LAUREN GILGER: The political world is abuzz with the news that we, for the first time ever, officially have two lieutenant governor picks. Republican candidate Andy Biggs chose former state lawmaker and dairy farmer Sine Kerr, and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs made a more unconventional choice in picking former Mesa mayor and former Republican John Giles.
And while lots is being said and written about both choices and how they could help or hurt their respective campaigns, our next guest this morning has a slightly different take.
Brigham Tomco covers politics for Deseret News in Salt Lake City, and as he calls it, this is a battle of the BYU grads. Biggs and Giles are both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and graduates of its flagship school, Brigham Young University.
I spoke with Tomco more about it and how it reflects a long-standing political divide in the Mormon world.
BRIGHAM TOMCO: This has kind of been a simmering debate, maybe for the past decade, where members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are conservative in the state of Arizona have been split on the direction of the Republican Party and their allegiance to the party.
And so you’ve had very prominent figures on both sides of this debate in Arizona, as your listeners are well aware. You’d have former Sen. Jeff Flake, for example, in the same camp as John Giles, the former mayor of Mesa, where they think that the party has left them and that the politics and rhetoric of Donald Trump do not represent their values that they get, they say, from their faith.
On the other side, you have folks like Andy Biggs or Tyler Bowyer, who runs the political campaign arm of Turning Point. And these are also members of the same church who think that the current iteration of the Republican Party — this maybe more aggressive, populist feel — is very in line with their conservative values.
And so you’ve seen this play out at the highest levels of politics in Arizona where Turning Point, for example, helped to oust Rusty Bowers, the former State House speaker who’s also a member of the church, but who spoke out against the Trump administration. And so I think now in 2026, you’re seeing this come to a head in the Arizona gubernatorial race.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, this is going to be an interesting one to watch in this world, for sure. How do Latter-day Saints sort of lean politically these days? How does this divide within the community play out in polling?
BRIGHAM TOMCO: So there has been a lot said and written about how Latter-day Saints are not on the Trump train. I think in some cases that’s been overblown. I think most people will point to in 2016 how Utah voted in significant numbers for a third-party candidate to try and find an alternative to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and that’s kind of the big data point they’re using.
There’s also something to be said for the fact that over the past 20 years, Latter-day Saints went from being the most Republican religious voting block to the second-most Republican voting block. And so there has been a shift to the left that you have not seen in any other religious demographic in the state, although we’re still one of the most Republican voting groups in the country.
And so there’s those two factors to take into account, although other polling has shown that Gen Z Latter-day Saints have kind of warmed up to Trump. Maybe that’s what they’ve come to know as Republican politics, and so they’re still voting for him in similar ratios and rates as older generations.
LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. So a shifting political demographic, but still very Republican. What is the objection that so many Latter-day Saints seem to have, especially when Trump was new to the political scene and really changed the conversation, changed the mode of politics, and changed the platform in some ways of the GOP? What was the objection from many Latter-day Saints — like John Giles, like Jeff Flake — at the time?
BRIGHAM TOMCO: So I think the stereotype of Latter-day Saints as being very kind bleeds into political philosophy for lots of Latter-day Saints, where they see the way you go about your politics as being just as important as the actual policy solutions you’re putting forward. And so I think from the beginning of the first Trump campaign up until now, you’ll hear Latter-day Saints who say, “Listen, I have more conservative values, there are policy positions of Donald Trump that I agree with, but I don’t agree with the way he talks about it or treats his political enemies.” And so I think that is a very real constituency among Latter-day Saints.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And we saw John Giles in particular, I think, go even further than many others, where it wasn’t like he even stayed in the Republican Party. Officially left a few months ago. He was sort of the face of Republicans for Harris. He spoke at the DNC, right? Tell us about John Giles in particular and his brand of this version of LDS politics.
BRIGHAM TOMCO: You see some politicians in Utah who have made a quote-unquote “disagree better” approach to politics kind of their brand. You saw this with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who actually in the past few years has endorsed Donald Trump and tried to mend some of those relationships with the Republican Party.
But John Giles has taken that the other direction, saying that his priority of making the Republican Party, or at least his politics, a welcoming place, a place where people can bridge divides and be peacemakers, has pushed him out of the party entirely. Like you said, earlier this year he disaffiliated with the Republican Party for the first time in his adult life, and he told me that was because he felt more comfortable as a quote “independent,” and he thinks that that is the best place to govern from because you’re able to listen to both sides of an argument and not get bogged down, I guess, by partisan loyalties, is how he described it.
LAUREN GILGER: I want to ask you about the way this plays out in religious communities, maybe at a very local level, right? I remember interviewing Julie Spilsbury a year or two ago when she was ousted from the Mesa City Council by the Turning Point coalition, right? She hadn’t voted the way that they wanted her to on some issues, and they recalled her. And she said it was so personal to her because she had people in her church that she saw every week, their kids had grown up together, who voted to recall her. Is this something that’s becoming very personal within the Latter-day Saint community?
BRIGHAM TOMCO: I think there’s something unique about the way politics and the Latter-day Saint community overlap in Arizona that I haven’t seen as much in Utah. So another example of this in 2022 was John Giles’ friend Clint Smith ran against Andy Biggs in an ultimately unsuccessful effort for Congress. But what you saw in that race was Turning Point Action’s COO Tyler Bowyer — again, a Latter-day Saint — putting signs in the neighborhoods of Clint Smith, John Giles and Jeff Flake calling out their church membership and saying that they were acting out of step with church leaders or church doctrine. And so it did become very personal, even to the point of these yard sign campaigns in their neighbors’ front yards.
And so I do think maybe something about Arizona being a swing state, or something about Turning Point USA being located there, or maybe a combination of all these things, has really put a spotlight on that overlap between Latter-day Saint identity and partisan politics.
LAUREN GILGER: So what are you watching for, Brigham, as this race plays out, now that we have sort of two BYU grads on either side of the ticket going at each other and representing this kind of unspoken debate within the community for a very long time?
BRIGHAM TOMCO: Well, there’s so many interesting layers to this. For one, Gov. Katie Hobbs picked John Giles as her running mate for an important reason, and whether that is pure political strategy to try to appeal to Mesa voters that he represented for about a decade as their mayor, or maybe it’s more symbolic — they both are trying to convey this message of lowering the political temperature, putting Arizona above politics, as they’ve said before. And so I think that’s one thing to watch.
And another piece is that Andy Biggs has also represented an area of the East Valley with lots of Latter-day Saints in Congress. And so I think you may see a lot of focus on this particular geography and this demographic where they will be appealing to those identities that they share as Latter-day Saints, as conservatives, and the direction this state wants to go.
LAUREN GILGER: We’ll see which way it goes in the end. Brigham Tomco is a politics reporter at Deseret News joining us. Brigham, thank you very much for coming on The Show. Thanks for taking the time, appreciate it.
BRIGHAM TOMCO: Yeah, thank you very much.
LAUREN GILGER: The battle of the BYU grads, as Tomco put it, is just the latest iteration of the impact of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona politics, though. In reality, the history of politics in this state is filled with LDS figures, from Arizona Congressman Mo Udall and Gov. Evan Mecham to Congressman Matt Salmon, Sen. Jeff Flake, State Senate Presidents Rusty Bowers, Russell Pearce and currently Warren Petersen. And the list could go on. The Udall family’s legacy in Arizona politics alone goes back to territorial days.
KEVIN DEMENNA: The state itself is built around an aspect of LDS culture that’s woven into our politics, into our Native American relationships. It’s just impossible to miss.
LAUREN GILGER: That’s Kevin DeMenna, a longtime Arizona lobbyist and Latter-day Saint. His family’s public affairs firm has been a force in shaping Arizona policy for generations. Kevin’s sons run the firm today.
I sat down with DeMenna in his office in downtown Phoenix recently, surrounded by Arizona memorabilia and an impressive saddle collection, to talk more about the long and winding history of LDS politics in Arizona. And he told me he is actually a convert to the faith after he fell in love with his wife.
KEVIN DEMENNA: She wasn’t going to marry anybody that wasn’t a member of the Church, and I wasn’t going to marry anybody else. But what happened for me is that my work here and my faith are inextricably linked.
Way back around 1980, I got an internship in the Senate, and the president of the Senate in this period was Stan Turley. And Stan Turley is just a giant of a man. Long passed on, but his pedigree is from the Snows and the Flakes. He’s a cousin to Jeff Flake, former (Arizona House of Representatives) Speaker Jake Flake I think is a nephew.
The end result, though, was that as an intern down there, I eventually became chief of staff, and President Turley through lots of conversation invited himself to my home. This is the classic side of the LDS outreach. And I think he and his wife Cleo probably came over seven or eight evenings, and he baptized me. And then for the remainder of the time he was in politics, he was a mentor.
LAUREN GILGER: So in kind of that front-row seat that you’ve had to Arizona politics over the last many decades, give us some of the highlights, some of the big names, some of the people that everyone’s probably heard of and maybe did not realize were Latter-day Saints.
KEVIN DEMENNA: The things I’ve seen, if only I could tell all the stories. But Matt Salmon and Nancy Salmon, equally political giants, but also individuals that you look for, that their faith works in their daily decision-making.
There is an aspect to being Mormon that there are expectations. I wear a white shirt every day, mainly just because it’s easier to get dressed. But there’s an aspect to our doctrine that has woven itself into our daily existence. Latter-day Saints are a peculiar people. That comes from a church leader years ago, and by that, we are noticed.
President Ezra Taft Benson, who is one of the most noteworthy of our church leaders simply because of his dual role as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve — the church leadership council worldwide — and the eight years he spent as Secretary of Agriculture for President Eisenhower. This was when agriculture and that position really mattered. Little things: He would never allow himself to be photographed with a cocktail glass. He would order milk so that at the state receptions, when the toasts were offered, there was no confusion.
So the challenge and the benefit is that we do wear it on our sleeve, and as a result, people look for chinks in the armor.
LAUREN GILGER: So the LDS population in our state is not huge — it’s 6%. It’s notable, but it’s not Utah. I wonder why you think the representation of folks from your faith has been so oversized?
KEVIN DEMENNA: It’s a really fair question. The answer, I think, is complementary to the faith. There is an element of service in what we do. All of my sons, me included, are Eagle Scouts. Seminary, getting up at 6 a.m. to learn more about the gospel. These things, there’s an air of service.
Now Rusty Bowers, it was my privilege to work closely with him and to watch him lose an election. He won handily, he never really did any fundraising, not much campaigning, but always coasted. He lost his last election by 19 points because of the endorsement of his opponent from President Trump.
LAUREN GILGER: Well, and this was a very interesting moment, I think, in LDS politics and one that got national attention, right? Because this was this kind of tipping point where you watched somebody who had been a giant in Arizona politics really fall in the Trump era — and on kind of moral principles, it sounded like.
KEVIN DEMENNA: When Rusty spoke to the congressional panel, he read from his journal. Mormons keep journals, and it can get tedious at times, but I remember him telling me when he returned that he got a standing ovation on the airplane as he boarded that same day to fly back home. There is an element of commitment that what I’m doing is right, and as a result, whatever slings and arrows may follow, it’s right, and I need to follow through.
The giants — Stan Turley, unquestionably at the top, Jake Flake, Bob Worsley — there’s a handful of individuals that stand out because not only did they come with an extraordinary sense of integrity, but they also have an intellect that allows them — you meld these two things and you’ve got one heck of a policymaker. It’s just something you can’t really mix or match and get it any other way.
LAUREN GILGER: So that, you think, blend has been very impactful in what happens in Arizona politics, what’s happened in Arizona policy. How do you think it shaped the state?
KEVIN DEMENNA: Oh, my goodness. Well, we wouldn’t have had Snowflake but for that. It could have been Flakesnow. But the notion that somewhere in this pile on the desk in front of me is Mason’s Manual of Legislative Procedure. This is the Bible of the Legislature, these are the rules that you play by. And the most important thing for protocol is that each member is equal. They may not have enough votes, but they are to be treated with the dignity and the humanity that every other member, who may have more votes, is treated with.
So there’s the doing and the telling, and as I like to say, the doing with the Latter-day Saint world is there. It’s hard to miss the ditches we’ve dug, the towns we’ve settled and the leaders that have grown out of this.
LAUREN GILGER: So let me ask you about the political side of that, right? Because I think there have been very many successful LDS politicians, and there still are in the state. But in the era of Trump in particular, in light of what we just talked about with Rusty Bowers, is that shifting? Is it something that politicians would shy away from talking about anymore?
KEVIN DEMENNA: Yes. Heck, I hardly want to talk about it. As Latter-day Saints, we are always mindful of our bearing, of our countenance. This doesn’t need to be a blood sport. It’s become that so much, and there’s a natural sort of angle of repose, if you will, where we don’t yell. In fact, the prophet, the leader of our faith right now: “Peacemaker, be a peacemaker.”
LAUREN GILGER: So I wonder, do you think that today within the church itself and within members of the church itself here, there is a political divide? I mean, you see, I interviewed Julie Willoughby not too long ago about members of her own faith, members of her own church that she saw every week voting her out of office, voting to recall her, and she was devastated by that. Do you think in the era of Trump and in the era of what’s gone on with conservative politics, it looks a little different, feels a little different today?
KEVIN DEMENNA: Well, it definitely feels different. But when they turned on the internet, everything sped up and communication changed fundamentally. And the beauty of politics and the beauty of the internet is that that will be known. It will be — you will be shown for the person you are.
When I look at the behavior of all of our legislators, the tone on the floor is different now. I suspect more is at stake, at least in the minds of some. The fact is that Latter-day Saints have had an oversized impact on how Arizona has grown and developed. And it’s because these teachings aren’t just gospel theory, they’re how to manage your life on a day-to-day basis.
And that comes through. I’m proud of that. Any guy or gal can get a bill passed, but doing it in a way that adds to the number of friends you have and a more enlightened approach, it’s simply better. Being a peacemaker, it’s just a better long-term strategy.
LAUREN GILGER: Kevin DeMenna, thank you so much.
KEVIN DEMENNA: You’re welcome. Loved to talk about this.
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