Recently Utah Congresswoman Mia Love came out in support for Marco Rubio. For those of you who do not know Mrs. Love, she is the child of Jamaican immigrants and was the first Utah’s first Black Congresswoman to be elected to office. There is something else you need to know about her, like most people in Utah she is a Mormon.
Of course, she wasn’t the first Black Mormon woman to join Marco team. I 
was LOL. I wasn’t raised in the Mormon faith but have been a devout participant of it for the past 12 years. But this does raise some interesting questions. Will the endorsement of Marco by Mia help him increase his standing among the more strongly religious and Blacks or because of her Mormon faith, will it cause incidental harm?
Also, there has been a recent backlash against the Latter Day Saint church because of its newest policy on the ordination of children of same-sex married couples. But does that mean Rubio should shy away from trying to get more votes from Mormons? I think doing so would actually do more considerable harm if he did. Mormons are a strong voting block. We see the Constitution as a divinely inspired document and take our civic responsibilities quite seriously.
Most Mormon members of Congress (15 out of 16) hail from the West. Not surprisingly, Mormons make up a much higher percentage of the West’s population (6%) than they do of any other region. (About seven-in-ten U.S. Mormons live in the West.)
Which makes sense because Utah is located in the West, so it makes sense we would have more Mormons in the West than an
y other region. But it also shows how strongly we regard our responsibility to serve the public. The religious community was very strong when Prop 8 was put forth in California, but one of the strongest proponents of it was the Church of Latter Day Saints, so much so that they threatened our Prophet and President of the church, Thomas S. Monson, along with threatening to burn down our temples. Regardless, we still stood by our principles.
A lot of people think the Mormon factor hurt Mitt Romney in his bid for Presidency. However, I think it was probably the one positive thing he had going for him. It was his record on conservative issues that hurt him more than his Mormon faith. In fact, it would be quite detrimental not to court the Mormon vote given the fact that we are the most conservative of the major religions:
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, are the most conservative major religious group in the country, with 59% identifying as conservative, 31% as moderate, and 8% as liberal.
“The 49% of Mormons who self-identify as both conservative and Republican is the highest of any major religious group, significantly larger than the 31% of Protestants/other non-Catholic Christians who can be so categorized.” http://www.gallup.com/poll/125021/mormons-conservative-major-religious-group.aspx
While this is an old poll, I would not imagine the numbers have changed all that much. So as the Rubio reaches out to the religious and conservative community, will those in those in the Mormon faith endorse his candidacy? He already has two really devout Mormon women backing him, I am sure he can get more.
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