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Every state has mottos and symbols to represent that state’s whole, general vibe. Consider Florida, for instance. Florida’s state reptile is the American Alligator, and, as the state with the fifth highest median age, Florida’s state song is “Old Folks At Home.” Each state also picks two people to represent them in Washington, D.C., and I’m not talking about electing U.S. Senators. Rather, the National Statuary Hall collection contains more permanent representation (although a few forever-senators have tried to give them a run for their money). 

The selection of the statues is an opportunity for each state to put its best foot forward and highlight its favorite sons and daughters. Not every state gets it right the first time. Several Confederate officers have lost their spots in the National Statuary Hall…as well as Philo Farnsworth, a former resident of Beaver, Utah and the inventor of the television. 

Why give Farnsworth the boot? Well, a few years ago, we were approaching the 150th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Utah, which was the first state (well, territory) where women cast their ballots. To commemorate the occasion, the Utah State Legislature, after encouragement from the non-profit group Better Days 2020, passed a resolution to replace poor, old Farnsworth with Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon. 

Cannon was the first-ever woman elected to a State Senate. She was also a medical doctor, suffragist, mother and Mormon Pioneer. Not only did Cannon check all of the “Utah” boxes, but she also reminded people that Utah used to be first for women. Maybe it could be again. At the time of this publication, Utah has once again ranked the worst state for women (according to WalletHub’s analysis, “Best & Worst States for Women’s Equality”), thanks in part to a significant gender-wage gap and political representation gap. 

To address this reputation, the Utah State Legislature “sent Martha to Washington” to stand next to our other statuary representative: Brigham Young, a man who loved women so much that he married 56 of them and once complained of women who didn’t particularly like polygamy, “I do know that there is no cessation to the everlasting whining of many of the women in this Territory.”  

In sending Martha to Washington, D.C., Utah is also addressing the realization that not much of the art in the nation’s capital is of women, and, as many have pointed out before, the few women who are depicted are not real people; they’re fictional like Betsy Ross or embody concepts like Justice, Truth or Victory. Women in the National Statuary Hall include a few more recent additions like famed aviator Amelia Earhart (who replaced a statue of some Kansas senator in 2022) and educator and civil rights leader Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. She’s the first Black woman depicted in the National Statuary Hall collection. Florida chose her to replace a statue of a Confederate general in 2022. That’s become something of a trend as well. Student civil rights leader Barbara Rose Johns will eventually fill a vacancy for Virginia left by a Confederate whose name rhymes with Bobert B. Pee, and Arkansas plans to remove both of its statues of white supremacists and replace them with civil rights activist Daisy Bates and singer-songwriter Johnny Cash. 

All told, currently 11 out of the 100 statues in the National Statuary Hall collection are of women. Once Martha Hughes Cannon joins them, it will be at least 12. She was supposed to head to Washington in 2020, but the pandemic delayed her trip until further notice. At last check, she’s still standing in the Utah State Capitol building, if you’d like to visit her before she leaves. Until then, Mr. Farnsworth stays on his pedestal a little longer. 

On the grand stage of national politics, Utah is a bit player. We are one of the least densely populated, most reliably conservative states with middling voter participation rates and are currently embroiled in a gerrymandering lawsuit. However, Utah’s seeming political insignificance is something of a smokescreen, and the monolithic nature of Utah’s long-held political beliefs is an illusion. Utah politicians have amassed power and influence that penetrated state borders and directed the country to where it is today. We are taking a look at the Utah men throughout history who made it into “the room where it happens,” as Hamilton so succinctly put it, and what they did when they got there.  

Political Ideology With Parallels Today

On June 17, 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed The Smoot-Hawley Tariff in the wake of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that marks the impetus of the Great Depression. Utah Senator Reed Smoot lent his name to the Tariff, as the chair of the Senate Finance Committee during the months of odious debates, amendment votes, reversals, in-fighting, backroom-dealing and special interest lobbying that preceded the bill’s passage. (Sound familiar?) At best, the act failed at what its authors initially set out to do—help the struggling agriculture sector. At worst, the Tariff takes the blame for exacerbating the Great Depression. 

 If the act sounds familiar, it might be because Smoot’s namesake was invoked in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and again in 2017. A Washington Post columnist who declared “The ghost of Smoot-Hawley seems to haunt President Trump” was not the only one who compared President Trump’s tariffs and protectionism to the 1930 bill. 

In 1929, when the tariff negotiations began, Smoot had a reputation as an “exceptionally capable and indefatigable legislator,” according to Douglas A. Irwin of the National Bureau of Economic Research. By 1932, Smoot had lost reelection, but he defended his tariff with the zeal of a religious crusade. “Even if one disagrees with Smoot’s strict protectionist doctrine, one can understand and admire the tenacity with which he pursued his goal,” concludes James B. Allen, former LDS Church historian and BYU professor of history. “He had one great characteristic that some will admire and others scoff at…his overwhelming confidence in his own wisdom and ability.” 

That confidence allowed Smoot to lead “Utah’s march into the national mainstream,” as Utah Historic Quarterly put it, and to be “successful in placing many Utahns in positions of national prominence,” as stated in Smoot’s failed reelection campaign. Outside of the impact of his policies (soon undone after he left the Senate), Smoot’s legacy is forging a path to power for future representatives of the frontier West.  

Elbert D. Thomas, the Utah senator who replaced Smoot, took office during worst economic crisis the country had ever seen. Thomas worked to create a New Deal work-relief program that employed millions of young men in environmental projects and national parks, as chair of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, establishing the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, a minimum wage and a legal working age.

Thomas’s secretary, Elaine F. Hatch, said of her “beloved” senator’s legacy, “This Nation may have totally collapsed and foundered except for the dedicated efforts and activities of men like President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marriner Eccles and Senator Elbert D. Thomas.” 

In today’s political climate, as well as in the 1930s, the mindset of a Utah banker might seem incongruous with the top-down economic policy of the New Deal, but Marriner Eccles was different. Eccles said “frontier economic philosophy”  guided him until the Great Depression, when he changed his mind and chose not to double down on a failed philosophy. In 1933, Eccles testified before the Senate Committee on Finance, saying, “The orthodox capitalistic system of uncontrolled individualism, with its free competition, will no longer serve our purpose. We must think in terms of the scientific, technological, interdependent machine age, which can only survive and function under a modified capitalistic system controlled and regulated from the top by the government.” 

The young banker from Utah proposed a bold five-point plan to fix the economy. F.D.R. gave Eccles a job in the U.S. Treasury Department and then, in 1934, the job as chair of the Federal Reserve. His plan became the inspiration for New Deal programs. While the New Deal did not end the Depression, “It restored a sense of security as it put people back to work. It created the framework for a regulatory state that could protect the interests of all Americans, rich and poor…It rebuilt the infrastructure of the United States, providing a network of schools, hospitals and roads,” said historian Allan Winkler in his own 2009 testimony to the U.S. Senate. 

Eccles pushed to reform the Fed and create the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Housing Act (FHA). While the FHA allowed many Americans to obtain housing, it did not extend those benefits to generations of Black Americans in a process known as “redlining.” Eccles’ legacy includes some insights relevant to post-Great Recession America, as noted by Mark Wayne Nelson in Jumping the Abyss: Marriner S. Eccles and the New Deal, 1933–1940. Eccles advocated for centralized banking regulation and believed it would “prove effective in establishing a sound financial sector…One imagines that were he with us today he might assert that the remarkable financial stability that has distinguished the first three decades following the New Deal, and the turbulence that marked the years 2007 and 2008, has validated this conviction.”

– 1870 –
Utah’s Impact on Voting Rights

Utah Territory holds the first elections in which women could vote in the U.S. Seraph Young is the first woman to cast a ballot. Utah women lost voting rights with the passing of the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887.

Seraph Young (Ford)

– 1894 –
Joining the Union

Congress passes the Utah Enabling Act, admitting Utah into the Union contingent upon its banning polygamy and other mandates.

– 1896 –
Utah Statehood

Utah becomes the 45^th state in the Union after publicly forgoing polygamy. The right for women to vote and to hold public office is written into the state constitution.

Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon

– 1898 – 
Women’s Suffrage

Utah State Senator and suffragist, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon testifies to the success of women’s suffrage in Utah before a U.S. congressional committee.

Reed Smoot

– 1903 – 
Credentials in Question

Reed Smoot is elected to the Senate. His ability to serve as a senator is challenged due to his leadership role within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, leading to the Reed Smoot Hearings.

William H. King

– 1917 > 1919 – 
Polygamist Denied Senate Seat

William H. King of Salt Lake City replaces B. H. Roberts, who was unseated over polygamy. King also serves on the Overman Committee, which investigated “un-American” activities during WWI. 

Justice George Sutherland

– 1922 – 
One of the ‘Four Horsemen’ of the U.S. Supreme Court

The Senate confirms the nomination of George Sutherland to the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the first and only Utahn to so far serve on the Supreme Court. During his tenure, he becomes known as one of the court’s “Four Horseman,” a group of conservative justices who rule against some of F.D.R.’s New Deal policies.

– 1930 – 
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, cosponsored by Senator Reed Smoot (then chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance), is signed into law. The act raises U.S. tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods to record levels, and other countries raise their tariffs in retaliation. It is widely blamed for prolonging the Great Depression.

Marriner Eccles

– 1934 – 
The Father of the Modern Federal Reserve

F.D.R. appoints Marriner S. Eccles, a Utah banker,  as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Eccles advocates for policies that become the architecture of the New Deal. By restructuring the Fed, he becomes known as “the father of the modern Federal Reserve.” He is the son of industrialist David Eccles’ and Eccles’ second wife, Ellen Stoddard Eccles.

Elbert D. Thomas

– 1937 –
New Deal

Elbert Thomas of Salt Lake City becomes chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. He introduces part of the New Deal legislation and serves on New Deal committees.

Arthur Watkins

– 1953 –
Leading the Tribal Termination Movement

Utah Senator Arthur Watkins spearheads the assimilation of native tribes and the tribal termination movement, authoring bills that unrecognize and relocate 60 tribes across the country.

Ezra Taft Benson

– 1953 –
Secretary of Agriculture

President Dwight Eisenhower appoints Ezra Taft Benson as Secretary of Agriculture. Benson opposes government price controls and aid to farmers, arguing that it amounts to socialism and drawing the ire of farmers across the country and at home in Utah and Idaho.

Ivy Baker Priest

– 1953 – 
United States Treasurer

President Dwight Eisenhower also appoints Ivy Baker Priest of Utah as Treasurer.

Joe McCarthy

– 1954 – 
Censuring McCarthy

Arthur Watkins is chair of the Select Committee to Study Censure Charges against Joseph McCarthy, voting to censure McCarthy for conduct unbecoming of a senator.

Esther Eggertsen Peterson

– 1961 > 1963 – 
Equal Pay for Equal Work

President John F. Kennedy calls up Esther Eggertsen Peterson, a labor organizer and lobbyist from Utah, to be Director of the U.S. Women’s Bureau and later the Assistant Secretary of Labor. She crusades for the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

Frank “Ted” Moss

– 1965 – 
Consumer Protection

Utah Senator Frank “Ted” Moss champions the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, creating requirements for cigarette package labels and banning cigarette advertisements. As chair of the Consumer Subcommittee, Moss sponsors numerous consumer protection acts that become law.

David M. Kennedy

– 1969 – 
Short-lived Term in the Treasury

David Kennedy of Utah serves as Secretary of the Treasury and later as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, after losing the favor of President Richard Nixon.

Wayne Owens

– 1973 – 
Taking Nixon to Task

Wayne Owens of Panguitch is elected to U.S. Congress. While in Congress, Owens fights to impeach Richard Nixon for the Watergate scandal, despite Nixon’s popularity among Utahns. 

Utah’s Faithful Fight the ERA

– 1976 > 1977 – 
Equal Rights Amendment

LDS Church leaders direct anti-Equal Rights Amendment campaigns in 21 states outside of Utah, collecting funds for Families Are Concerned Today. Their efforts often receive credit for defeating the ERA.

MX Missle Protest

– 1979 > 1980 – 
The Mormon Church and the MX Missile 

The Carter administration plans to have the Air Force store new MX missiles on bases in Utah. LDS Church leadership releases a statement against the missile bases, after which opposition to base in Utah increases by 21% and the plan does not move forward.

Jake Garn

– 1981 > 1982 – 
Banking Deregulation

Jake Garn of Utah becomes chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. As chair, Garn co-authors the Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982. The law deregulates the savings and loan industry in an attempt to thwart the ’80s S&L crisis. The Act directly contributes to the conditions that cause the 2007 Subprime Mortgage Crisis.

Orrin Hatch

– 1988 > 1990 – 
An Unlikely Supporter of AIDS Funding + Research

Orrin Hatch of Utah gathers support to pass the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Research and Information Act. Two years later, Hatch co-sponsors the Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act.

– 1990 – 
ADA

Hatch proves instrumental in ushering the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) through a gridlocked U.S. Senate with the passage of the Hatch Amendment.

– 1994 – 
DSHEA

Hatch authors the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which deregulates the dietary and herbal supplements industry.

– 1997 – 
CHIP

Hatch works with Ted Kennedy to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover uninsured children whose family’s often do not qualify for Medicaid in their states.

– 1998 – 
Opposing Gay Marriage

The Hawaii legislature passes a bill that bans gay marriage, following the lobbying efforts of the LDS Church and other religious organizations.

– 2001 – 
The Patriot Act

Orrin Hatch introduces the controversial USA PATRIOT Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Some of the bill’s provisions are later struck down in legal challenges for violating individuals’ constitutional and civil rights.

Mitt Romney

– 2012 – 
On the Main Stage

Utah’s political visibility appears to be at an all-time high. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. (and at times serving as U.S. Ambassador to Singapore, China or Russia) makes a bid for the presidency, and future Utah Senator Mitt Romney secures the Republican nomination but loses the general election to Barack Obama.

Orrin Hatch

– 2018 – 
Long Legacy

Orrin Hatch announces his retirement from the Senate. He is Utah’s longest-serving senator, surpassing Reed Smoot’s record of 30 years. During his term, Hatch sponsors or co-sponsors nearly 800 pieces of legislation that pass into law. Mitt Romney succeeds Hatch.

Unmaking the New Deal

While Eccles went back to Utah during the Truman administration, he returned to Washington, D.C., in a fashion, when the building that houses the Fed was named for him. The provision to name it after Eccles came in a 1982 bill co-authored by Utah Senator Jake Garn. Perhaps ironically, given Eccles’ convictions, the Garn-St. Germaine Act deregulated financial institutions, removing some Depression-era restraints on savings and loans and allowing variable-rate mortgages. As with Smoot-Hawley, the legacy of the Garn-St. Germain Act is one of devastating, unintended consequences.

If this sounds familiar, VRMs were at the heart of the 2007 Subprime Mortgage Crisis, which preceded the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. 

As economist Gillian Garcia noted, “The Garn-St. Germain Act allowed lenders to make alternative mortgages, some of which proved to be problematic…unrestrained lenders offered infamous 2/28 adjustable-rate mortgages to entice subprime borrowers,” who then could not afford payments when the rate reset at a higher rate, and millions of people lost their homes. 

Conspiracy Thinking

Eccles’ policies as Fed Chair drew the same sort of shallow criticism that we see in American politics today, when one congresswoman told him, “You just love socialism.” During the Red Scare, such unfounded accusations abounded. Burgeoning McCarthyist fervor ended Sen. Elbert Thomas’s political career. Thomas advocated for accepting more Jewish refugees into the U.S. and against interning Japanese Americans during WWII. His inclinations toward global cooperation saw him labeled a communist sympathizer. 

In 1953, one man with Utah ties came to Washington, D.C. with more zeal for rooting out communism than anyone, perhaps save for Sen. Joe McCarthy himself. When Ezra Taft Benson, a Mormon apostle, became President Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture, he did not face the same scrutiny that Smoot endured. At the time, separation of church and state was not much of an issue, explains Dr. Gregory Prince, author of multiple books and essays on Mormon history. “The precedent of a high-ranking church official holding a high office in the federal government had been in place for decades,” says Prince. “I think what changed was the nature of the public’s perception of what churches should and should not do.” 

The shift in perception might have come about in part because of Benson’s controversial politics. In his book, Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right, Matthew Harris, professor of history at Colorado State University, details Benson’s political involvement and influence. Benson believed “he had a divine calling to warn Americans about the dangers of communism,” says Harris. As such, he created a secret surveillance system to catch suspected communists within his department. Benson also worked on dismantling the popular New Deal policies of price controls on farm goods and reducing agricultural subsidies, which he called socialism. 

As Benson became entrenched in the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative anti-communist hate group, “Benson emerged as one of the leading anti-communist spokesmen in the United States,” says Harris. For Benson, the concepts of centralized government, socialism, social justice, atheism, etc., were lumped together under a communist conspiracy that he believed had infiltrated all levels of government and corrupted the American way of life. 

Harris is careful to point out that Benson was not unique among his peers for embracing conspiracy theories, with one notable exception. Benson and his friend J. Rueben Clark—whose name is still on BYU’s law school—were “the only apostles who associated the conspiracy with Jews.” They made antisemitic claims that Jewish people established communism and the NAACP to promote racial integration, which Benson opposed. Benson’s political ambitions culminated in two failed presidential bids with two high-profile segregationists: Strom Thurmond and George Wallace.

Influence on Civil Rights

In 1898, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon, the first woman to serve as a State Senator in Utah and the U.S., testified to the success of Utah’s equal suffrage before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. Cannon declared that the women’s suffrage experiment was so successful that it “is no longer an experiment, but is a practical reality, tending to the well-being of the State,” and “Even those who opposed equal suffrage with the greatest ability and vehemence would not now vote for the repeal of the measure.”

The Utah Territory’s women were the first in the nation to cast their ballots. The comparatively early adoption of women’s right to vote and run for public office allowed Utah women to become powerful and vocal advocates for the national suffragist movement, Cannon among them, alongside household names like Susan B. Anthony. While nothing can purge Utah’s legacy as a state that pioneered women’s involvement in politics, Utah’s role as a civil rights leader would later transform into that of one of its most ardent detractors. 

Officials in Washington, D.C. were not the sole actors from Utah influencing national politics. The Utah-based religious organization, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka LDS Church or Mormon Church), has wielded its clout and deployed an obedient membership to sway national politics. Gregory Prince notes that the first time the LDS Church waded into a political issue and made a difference on a national level is with the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 (ERA). 

The ERA would amend the U.S. Constitution to include, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” and needed the approval of three-fourths of state legislatures to ratify. The Utah-based church (then led by Spencer W. Kimball) publicly justified its opposition to the ERA in 1976 when it needed only four more states’ approvals. The church considered the ERA not a political issue but a moral one. The church claimed that the ERA allowed for a “possible train of unnatural consequences” such as “encouragement of those who seek a unisex society, an increase in the practice of homosexual and lesbian activities, and other concepts which could alter the natural, God-given relationship of men and women.” 

LDS Church leadership created a Special Affairs Committee to spearhead anti-ERA efforts in 21 states outside of Utah, where members collected funds for anti-ERA candidates, distributed pamphlets and organized letter-writing campaigns. Historian D. Michael Quinn wrote, “The results were numerically staggering.” Of the anti-ERA mail received by state legislators in Virginia, for instance, 85% of the letters were written by Mormons. They succeeded in swaying ERA “I think the ERA was when they honed their political skills, certainly,” says Prince. “And that same playbook came back in the marriage equality battle.” The Utah-based church once again mobilized to influence votes in other states—this time to oppose the legalization of gay marriage. “That started in Hawaii,” says Prince. The LDS Church “allied with the Catholic Church, very quietly, under a front organization called Hawaii’s Future Today,” says Prince. “It had a significant influence on the debate and the legislation that was going on in Hawaii.” 

The LDS Church followed similar patterns in 2000 with Proposition 22 and again in 2008 with Proposition 8, both in California. “When Proposition 8 came around, they jumped in with both feet,” says Prince. “They took a very public stand and had a considerable boots-on-the-ground initiative within the state.” Mormons’ financial contributions accounted for more than half of the money raised in support of Prop 8. 

The LDS Church likewise declared this a moral issue, not a political one, and published its justification, called The Family: A Proclamation to the World. The document asserts that divine design only allows for a narrow definition of marriage, families and gender roles. The proclamation warns that living outside this definition “will bring upon…the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.” 

The promises of the unraveling of society are not unlike the arguments made against women’s rights. As Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon observed in her prescient testimony on women’s suffrage to Congress in 1898, “None of the unpleasant results, which were predicted, have occurred…[They] have all been found to be but the ghosts of unfounded prejudices.”  

Time Will Tell

Utah’s history of political influence could show that who wielded power was determined by the swing of the ideological pendulum. The same state that produced George Sutherland, who ruled against New Deal legislation as a Supreme Court Justice, elected Abe Murdock, a New Deal supporter; Republican Arthur Watkins replaced him, and Frank Moss, the last Democrat to represent Utah, replaced him. Moss lost reelection to Orrin Hatch. Had the pendulum stopped swinging? 

“Utah began to swing to the right with the full aid of Benson,” says Prince. “And I think it’s kept going in that direction ever since. I think that’s where the genesis of it was, in the early 1960s, to the point now where Utah is one of the most reliably pro-Trump states in the country.” 

That is not the sum of Utah’s political legacy. People—even politicians—are complex, and sometimes they break ideological ranks to great effect. 

As a final example, take Sen. Watkins, who championed a policy that forcibly disconnected indigenous people from their culture and lands. But during his tenure in Congress he also headed a committee to censure Joe McCarthy, a move so unpopular in Utah that he likely lost his seat over it. What was right and what was wrong depends on not just who you ask but when. Legacy is our choices and all of the unintended consequences.