Only three Latter-day Saint women have served in Congress.
There’s the late Paula Hawkins, a Republican from Florida, who served one term in the U.S. Senate in the 1980s. Utahns Enid Greene Mickelson (one term in the 1990s) and Mia Love (two terms last decade) served in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Looking back, Love said she almost didn’t run because she felt unqualified, despite having a decade of previous municipal government experience.
“I had to have a lot of people try and convince me to run,” she said. “It took a lot of people saying, ‘I’ll be with you, I will help you.’ ... It took a lot of support.”
A new group wants to offer support and help more Latter-day Saint women run for — and win — public office.
“What we really want to do is give women the opportunity to come together and help each other. We want to facilitate that,” said Audrey Perry Martin, founder and CEO of Project Elect.
Project Elect: Women in Public Service is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose primary objective is to encourage and support women who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as they seek election. The group launched a website — projectelectwomen.org — on April 12 and is not affiliated with the church.
Martin believes having more Latter-day Saint women running for office will help solve the nation’s most complicated problems. Many of these women already have resourceful networks, experience and the necessary skills.
“They really are ideal candidates,” she said. “They just might need a push to recognize that fact.”
Project Elect is taking a more narrow and practical focus to helping Latter-day Saint women serve in local and national government than Mormon Women for Ethical Government, said Tracy J. Nuttall, who serves on the board of both organizations. MWEG’s broader mission is centered on national issues and advocating, she said.
“I don’t know if it comes from my professional experience as an attorney, but every female attorney that I talk to who is a Latter-day Saint has the same feeling,” she said. “It’s just a gut feeling from our professional experience that women need to be at the table in government offices. Women are not part of the discussion to the extent that we’d like to see. I am super excited to do something to try and address that issue.”
What are people saying about Project Elect?
Latter-day Saint women with political experience are reacting positively to the launch of Project Elect.
Deidre Henderson, Utah’s newly elected lieutenant governor, is a Latter-day Saint who spent the past few years working to place a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon in the U.S. Capitol. Cannon was the state’s first woman to serve as state senator.
“I have long been a champion of women serving in elected office and am supportive of efforts to encourage more women to run,” Henderson said in a statement about Project Elect provided to the Deseret News. “We need the perspectives of women from diverse backgrounds and life experiences at the table in order to make policy decisions that benefit everyone.”
Love is a former U.S. Representative for Utah’s 4th Congressional District and former mayor and city council member of Saratoga Springs with experience as a political commentator for CNN. In her experience, continued support is essential for women who are willing to run. As a church member and former elected official, she is willing to share her insight and experience with the group.
“They have to be able to recruit, train and then maintain,” Love said. “So it’s a difficult mountain, but I certainly appreciate the efforts and I’m happy to help them.”
A church member who studies the impact of women on international affairs sent a “hearty congratulations” to the founders of Project Elect.
“I think it’s magnificent,” said Valerie Hudson, a distinguished professor in the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
“The Church of Jesus Christ has always emphasized the importance not only of voting, but of also standing for office,” she said. “But we do know that the culture has often discouraged women from finding a place in the public square. So such an organization is timely, it’s needful and it’s praiseworthy.”
What support does Project Elect provide?
Project Elect offers three programs:
- Experienced campaigners to mentor women considering a run for office.
“One of the biggest difficulties women have getting into campaigns and running for public office is they just don’t know where to start or have an understanding of how it works,” Martin said. “Having a mentor to guide you through the process makes a huge difference.”
“We want women to come and volunteer even if they don’t want to run for office,” Martin said. “They can still help somebody else run for office, match them with a candidate or potential candidate, give them some training.”
- Candidate recruiting tools. For example, one form provided allows a potential candidate to make a list of skills and church calling experience and receive a digital certificate declaring her qualified to run for public office.
The website also features a page, “Called to Run,” with thoughtful quotes from church leaders about community and civic service.
Ultimately, Project Elect hopes to provide education for all church members, especially women, on why it is important to get involved.
“To me it’s a cultural issue,” Nuttall said. “Somebody needs to go out and proactively help change the culture.”
What inspired Project Elect?
The idea was born thanks to public education issues in Martin’s Northern California community.
It started when a group of concerned Latter-day Saint women banded together in an effort to resolve some issues with the local school board. Given her background in politics, Martin didn’t expect much to happen.
But working together little by little, chipping in whatever skills and resources each individual could offer, they eventually achieved their objectives.
“They absolutely blew me out of the water because they put together this amazing grassroots campaign that in my experience would have cost thousands and thousands of dollars to have a consultant do … and put together this amazing campaign to lobby the school board and get some things changed,” Martin said.
Eventually two of those Latter-day Saint women campaigned for openings on the school board in the Sacramento area and won. They served in those positions during the pandemic when public education was “the most heated and debated thing in the world,” Martin said.
Martin came away with a profound realization that Latter-day Saint women carried a great deal of untapped potential in public service. It sparked an idea.
“Latter-day Saint women have all these skills they’ve learned in church callings — they are wonderful negotiators, they have public speaking skills, they know how to get along with other, they are great listeners — all the things you would want in a community leader, these women had,” she said. “I wondered, ‘Why aren’t these women running for office?’ These are exactly the sort of people that we need in political office. That inspired me to start this organization.”
Project Elect launched about a week after President Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the church’s First Presidency, noted that Latter-day Saints should “exercise our influence civilly and peacefully within the framework of our constitutions and applicable laws. On contested issues, we should seek to moderate and unify.”
He also said that in democracies, “political influence is exercised by running for office (which we encourage),” adding that “members should seek inspiration on how to exercise their influence according to their individual priorities.”
Martin started contacting other Latter-day Saint women who she knew with various levels of political experience and found many who were interested in joining the project. They created a board of directors and got to work.
What Nuttall likes most about Project Elect is its emphasis on creating a Latter-day Saint community of candidates.
“Women can come to our website and feel comfortable. This is a faith-driven organization,” she said.
What obstacles are Latter-day Saint women facing in politics?
Martin says most women are generally unwilling to run for public office and decline multiple times before honestly considering the idea.
Latter-day Saint women seem even more reluctant because some have never worked outside the home and don’t feel qualified, Martin said.
“In my experience, when you ask a Latter-day Saint woman if she would run for office, her reaction is often ‘No, I would never do that,’ even if she is the most qualified woman ever,” Martin said. “We want to change that mindset because these women have so much experience in their communities, in their churches and daily lives, which gives them perspective that would make them ideal community leaders and decision-makers. They are exactly who should be running for these local offices.”
Women who generally stay at home may lack confidence in the public arena or feel they don’t know what the current issues are, Nuttall said.
“If they haven’t had any professional experience, I would say that’s probably a big one,” she said.
Bolstered by the encouragement of many supporters, the one person who finally persuaded Love to run for Congress was her husband, Jason Love.
“My husband said, ‘Look, we’re going to go on this journey together. I’m 100% with you. What’s great about you is that we don’t need the money from this job,’” Love said. “I think politicians who need the job and need the money from the job really shouldn’t do the job.”
With families, careers and church responsibilities, Latter-day Saint women have already filled their lives with so much that taking on a political office seems daunting. Providing information can help change that mindset, Martin said.
“One of the things we can show them is that a lot of these local offices are not as involved as they think they might be, they are very part-time,” the founder said. “And you can do this for a term, or two terms, and then it’s somebody else’s turn, like a church calling.”
Hudson agreed that women usually carry the heavier role in unpaid caregiving labor, which means their time is often at a premium. That kind of juggling act is going to be a barrier for women in and outside the church.
Perhaps more critical for Latter-day Saint women to understand is that “political leadership is an extension of motherhood and womanhood,” Hudson said.
“The children that you are nurturing and raising today are going to go out into the world tomorrow. Should that be a world that has been shaped only by men, with men’s priorities and concerns at the forefront and without the benefit of women’s wisdom? Certainly not,” Hudson said. “If we care for the next generation, then good women need to stand for political office to help rectify some of the problems with male-only leadership of our world.”
Love acknowledged that women and mothers have busy lives, and she worried about how her public service might affect her children’s lives. She’s grateful to say it’s had an inspiring effect on her daughters. One daughter is studying rocket science in college and the other is interested in economics.
“The reason they aspire to more is because they have seen their mother do it,” Love said. “Latter-day Saint moms need to be involved in government because their children will see them doing it and believe that they should do it also.”
Another issue might be that women have a tendency to keep their professional lives to themselves.
“That’s a problem,” Nutall said. “Women don’t feel comfortable talking about what they do, or they are not being asked what they do or what their public involvement is. That might be something to look at.”
‘Voices of reason’
While many Latter-day Saint women might shy away from running for office because of how controversial and contentious politics may seem, Martin believes they can have an “incredible” impact as “voices of reason” in the political realm.
“My argument would be that’s exactly why they need to get into public office,” she said. “We need strong women of faith who can work together, who can reach across the aisle, who can be reasonable and take the temperature down in politics a little bit. If these women aren’t willing to run, it is just going to escalate.”
Hudson said having more women in leadership positions would cause a shift in priorities.
“Many times good-hearted programs are designed, but without the reality of caregivers’ lives in mind,” Hudson said. “Women would bring concrete knowledge of the potentials and the obstacles when the actual creation and implementation of public policy is considered.”
Love agrees.
“I am a strong believer that women need to be more involved in all areas of government from local, which I think is most important, all the way to the national level,” she said. “I think Latter-day Saint women and their sense of service, for the most part, can have a positive impact on our country. And trust me, we need more compassion now than we ever have.”
Having more perspectives at the table, even if they disagree, will produce better legislation, Nuttall said.
“Women, especially women of faith, are great protectors of children and other marginalized populations,” she said.
Who are the mentors?
Which Latter-day Saint women do other women look up to in the political field?
Love is not aware of any Latter-day Saint women serving in Washington at any level.
Henderson, Utah’s lieutenant governor, may be the highest-ranking Latter-day Saint woman in elected office in the United States, and is frequently mentioned as someone respected by other women seeking to exercise political influence.
“Not only is she a great example of someone who is well versed on policy, but she, more than anybody else in our state, has stepped forward and really helped on women’s issues,” Love said. “I’m proud of her and she is a great example of the impact Latter-day Saint women can have on our government.”
Another high-ranking Latter-day Saint woman in state politics is Idaho State Treasurer Julie Ellsworth.
Others mentioned by those interviewed included Love herself; Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; Michelle Kaufusi, the first female mayor of Provo; Aimee Winder Newton, a member of Salt Lake County Council and former candidate for Utah governor; and Julie Fullmer, mayor of Vineyard, Utah.
Members of Project Elect have started to compile a database of Latter-day Saint women who have run, served or who are running for public office. Here is a list of some notable Latter-day Saint women who have served as elected officials:
- Martha Hughes Cannon, the nation’s first female elected to a state senate, who served in the Utah state Senate (1897-1901).
- Alice Merrill Horne, second woman to serve in the Utah House of Representatives (1898-1900).
- Ivy Baker Priest, served as U.S. Treasurer (1953-1961).
- Algie Eggertsen Ballif, Utah House of Representatives (1959-1960).
- Angela Bay Buchanan, youngest U.S. Treasurer in U.S. history (1981-83).
- Paula Hawkins, first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the southern states (1981-87).
- Enid Greene Mickelson, U.S. House of Representatives (1995-97).
- Olene Walker, the first female governor of Utah (2003-05).
“All Latter-day Saint women have the potential to be great elected officials,” Martin said. “I really want people to know that we’ll help you, no matter your political party, no matter your political views.”