Mitt, the Mormons & Me 

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An LDS Olive Branch
Not that long after the Olympic story and scandal, I arranged a meeting with some key LDS Church officials. I asked if they would be interested in working with me on some stories. The pieces would be about the search for my grandparents who had been killed in the Holocaust. After mulling it over, the church ultimately signed off on the project and provided invaluable genealogical assistance. Eventually, with the information they found, I was able to trace my grandparents to Auschwitz.

This led to my reporting on several very personal and well-received stories. In fact, after one of these stories aired, I was stopped by an LDS member on Temple Square. Near tears, he told me how much these Holocaust stories meant to him and how nice it was for my people to reach out to his. Later, I would hear similar comments from other Mormons. These stories would also help lead to one of the most important moments in my Utah evolution.

March 2005 marked the 10th anniversary of the installation of Gordon B. Hinckley as the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To commemorate this, the church held a press event with President Hinckley and the other two members of the First Presidency, Thomas S. Monson and James E. Faust.

It was billed as a conversation between the First Presidency and the media. Taking part was one journalist from each of the major Salt Lake City TV stations. The church had been kind enough to invite me to be the representative from my station. This, I think, was due to our recent, positive collaboration.

I asked several questions during the conversation with the First Presidency, but one has lingered with me to this day.

I asked if America were ready to elect a Mormon president. Instead of answering it himself, President Hinckley turned to James E. Faust. I am not quite sure why, but the way these two church leaders looked at each other made me think they had talked about this topic before.

Elder Faust answered my question by making comparisons to Al Smith and John F. Kennedy, both Catholic presidential candidates. When Smith ran, Elder Faust noted, people said a Catholic couldn’t win. But eventually, Elder Faust continued, Kennedy did. The second counselor in the First Presidency concluded his answer by saying, yes, he expected “that day will come for a Mormon.”

For me, this conversation with the First Presidency was notable for other reasons, as well.

Near the end of the conversation, President Hinckley was asked by another journalist what impact he thought the 2002 Olympics had on the church.

I remember leaning forward to make sure I heard every word of President Hinckley’s answer. Here, according to my notes, was his response:

“Well, it was a great occasion, as you know. We had people come from everywhere. They enjoyed it immensely. Our people all worked together. We had former missionaries who spoke languages that the people were accustomed to. They could serve as guides and helpers. They didn’t impose their faith on anybody. But many, many people were very, very impressed with Salt Lake City and Utah as a result of that tremendous undertaking, and I believe that the knowledge which people gained of the church as they saw it in action here has helped us and blessed us since then. I hope so.”

Here was the leader of the LDS Church saying, on the record, that the 2002 Winter Games had helped the church.

I couldn’t help but compare that to what my source had told me years before: that my early reporting of the Olympic scandal had caused a stir at the highest levels of the LDS leadership. Now, President Hinckley’s answer seemed to suggest something very different, something that I have given a lot of thought to since.

Simply put: While the Olympic scandal may have given Utah a temporary black eye, it also brought Mitt Romney to Utah. This helped lead to a successful Winter Games and catapulted him into elected office.

When the taping of the conversation with the First Presidency ended, I enjoyed a brief chat with President Hinckley. His final words to me that day were said with a gracious, perhaps knowing smile.

“You ought to come by more often.”

I took President Hinckley’s positive comment about the Olympics as a personal validation of sorts. If this sounds somewhat self-aggrandizing, well, there’s a bit more to this story.

The truth is, when my source told me all those years ago that someone high up in the church had voiced concerns about my Olympic reporting, a name also was mentioned. According to my source, the concern came from President Hinckley himself.

This is why his Olympic remark meant so much to me. I felt I had been absolved.

You’re Welcome, Mitt
All these memories will travel with me when I head to Tampa, Fla., at the end of August to cover the Republican National Convention for ABC4 News. There, on Thursday, Aug. 30, Mitt Romney will deliver his convention speech accepting the Republican nomination for president. It will be a moment of triumph for a man, a religion and a state.

Romney has now been running for president for at least the past five years—some might suggest longer. He has personally spent tens of millions of dollars in this presidential quest, not to mention the time, effort and never-ending scrutiny. Finally, he and his family will be rewarded with his party’s nomination.

As for the LDS Church, that moment will represent a remarkable evolutionary turn. Once persecuted as outsiders, the Mormon people will, at long last, see one of their own reach very rarefied political air. Mitt Romney’s speech that night will also be highly significant to me, but in a quieter, less public way.

I expect my thoughts that night will be many and varied. I wouldn’t be surprised if I think about my 30 years in Utah, about the perils and promise of holding up letters on TV, and about how close Mitt Romney may be to living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Listening to his words that night, I may also silently yet strongly be reminded that journalism still matters.

But not only that. Lately, I have found myself thinking about families. My father, Sander Vanocur, covered Mitt Romney’s father, Gov. George Romney, when he ran for president in 1968. Forty four years later, that reporter’s son is covering that governor’s son.

In a state where both family and history matter a great deal, this almost half-century connection is another intriguing footnote to the story of Mitt, the Mormons and me.

Earlier this summer, I was attending a charity event when a person who appeared to be both slightly liberal and slightly inebriated approached me. He greeted me with this cheeky comment, “So, I suppose we have you to thank if Mitt Romney becomes president?” He proceeded to explain how my breaking the Olympic story had brought Romney to Utah and started him on the path to the White House.

It was not the first time someone had said this to me. Over the years, I have heard this lighthearted suggestion from Democrats, Republicans and even from someone fairly high up in the Romney campaign. It always makes me laugh. To think that someone of Romney’s intelligence, abilities, energy and ambition would need help from a hack like me never ceases to amuse.

Still … if Mitt Romney were elected president and somehow wanted to say thank you in the form of a plum political job, I suppose it would be unpatriotic of me not to accept.

I could, for example, be one of the Federal Communications Commissioners. There is plenty of mischief to be had there.

Or, on second thought, I would also grudgingly accept an appointment as ambassador to a warm island somewhere in the Pacific. Perhaps, I could be assigned to a small country with quality beaches, an absence of political strife and no Winter Olympic sports.

This, it seems to me, would be the perfect place to let some old scar tissue disappear in the warmth of the sun. 

Chris Vanocur is the senior political reporter for ABC4 News. He also hosts the Sunday morning show On the Record.