I just finished another thing from my American Federation TL.
The Republic of Deseret is among the most politically distinct in the Federation, primarily due to its history as a region first colonized by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) missionaries who fled eastern territories due to persecution. First admitted to the Federation in 1858 under the terms of the end of the Deseret War, which the Federation ultimately capitulated from due to the international controversy, it started out as a theocracy governed by LDS President Brigham Young, but by 1870 had formed a democracy with a dominant party system. The People’s Party, the Mormon political vehicle in the state, won every election from 1870 to 1895, which was narrowly won by the Liberals under Thomas Kearns, considered a left-wing firebrand due to his Catholicism and his party’s radical manifesto calling for the free coinage of silver to capitalize on its abundance in Deseret.
Kearns’ government’s single five-year term in office saw radical reforms including an eight hour work day, bimetallism implementation and a reduction in the powers of the LDS President against the Deseretian Parliament; surprisingly, all of these were retained when the People’s Party returned to power in Deseret in 1900, the former two due to their popularity and the latter due to the High Court of the Federation overruling the bill intended to restore the LDS President’s powers. However, the Liberals would not regain power until 1931, since despite the rising miner population of Utah, the People’s Party was able to accuse them for being willing to sell out Mormonism, a damning accusation when a majority of the republic’s population has always been Mormon.
It took the Great Depression and the highly unpopular People’s government of Reed Smoot to change that. The charismatic Liberal George Dern proposed ambitious social welfare programmes and tax reform in contrast to the ardently laissez-faire Smoot and won a landslide, with the implementation of public works programmes, irrigation and relief work helping allow him a second landslide in 1936. Just three months after being re-elected, however, he died and the Liberals picked their first ever Mormon leader, Henry Blood, who declared in his first speech that ‘the Liberals have become not a party committed to hatred of Mormonism, but a party committed to the advancement of all peoples’. He and his successor Herbert Maw were both left-wing liberals who retained power in no small part thanks to the continued strong economy.
In 1949, however, the election was narrowly won by the People’s Party, and George Dewey Clyde became PM. Clyde continued to expand works programmes and increase wages while allowing private investment to take priority over public investment, a stance that allowed him to win a landslide re-election in 1953, but when he resigned as a result of a 2-day classroom walk-out by educators protesting his spending increases falling short of what they needed, he resigned and right-winger Arthur Watkins took power. Watkins proved scandal-prone and damaging, with his heavy slashing of public services and controversial Native American assimilation plans, and the 1958 recession led him to lose that year’s election.
The Liberal PM to replace Watkins was Frank Moss, who created a universal healthcare system for Deseret and deftly balanced environmental protections with benefits for miners, a balancing act that made him popular and allowed him to become Deseret’s longest-serving PM, staying in power until 1978; after a single People’s Party term under Jake Garn, whose administration slashed public services and banned abortion in Deseret, the poor economy saw him lose to Ted Wilson, the last Liberal PM to date.
After Wilson left office in 1988, Deseret’s politics have drifted rightward, with the ban on abortion remaining in place and continued cutting to welfare programmes and Medicaid while tax cuts have repeatedly been passed. Since 2010, when Mike Lee ousted Bob Bennett as People’s Party leader, Lee has served as PM, and he won a comfortable victory in 2011, but the 2016 election saw him fighting an election on an issue that severely divided not only the People’s Party, but Deseretian society in general.
Despite the severe abhorration of the practice in most other Federation countries, since its foundation Deseret has been the only country in the Federation in which polygamy is legal. While the 2011 Census showed only about 13% of Deseretians are engaged in polygamous relationships, when Lee announced in January 2016 he wished to abolish the practice the President of the LDS Church Thomas Monson announced that Lee ‘has declared war on his own people’. Subsequently, Provo North MP Evan McMullin and four other People’s MPs resigned from the party, announcing the formation of a new party, the Conservative Party, which sought to ensure no polygamy ban would pass.
One might assume the People’s Party could simply fall back on the Liberals to get through a polygamy ban, but Liberal leader Jackie Biskupski and the party whips revealed the Liberals would abstain any polygamy vote. The reason for this is fairly simple- a rising movement in Deseret, particularly among its LGBTQ community and the socially liberal regions of Salt Lake City, has called for the polygamy laws to be reformed to form the basis of a law establishing polyamory as a legally recognized form of relationship. Biskupski gave an impassioned speech on this, stressing her solidarity with other queer Deseretians as a lesbian herself, and her hope that Deseret might soon become the second country in the Federation to legally recognize polyamory after California. Surprisingly, given the traditionally limited tolerance of Deseretians of LGBTQ people, Biskupski’s speech was actually well received both within and outside the country.
With the split between her, Lee and McMullin being fairly even, the 2016 election was expected to lead to a hung Parliament, and this was exactly what happened, as for the first time since 1973, Deseretians elected a Parliament in which no party had an overall majority. The People’s Party fell three seats short of one thanks to the Conservatives shaving off a huge chunk of their voteshare, and the two-party voteshare fell from 91.3% in 2011 to 68.5%. While the Liberals' voteshare fell, they bled far less support for tacitly backing polyamory than the People’s Party did for actively opposing polygamy. On top of this, Deseret also made headlines for electing its first ever transgender MP, Misty Snow.
Humiliated by the election, Lee has had no less than six leadership challenges in the four years since, and despite the objections of some of the high-ups in the Mormon church, many Deseretians have slowly come around to adopting polyamory as an alternative to polygamy; in 2018, when a free vote on the issue was finally held, 38 MPs (all the Liberals, 9 of the 11 Conservatives, 3 People’s MPs and the sole Green MP, Rocky Anderson) voted to establish the legal status of polyamory. Advocates have praised the move for effectively making polygamy defunct; critics have pointed out that it does not abolish or replace polygamy, and exlusionist queer folk have criticized the move due to opposition to polyamorous relationships on principle. Regardless, the move is a historic one for Deseret and has only heightened the popularity of Biskupski. Whether she can finally topple Lee’s government and become the first Liberal PM in 31 years (or 30 if the election is held this year), and whether the People’s Party will continue to lose relevance to the Conservatives, has yet to be seen, but the politics of Deseret are perhaps more fluid now than they have ever been in its history.
