The Washington Post wrote up an article on Donald Trump’s most recent stop on the campaign trail where he addressed the fact that he has a “Utah problem”.
A quote from the Post article talked about the fact that Trump was trying to separate himself from Mitt Romney who was the Republican Presidential nominee:
Trump tried to draw a direct distinction between himself and Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee, who would have become the nation’s first Mormon president. Echoing some post-2012 analysis suggesting that Romney’s religion led some evangelicals to stay home, Trump said ‘religion didn’t get out and vote’ for the former governor, ‘whatever the reason.’
They also pointed out his struggles in a usually strong Republican state.
Trump stressed his difficulties in the country’s only majority-Mormon state — making an apparent play for support by noting that he has a ‘tremendous problem’ in Utah.
Trump called Utah “a different place” and asked whether anyone in the crowd was from the state.
“I didn’t think so,” he said. Some laughed.
He continued to talk to the mostly evangelical crowd on religious freedoms by touting his goal to help them get their voice back within the political arena.
‘You’ve lost your voice…We’re going to get it back.”
Trump then proceeded to document the history of an amendment introduced in the 1950s by Lyndon B. Johnson who was a senator at that time. This amendment limited electroal activity by tax-exmempt groups.
Utah, a state that typically is ignored during a presidential election is starting to gain attention from all of the major party leaders including Hillary Clinton (who wrote an op-ed piece quoting LDS leaders) and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Candidate for President, who has made his campaign headquarters in Utah.
