"For our friends from the press, no, there is no open bar," joked Utah Democratic Party chairman Jim Dabakis on Tuesday afternoon, as he called to order the first national meeting of the "LDS Dems" — short for Latter-day-Saints Democrats. And while the dozens of reporters who packed into a Holiday Inn conference room a block from the Democratic National Convention certainly didn't expect alcoholic beverages (or caffeinated ones, for that matter), they were hoping they might encounter some, you know, Mormon Democrats — who, in a year when Mitt Romney is the GOP presidential candidate, seem as unlikely and out of step as African-American Republicans did in 2008. Alas, the LDS Dems were just slightly less scarce than booze.
According to a Pew poll from earlier this year, 17 percent of American Mormons identify as Democrats (compared to 74 percent who ID as Republicans). And the LDS Dems caucus inside the Utah Democratic Party boasts 2,000 members. But at the LDS Dems meeting in Charlotte, the Mormon Democrats appeared to be outnumbered by the reporters there to gawk at or interview them, or simply the non-LDS Dems who were there to show their support. After approaching half a dozen attendees who weren't reporters and not finding a Mormon among them—"Most of my family is LDS, but I'm not," Ali Sadler, a young Utah delegate, apologized—I finally encountered a living, breathing LDS Dem named David Baker.
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