Support for the Radio West podcast comes from Harmon's Grocery, where Easter baskets can be filled with chef-prepared holiday meals, Easter lilies, Easter candy, and more.

We've been exploring the history of the Republican Party in Utah over the last few weeks because we wanted to see how the party has evolved over time and whether or how Donald Trump has changed its character.

And there's a legend you hear about the state's political history that when Mormon leaders were lobbying for statehood, they realized they had to convince Congress there was political diversity here, only there wasn't really.

Mormons voted in a block. So church leaders divided up ward congregations and assigned people a party.

When we talked to the journalist Rod Decker, he had a version of that story.

David O. McKay told this story. He grew up in Huntsville. He said the elders came, and by the

time they got to the McKay House, everybody had chosen all the Republican slots. So the McKay's had to be Democrats. And he said, quote,

how ashamed we were to be Democrats in those days. The only Democrat before had been the town drunk.

So there was some assignment and there was some stories about it.

The problem is like a lot of good stories, it's probably too good to be true.

But the historian Benjamin Park told us the real story might be just as interesting.

He says, yes, Utah desperately wanted to be a state, and the Republican Party could help them do just that.

So while there's a lot of family lore and stories passed down about members being divided at

meetings by church leaders into Democrat and Republican camps, we actually don't have any

evidence that that literally took place. However,

as is the case with most folkloric stories, there is a thematic truth to it. It's, we'll call it

spiritually true because it was very much the case that in the 1890s, LDS leaders were concerned that there was not enough political diversity among the membership.

So over the previous few years, there had been some tentative talks with the Republican Party.

The national GOP as a political power had been losing a lot of its dominance.

And as a result, the Republican Party, and especially the political operators, were seeking for ways to shore up

their political dominance. And one of the ways they could do that would be building alliances

out in the West. There are all of these Western territories, of which Utah was one, that still

...