Posted by:
PtLoma
(
)
Date: October 31, 2013 12:06PM
In my smallish (pop. 35,000) SoCal town, LDS population used to be growing. The city owned a parcel of land next to a very upscale country club (the first president of the Newport Beach temple lived there) which the country club developer had gifted to the city as part of the development deal.
City held a sealed bid auction for the parcel. LDS Church was one of the bidders, but bid too low and the winning bid was some commercial developer. THat company never built anything due to the economy. Just recently, a large medical group in town lost its lease for its current quarters and a developer stepped in to buy the land and build a new facility for the medical group.
LDS Inc was out-bid for this parcel in the early 2000s. They have no in-town facility, there are two wards each in a different stake. Each of the two wards is assigned to an out-of-town meeting house (each in a different town, in a different stake), so that members drive 5-10 miles to go to church. Not a big deal on Sundays, but it has to affect mid-week activities unless the parents serve as virtual taxi services.
No growth over the past two decades, still two wards, and since TSCC has no in-town facilities, it's not very attractive for prospective LDS move-ins. THey tend to cluster in the next town over, which has a stake center, so they can live a mile or two from church.
Good for us as it keeps the TBM factor here relatively low. In the adjacent town, the Mormon Factor raised its ugly head last November when a former LDS bishop (he was bishop before moving here, but obviously is well known in local stake circles) ran for school board against the incumbent---who as it turns out is EXMORMON (for how long, I don't know, but obviously the LDS axes were sharpened).
I first sensed something was wrong when a string of LDS clients advised me to vote for their candidate (the former bishop---for here I'll use his initals "SL"). They were unaware that school board elections in our district are by zone: only voters in Zone 1 can vote for the Zone 1 candidates---it's not at-large. SL is a wealthy roofing company owner, I don't know if he is BIC or convert. Did not do mission or BYU. From his website, I could tell he was LDS from the list of community activities and from one photo taken in Paris with his wife in which a scoop-neck garment line was clearly visible. So it didn't take much to figure out the guy was LDS and that the stake was doing all it could to elect him.
The next thing that was odd were reports from two non-LDS clients that they'd seen some odd politicking at city events: the football Homecoming game and a middle school Open House (back to school night). At both events, about 100 people were gathered in the parking lot, holding signs supporting SL. Even more strange, five year-olds were handing out flyers in support of SL, and onlookers noticed women in their mid to late 20s pushing baby strollers with 1-3 young kids following....not the usual school board activists one encounters here (usually in their 30s-50s, and they don't use young kids to pass out literature). Again, TSCC doesn't know how do to things with subtlety, they only know how to use a sledgehammer. I also heard stories of people receiving front door canvassing efforts by known neighbhorhood Mormons (one such person who got unwanted front door bell rings is an inactive Mormon---because he knew that the unwanted canvassers were active LDS, he figured the candidate was also active LDS).
SL lost 48-40% but it was close. With bloc voting, you only need 5-10% of the people solidly behind you, and the opponent then has to win by >10% outside the bloc (i.e. among non-LDS voters) in order to hit 51%. There was a third party candidate who probably hurt SL because he offered an alternate choice for anti-incumbent voters. If one assumes that most of the third candidate's supporters would have backed SL rather than the incumbent, it's possible that SL could have won in a two-candidate race.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2013 12:08PM by PtLoma.