Finally, I am a Democrat because I believe LDS scripture and prophets have urged us to live within our means, to be fiscally responsible. Democrats believe we need to pay for any programs we create, and Democratic administrations have, since the Great Depression, consistently lowered deficit spending, while the Reagan and two Bush administrations have greatly increased it. Democrats have a strong record of fiscal responsibility.
Many Mormon Democrats like me are pro-life, and find no pressure to change that view. Senator Harry Reid once told how, when an abortion issue came up for a vote during his first year in the Senate, some senators were expressing to him the importance of his vote. Reid recalled how Senator Barbara Mikulski, "at that time the only woman in the Senate and one of the nation's feminist leaders, told everyone to leave me alone, my vote was a matter of character." Reid's pro-life stance in the Senate has not hurt his career -- in 2006 he became the Senate Majority Leader, the highest-ranking Mormon in Washington.
I believe Mormon Democrats can make a difference, not only like Reid in Washington, but in their own local party. I have witnessed first-hand how Mormon Democrats in Utah county have worked to make the county platform more in-line with LDS values.
Boyd Petersen is the Program Coordinator for Mormon Studies at Utah Valley University, the biographer of Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley, and a former candidate for the Utah State legislature.
[1] Quoted in James E. Bell, In the Strength of the Lord: The Life and Teachings of James E. Faust [Salt Lake: Deseret, 1999], 86.
[2] Dan Harrie, "LDS Official Calls for More Political Diversity," Salt Lake Tribune, 3 May 1998.
[3] Op. Cit., 86
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