Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is making a play for a group of Nevada voters who have long been the safest of bets for Republicans — members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Harris campaign is launching a Latter-day Saints (LDS) for Harris-Walz Advisory Committee, following an identical effort in Arizona. With the race virtually tied in both states, the campaign believes improving its margins with the traditionally conservative group will be critical to win. In coordinating the public endorsements of prominent church members and engaging in formal outreach, the Harris campaign believes it can provide a permission structure for LDS voters skeptical of former President Donald Trump to abandon the Republican Party.

“We're taught that contention is not of the Lord,” said Andy Hafen, a former Democratic mayor of Henderson serving on the advisory committee. “And that's what we're seeing a lot now, is contention, and I think that is really a big part of former President Trump's makeup, and we need to get away from that.”

Courting Latter-day Saints voters will be an uphill battle for the Harris campaign — and one they expect to lose outright. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as Mormons, are among the most Republican religious groups in the U.S. A survey of partisanship among religious groups by the Pew Research Center in April found that 75 percent of Latter-day Saints identify as Republicans, second only to white evangelical Protestants. Typically socially conservative and known for impressive voter turnout and political organizing, Nevada’s community of more than 180,000 Latter-day Saints — mostly concentrated in Clark County — have most often been courted in Republican presidential primaries rather than general elections. 

In Nevada, Latter-day Saints make up 6 percent of the population — a number that includes children but is a significantly larger figure than the 2.5 percentage points that Biden won by in 2020. The Harris campaign believes it can convince enough independent-learning and Republican Latter-day Saints to vote for its candidate — or select “none of the above” in the presidential race — to be meaningful in a state where races can be decided by fewer than 10,000 votes. Going after Republican-leaning groups such as Latter-day Saints may also prove necessary if Harris loses ground relative to Biden’s 2020 mark with more traditionally Democratic groups such as young voters and Latino voters, both large populations in Nevada where polling suggests Trump is improving upon his 2020 totals.

The advisory committee, which includes local leaders across the state, plans to engage in LDS voter contact, host events, do traditional canvassing through the coordinated campaign and make appeals within their religious community to try to identify and persuade Trump-skeptical Latter-day Saints that they should not only pass on Trump, but vote for Harris.

The Trump campaign is engaged in Latter-day Saints outreach as well. Trump hosted church officials at Mar-a-Lago, the New York Times reported, and his campaign plans to highlight actions he took during his presidency to promote religious freedom and defend Christianity, including issuing rules allowing employers to only hire employees who align with their religious beliefs and churches to participate in politics while maintaining their tax-exempt status.

And Trump has the endorsement of every Latter-day Saint in Congress, save for Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT).

“In the last four years under Kamala Harris, Democrats have abandoned the Mormon community and led the charge on an attack on the freedom of religion and religious institutions,” said Halee Dobbins, the Republican National Committee communications director for Nevada. “Their silence on key issues vital to Mormon values has been deafening … In contrast, President Trump has consistently stood with believers by protecting religious institutions, appointing constitutionalist justices, and defending Christian values nationally and abroad.”

But the partnership between LDS voters and Trump has often been uncomfortable, and Democrats have made gains during the last eight years. In 2016, Trump won Utah with just 45 percent of the vote, the lowest total for a Republican candidate in the Latter-day Saints-heavy state in more than 20 years. While voter data in Nevada is not available, a study of Latter-day Saints voting in Arizona between 2016 and 2020 showed promising signs for Democrats — President Joe Biden won 18 percent of the state’s Latter-day Saints voters, doubling Hillary Clinton’s 2016 total en route to narrowly flipping Arizona.

There is a long list of LDS members who have been elected in Nevada as Republicans, including former Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV), former Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison and former North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee, who is now running for Congress. But Democrats are not starting from scratch in the Silver State. The most influential politician in Nevada’s history, the late Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), was a Latter-day Saints Democrat. Having converted to the faith in college, Reid maintained that the church’s teachings motivated his partisan ideology, particularly on combating poverty. His longtime Latter-day Saint aide Megan Jones now serves as a senior political adviser on Harris’ campaign.

Rory Reid, his son and a longtime Clark County commissioner who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010, said recruiting Latter-day Saints voters is inherently challenging for Democrats — but that this election presents a unique opportunity. 

“As a rule, Mormons tend to value American institutions,” Reid said. “I think what the Harris campaign should say that is that if you care about American institutions, and if you're sitting in a room with your kids and your grandkids and America's president gets on the screen and begins to talk, if you want to be proud of that person, then you should consider somebody other than Donald Trump.”

Making the case for Harris

Even the most optimistic believers in a growing Latter-day Saints Democratic constituency acknowledge that the opportunity for Harris lies in the unique matchup she faces against Trump.

Latter-day Saints believe that the U.S. Constitution is a divinely inspired document that they have a responsibility to uphold. Harris’ Latter-day Saints supporters in Nevada think that Trump’s attempted subversion of the electoral process in 2020, first through court cases and then in the attempted insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, will be a powerful motivator for their community come November. Trump also called for the termination of the Constitution in 2022 over his unproven claims of election fraud.

“For many of these voters, Jan. 6, at that point, was just a disqualifying factor,” said Daniel Stewart, a former Republican who worked on campaigns for Romney and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) but is now backing Harris.

Members of the advisory committee see their goal as twofold — make their peers feel comfortable abandoning a Republican given those concerns, at least at the top of the ticket, and affirmatively make the case that they should vote for Harris.

In 2023, the church itself, which is politically neutral, gave implicit permission for members to vote Democrat. In a letter from the First Presidency, the governing body of the church, leaders warned of the dangers of straight-ticket voting, encouraging members to research candidates carefully. Simply voting for all candidates of one party without careful study is a “threat to democracy,” the letter reads.

Latter-day Saints Democrats in Nevada described this as a watershed moment, particularly in a faith that prides itself on its uniformity. Kendal Davis Weisenmiller, a Latter-day Saints Democrat in Las Vegas, said she believes many members of her community have privately come to the conclusion that Trump’s candidacy is inconsistent with their values, but are nervous to discuss it for fear of inciting division. She sees her job as presenting the affirmative case for Harris as someone who better symbolizes the church’s values — and ensuring that her fellow churchgoers know that they’re not alone if they’re considering voting Democrat.

“I’m always really quick to point out that Vice President Harris has a really committed record of public service — her commitment to the rule of law, equal justice for all, nobody being above the law and just basic human dignity, serving our fellow men,” Davis Weisenmiller said. “Those are all things that align with our values or our goals that we strive to meet as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Still, the Harris campaign can be an awkward fit on some issues important to Latter-day Saints — abortion chief among them. The church opposes elective abortions except in cases of rape, incest and a threat to the life of the mother or fetus. And while its guidance has changed over time, the church opposes same-sex marriage within its ranks. Plenty of Latter-day Saints from Utah will be crossing the border into Nevada through canvassing trips planned by the Utah Republican Party, speaking about issues where Latter-day Saints and Republicans traditionally align.

But Latter-day Saints Democrats believe they can emphasize other issues. As a religious minority, Latter-day Saints have long been advocates against religious discrimination given their history — the LDS church released a statement encouraging governments to prioritize ending refugees’ suffering after Trump’s 2017 travel ban on predominantly Muslim nations.

Stewart said he believes Latter-day Saints’ values on immigration more closely align with Harris’ more tolerant approach; Davis Weisenmiller said Latter-day Saints moms are deeply concerned about gun violence. And the Harris campaign believes a character-based pitch will be poignant with Latter-day Saints moms as well, who they believe struggle to reconcile Trump’s insult-laden rhetoric with how they encourage their kids to behave.

“I think that you're seeing a lot more Mormon women saying, Whoa, every time [Trump] opens his mouth, [he] is ‘other’-ing people,” said Jones, Harris’ senior adviser. “There's no empathy there. And so they're looking to see, what kind of leader is Kamala Harris? And I think the contrast is very clear.”

The Harris campaign is also hoping to capitalize on younger Latter-day Saints, who are less conservative than their forebears. As Gen Z Latter-day Saints enter the voting pool, the Harris campaign believes improved margins even with generational groups can make a difference.

“With an election this close, it’s one of those things where any improvement — not only on 2020 — but any improvement on what the campaigns may have even been seeing from four months ago, would be welcomed and could make a difference,” Stewart said.