Not that the reaction is new. One of my law professors, Edwin Brown Firmage, featured a picture of Hugh B. Brown, his grandfather, in his campaign brochure, as one of his heroes, alongside Roy Wilkins, former head of the NAACP. Brown was actually a Democrat, and might have personally endorsed his graqndson’s run for Congress if he had still been alive. But Brown was also a Mormon apostle and former member of the First Presidency of the church, and Firmage was criticized by many Mormons for capitalizing on his relationship to Brown and the Church.

Firmage was also known in Utah for being a leader in the local opposition to the construction of enormous bases for the MX ICBM that would have covered half of Utah and Nevada. His most successful action was in persuading LDS President Spencer W. Kimball to issue a public statement opposing the deployment, that was a major factor in the newly elected Ronald Reagan’s decision to cancel the program. (During my five years at Strategic Air Command, one of the major preoccupations was figuring out alternative ways to use the MX ICBMs.) Despite prevailing on that crucial issue, which involved a lot of potential revenue for Utah’s economy, and getting explicit Church endorsement for his most well known political position, he lost his own election, even though Democrats have won that seat before and since.

Firmage actually wrote a short biography of his grandfather a few years later. He also coauthored with an LDS law professor at Creighton University in Omaha (a former student) a very fine book on the early legal history of the LDS Church, Zion in the Courts.

Association with the Church and a politician trumpeting that association are two different things. One of the earlier successful Democrats was K. Gunn McKay, a relative of long-time Mormon president David O. McKay, who didn’t have to point out his obvious relationship to a Church leader. Another was Wayne Owens, who after serving a term but losing reelection was called by the Church to serve as an LDS mission president in Canada, a sort of endorsement of him as a person but after the election. After Owens completed his three year term as mission president, he returned to Utah and was elected to Congress again.

Being LDS does not mean one cannot win statewide office in Idaho. Senator Crapo and Attorney General Wasden and even Larry Echohawk are examples. But running as a “Mormon candidate” is not a path to election.