The Mormon Church is Like…Trying to Help Mitt Romney Get Elected…or Something

The LDS (Mormon) Church is at it again – trying to boost their image by running a very professional ad campaign. Of course the ever-suspicious minions presume there exists an ulterior motive, and it MUST be that the Mormons Church wants to put Mitt Romney in the White House.

I first started seeing this suggestion in spare tweets on Twitter a few days ago. Then came the rather silly Salon.com article (I say ‘silly’ because the author has a hard time obscuring his intent to raise suspicion of Mormons). Lastly there is a video news-clip (embedded below) from a local FOX affiliate in the Twin Cities, though the news clip is much more fair and objective.

I’ll highlight a few keywords and phrases from the Salon.com article that display the writers lack of objectivity: “weird middle-American Mormon ad campaign”, “nine seemingly randomly selected”, “naturally the natives are suspicious”, “Mormon King Mitt Romney”, “they’re a bit touchy”, “damage control”, and “spending millions imposing their morality on us”. Naturally, we all should be suspicious too, right?

The big conspiracy here is that the LDS Church is always trying to improve their image, no matter where it currently stands, and they’ve been doing it through television commercials since the early seventies. This ad campaign just happens to coincide with the re-launch of LDS website, Mormon.org. Though the author of the Salon.com article tries to argue otherwise, the cities selected for this ad campaign don’t seem to me to be of any electoral advantage, especially when you consider the 2012, election is 27 months out. No, if the LDS really wanted to boost Romney’s chances in 2012 through their positive image campaign they would focus on the Republican Primary states. There is no given that Romney will win the primary – why would the Mormon Church risk millions of dollars trying to promote him for the general election?

So is the Mormon Church trying to push Mitt Romney for President?

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Perhaps the need to promote public awareness is evident by the fact that the FOX affiliate misspelled the word “Morman” at the 1:25 mark in the video.

More coverage on the ad campaign is provided by a Yahoo.com article by Liz Goodwinwhich is a little more informative and balanced. The article gives some insight into the Mormon ad campaign strategy:

According to Joel Campbell, a Mormon journalism professor at Brigham Young University who is researching the ad campaign, the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had a TV ad campaign three years ago that tried to explain Mormon beliefs. Research showed that the ads were too “sophisticated” and viewers weren’t getting the message.
[...]
“The church’s desire here is just to tell people who have no opinion or a negative opinion of Mormons to say, Look it, we’re not a bunch of polygamists that wear weird clothes and have a compound in Texas. That’s not us, we’re just regular folks,” Campbell said.
[...]
LDS spokesman Scott Swofford said the church has run ad campaigns for 25 years and has found that the best way to dispel myths about the religion is to have Mormons speak for themselves. The aim of the new campaign is to give Americans “a virtual Mormon neighbor,” he said.

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Of perceptions and being Mormon: Often Mormons can be overly sensitive to the perceptions of others. It seems Nancy French of Evangelicals for Mitt was barraged by some letters of concern when some misunderstood her purposes in linking to the Salon.com article, thinking that she was somehow in accordance with them. She has since clarified, but it shows that Mormons can indeed be “touchy”.

I am a Mormon, and what’s worse is that I’m a Mormon from Utah. My pet peeve is when others assume that I’m for Romney because of that – as if I’m some sort of mindless drone. I don’t like it when people perceive me that way, and granted, I am touchy about that. What I am not touchy about is what happened to the Mormons 160 years ago when the Mormons were “run out of everywhere they were until they ended up settling beside a giant dead salt lake”, as the author of the Salon.com article would have you think.

I completed an LDS mission to the remote land of southern New Jersey 12 years ago. I believe Mormon perception has improved drastically since that time, but I recall very wild things that people supposed about our lifestyle or our teachings. Far too many to list here. With the Mormons having settled in the West, I find that misinformation, or suspicion of Mormons, grows the further East you go. I can’t help but think this is due to the much smaller percentage of Mormons living in these areas. Simply put they are not exposed to Mormons and their so called “normalcy” as much. Thus the ad campaign.

We don’t discuss Romney and his Mormonism here on this blog much, mostly because we don’t feel it very necessary. Sure, Romney did overcome much of the anti-Mormon stigma last time around, and there is certainly some left, but I don’t feel it will have huge impact on the upcoming primaries. If Romney goes into official campaign mode here early next year, my guess is the campaign won’t put as much effort to win over those who might be against him because of his religion. Those who were exposed to him last cycle, and are still against his religion, won’t be won over anytime soon. I think the campaign will wisely move ahead in convincing those whose minds aren’t so made up.

This will probably be the last time you see me tackle the issue of religion, or Mormonism, for a very long time… and I’m glad.

I’m a blogger, I’m a patriot, I’m a sandwich lover, and I’m a tech-enthusiast. I’m Nate Gunderson, and I’m a Mormon.
(Ha. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)