Mormons May Desert GOP over Romney

If Republicans reject Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate in 2008 largely because of his Mormon faith, many Mormons could abandon the GOP, political observers believe.

Followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party during the past three decades. But if GOP conservatives - especially evangelicals in the South - spurn him, Mormons might stay home from the polls, leave the Republican Party for independent status - or even become Democrats.

"I think that's a real possibility," Charles Reagan Wilson, director of the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture, told the Salt Lake Tribune.

"To feel that kind of rejection from the national party they have allied with, that could well lead to some reassessment of the party."

Romney hasn't yet officially declared that he will run for president, but he has been traveling around the country meeting with Republican groups and distributing money to local candidates, "all preparatory moves for chasing the White House," the Tribune reports.

"But the issue of his religion continually dogs Romney, and some observers predict a Mormon could never be elected president."

A 1999 poll found that 17 percent of Americans would not vote for a Mormon. That sentiment is most prevalent in the South, where some evangelical groups consider the faith a cult.

Columnist Robert Novak, writing in April, said: "Prominent, respectable Evangelical Christians have told me, not for quotation, that millions of their co-religionists will not vote for Romney for president solely because he is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

Romney has said that he plans to give a speech similar to the one John F. Kennedy delivered when he insisted that if elected president he would not do the Pope's bidding.

"I think if I decided to go national that there will probably be a time when people will ask questions, and it will be about my faith, and I'll have the opportunity to talk about the role of religion in our society and in the leadership of our nation," he said in early May.

But Wayne Holland, chairman of the Utah Democratic Party, said Romney will face a powerful anti-Mormon bias in the South.

"I'm thinking [Mormons are] going to get pretty disgusted with what I believe they'll do to Romney," he told the Tribune.

If that happens, he added, some Mormons might finally start questioning whether the Republican Party isn't "too beholden to the group that just can't jibe with the LDS faith.".