Reissued: “Utah Politics: The Elephant in the Room”: Utah Politics from 1890s-1970s with Rod Decker (S1, E6 - Part 1)

**Brad Westwood** (0:04)
Hello, this is Brad Westwood. This is the podcast Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history. The past is never in the past. It's all around us. It informs us, it speaks to both our shared and to our separate identities. Speak Your Piece is a podcast where writers, historians, curators, archivists, all who contribute to Utah's history share their insights and discoveries. If there's one podcast you listen to related to Utah history, we hope this is the place.
Today's guest is Rod Decker, known for his reporting on Utah's KUTV Channel 2, as well as for his columns and editorials in the desert news. Rod Decker understands the great depth and all the stuff that goes on with Utah Culture, politics, faith, and so many other things. He has been involved in this world of journalism for 45 years. A graduate of the University of Utah in political science, he attended graduate school at the University of Chicago and spent a year at Harvard as a Newman Fellow in journalism. After serving in the military intelligence during the Vietnam War, he got involved as a reporter for the desert news and has gone on to KUTV News where he retired just a couple of years ago.
The reason we have him today is he has written a book called Utah Politics, The Elephant in the Room, where he tries to help the everyday Utahan understand just what is going on with Utah in the last 50 years and just how important politics is to life and times in Utah. Rod Decker, welcome to Speak Your Piece.
Rod, there has been a number of cases in the past where I've heard you speak about your general thesis of this book, this ideas that I'm sure have formed over your 45 years here, trying to help others understand politics in Utah. Just tell us what is the thesis of the book Utah Politics, The Elephant in the Room?

**Rod Decker** (2:22)
The big thesis, the big point is this.
Utah is Republican because Latter-Day Saints are Republican. Latter-Day Saints weren't always Republican. They became strongly Republican in the 1970s. What pushed Latter-Day Saints to become conservative and Republican was the American sexual revolution, social change in America. Change in sex, change in families. The Latter-Day Saints stuck with traditional morality and traditional families, especially traditional families, that put them at odds with much of the rest of the United States, with the main current in the United States.
Utah politics are a result of that cleavage.

**Brad Westwood** (3:15)
So, when you look at over the last 50 years, when you started reporting, Utah had a different political complexion. There were much more of a mix between Democrats and Republicans.

**Rod Decker** (3:29)
When I started in 1972, we used to say, Utah is a state of thirds. We were a third Latter-Day Saint, a third non-Mormon, and a third inactive Jack Mormons.
We were a third Democrat, a third Republican, and a third Independent. Now, the religious makeup has changed some. The number of Latter-Day Saints has gone down, though maybe not the number of faithful Latter-Day Saints. But things have changed immensely in politics.
Republicans now outnumber Democrats by more than two to one. Independents are still about a third of the electorate.

**Brad Westwood** (4:20)
So, as I recall, in the mid-century, 20th century, the Democratic Party, we had a couple of governors, Matheson, and Rampton.

**Rod Decker** (4:36)
Together, they were 20 years governor.
Very conservative. From 1964 to 1984 They were both Democrats. They were both very popular.

**Brad Westwood** (4:48)
And when we look at the way Utah has voted for national elections, particularly prior to 1970, just what was that story?

**Rod Decker** (5:04)
From 1896, when Utah became a state and could vote in presidential elections, through 1972, there were 20 presidential elections.
Utahans voted with the majority of Americans. That's for the winner in 17 of them. Only three states voted for more winners than Utah.
Utah was politically normal through that period. Now, that's hard to understand, but we were ordinary, we were mainstream. Professor Frank Jonas, a political scientist at the University of Utah in those days, said, As the nation goes, so goes Utah. We voted along with other people, and the state government usually swung with the national elections. And until the 76, the election of 1976, we were a mainstream state politically.

**Brad Westwood** (6:03)
So when I look back at those who were active in party politics, I know we had very strong union engagement here in Utah.

**Rod Decker** (6:17)
We had strong unions in Utah, and they voted Democratic.
The unions, in 1972, the Democrats nominated George McGovern, perhaps their most liberal candidate. He lost big nationwide to Richard Nixon. He picked the chairman of the National Democratic Party, and he picked Gene Westwood, who lived in what is now West Valley. West Valley wasn't created then. She could sit down with a cigarette and a cup of coffee and a telephone and bring out the troops. She did that in Utah. Utah had union connections. The west side of the Salt Lake Valley was dominated by people who worked at Kennecott or whose families did, and they were union people and steelworkers, members of the steelworkers, and they elected three or four, five state legislators.