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Response to accusation of “bigotry”

Some of you may have read a leader to the editor of the Daily Universe on Wednesday criticizing a sign that had been on display at the BYU Democrats booth.  The sign read “Mitt Romney dropped out.  Now you have to think.”  The editorial suggested that this was bigotry.  The following response was sent to the DU editorial staff, and while it was unfortunately not published in today’s editorial page, as it should have been, we have been told it will be published on Monday.  I did not want to wait, however, knowing that many of you might have concerns about the situation:

90 percent of those who voted in Utah’s Republican primary now face a choice.  On February 5th, they all chose to support Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.  Today, Mitt Romney is no longer in the running, and each and every one of those voters must now decide which candidate they will support in his stead.  To make that decision, they must think.  That was the fundamental argument of the sign posted at the BYU Democrats booth last week, and if you were to present that to any of those February 5th Romney supporters, they would agree.

The criticism offered of the sign in Wednesday’s opinion page suggested that presenting a similar argument to women who support Hillary Clinton or African-Americans who support Barack Obama in the event of either candidate’s withdrawal would amount to bigotry, and that therefore our sign was equally inappropriate.  Romney’s 90% support margin in Utah’s primary, far and away the widest win margin of any candidate of either party in any state’s primary thus far, combined with the fact that none of Romney’s policy platforms could be described as appealing specifically to Utahns, provides strong evidence that the causal factor in Utah’s disproportionate support of Romney is the one overwhelming trait that makes Utah unique: the predominance of the LDS faith.  This suggests that many Utah voters chose Romney predominately because he is a Mormon.  Now that there are no Mormon candidates in the race, this motivating factor has been rendered insignificant, and those single-issue Mormon voters must now think harder as to what factors will define their voting choice.  This is a valid criticism.  If statistics show that black voters are supporting Obama based on his race alone, or that women gravitate towards Hillary solely because of gender, to suggest that the resignation of either candidate’s campaign would complicate these voters’ candidate selection process would also be valid.  The fundamental issue here is single-issue voting, not religious affiliation, gender, or race, and therefore the accusation of bigotry is baseless.