or city council passing this kind of non- discrimination ordinance, such as the one recently endorsed by the LDS Church?” (emphasis added). For the second treatment group, the treatment phrase was “such as the one recently passed by the Salt Lake City Council”; for the final treatment group, the phrase was “such as those recently passed by seven cities and counties in Utah.” Respondents in all groups then evaluated this nondiscrimination ordinance on a scale from 0 (strongly oppose) to 100 (strongly favor).

In the control group the average score was 54. In the latter two treatment groups (referencing Salt Lake City and other cities), this average did not move significantly— perhaps because these local officials had already heard that other cities had been adopting nondiscrimination laws, or perhaps because they did not care. But the LDS treatment language did have an effect, raising the average evaluation from 54 to 61. Surely the effect would have been larger if the LDS endorsement had not already been so well publicized; officeholders in the control group who were already aware of the LDS endorsement would have previously adjusted their views, after all. This significant finding shows how eager local officials are to apply their religious values to the policy realm.

Because officeholders engage in anticipatory decision making, LDS values influence policy even when the Church says nothing. Of the Church’s lobbying efforts, the ACLU of Utah’s director concedes, “They’re not keen on direct lobbying.” Another lobbyist, a non-LDS former Democratic legislator, calls the LDS Church “unreasonably cautious. . . . We never said, ‘Please don’t say anything,’ it was always, ‘Can’t you say more?’” The Catholic diocese’s full- time lobbyist, who works the legislature throughout each annual session, calls the LDS Church “determined not to interfere,” adding, “I don’t even know the name of their lobbyist” (all preceding quotes from Magleby 2006). To expand Wimmer’s words from earlier, “They rarely want things badly enough to engage openly. The church is very selective regarding the legislation they engage. . . . Because most of Utah’s legislators are LDS members, the majority of legislation already aligns with the LDS Church position without their influence.” Even as Wimmer accused Church lobbyists of using bullying tactics, he acknowledged that “during the three terms [six years] I served in the Utah House of Representatives, I was only approached twice by the LDS lobbyists for a vote.” The state’s most powerful interest, then, exerts influence more through cultural dominance than through direct lobbying or explicit public appeals.

. . . .

Perhaps Utah’s greatest deviation from the research literature’s expectations is the outsized role of the LDS Church; Olson (1965) to the contrary, the LDS Church enjoys the unusual combination of broad-based grassroots support and a strong hierarchical organization. Though the Church seldom lobbies for a specific bill or mobilizes its membership to oppose a specific policy, those actions it does pursue are unusually effective. Moreover this LDS dynamic has remained constant for decades; even thirty years ago a study of lobbying in Utah found the same general pattern as reported here, in which the LDS Church influences policy more through its cultural dominance (via “anticipatory decision- making”) than through direct appeals (Hrebenar et al. 1987). Otherwise, though, Utah legislators interact with constituents, organized interests, campaign contributors, and one another in the same ways that legislators elsewhere do.