Donald Trump Jr. took to a Mormon bastion over the weekend in a bid to shore up the Latter-day Saint vote for his father in battleground states.
Former President Donald Trump’s eldest son has emerged as a major player in his father’s Republican Party ahead of the 2024 elections. Trump Jr.’s recent visit to Utah highlighted the role he is playing in the former president’s campaign after the Deseret News reported he holed up in the state to “strategize” with political leaders over how to reach LDS voters in neighboring Arizona and Nevada.
During a hunting trip at Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz’s ranch, Trump Jr. spoke with roughly 20 political leaders on Saturday about what issues “matter to people of faith, LDS or otherwise,” Utah Republican Party Chairman Rob Axson told the outlet.
The former president’s eldest child has frequented Utah in recent years for hunting adventures, per Schultz, who said Trump Jr. and fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle “love the LDS people and Utah’s culture.”
“He joked about being Mormon because he has so many kids,” another attendee said. Trump Jr. had five children with his first wife, Vanessa Trump, before they divorced in 2018.
But this weekend trip was about more than hunting or joking around. It comes ahead of the new “Latter-day Saints for Trump” initiative the former president’s campaign plans to roll out this week.
“He talked about the record of what his dad did for people of faith during his first four years, and obviously that will be a great guide and indication of how a second Trump presidency would be,” Axson said.
Marlon Bateman, a former State Department official, was among the guests at the weekend huddle. Earlier this month, he met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida alongside a group of Latter-day Saints to discuss outreach to the Mormon community.
While Utah has been safe territory for GOP presidential candidates for decades, winning over Mormon voters in battleground states such as Arizona and Nevada could be key to securing a second term for Trump.
The latest polls indicate Trump holds a razor-thin lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona, a state he won in 2016 before narrowly losing it four years later. Meanwhile, the Real Clear Politics aggregate of recent surveys shows the vice president leading by roughly 1 percentage point in Nevada.
With Mormons composing roughly 6% of the Arizona electorate and a pivotal slice of Nevada voters, the Harris campaign has vied with Trump to gain their support. In August, the vice president launched the “Latter-day Saints for Harris-Walz,” which specifically targeted Mormon voters in Arizona. On Monday, her campaign announced a similar advisory committee in Nevada.
While LDS voters are reliably Republican, the Democratic Party has made inroads with Arizona Mormons in recent years. President Joe Biden performed twice as well with Mormon voters in the battleground state in 2020 as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did during the 2016 presidential election.
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After losing Arizona by roughly only 10,500 votes four years ago, gaining even a small margin of LDS voters could help push Trump back into the White House.
Securing the LDS vote in Nevada could similarly clinch Trump’s win in a state that has eluded Republican presidential candidates’ grasp since 2004.