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As the title says, I'm thinking about doing a TL involving Mo Udall and the LDS Church. Here's what I want to do:

1) According to this, the LDS Church was on the verge of voting out the racial priesthood ban in 1969, rather than the OTL date of 1978. One of my PoDs will be for Harold B Lee to be sick and thus not able to get to that clandestine meeting.

2) As a result of this Mo Udall (who was at odds with the Church partially because of this policy) stays fully a Mormon, and in 1976 quietly courts the conservative Mormon vote in multiple states, and avoids the problems he had with the black vote (Coleman Young famously attacked Udall over the issue of race in Mormonism), thereby helping him in the Democratic primaries

3) I'm hoping that this would be would be enough to push Udall into first, but I don't know that much about 1970s American politics (or 1970s anything, really), so I would like some thoughts on how Udall's campaign could go better; could he campaign better, and if so, how? Could the other candidates (and Ford) be damaged politically enough by some scandal or another (Carter's Playboy interview, or something similar)?

4) Who would be a good VP for Udall? Could Carter be acceptable?

5) The second (or third, depending on if I) PoD is for Udall to not have Parkinsons disease. I don't think I need to explain more for this.

6) If the LDS Church secretly (or somewhat openly) supports the liberal Democrat Mo Udall, I'm wondering how that could affect politics within Mormonism, and the general political trend of Mormon voters. Perhaps they stay fairly moderate, with a Udall-esque bent on environmentalism?

7) With Udall as president, how are the events of the OTL Carter Administration changed? What would Udall do differently? Could he succeed where Carter didn't? Where would he fail (since I don't want to do a "Udall-wank" TL)?

I'd like to do a well-done Udall TL, so I'd like discussion on all of these thoughts (and more, if you think of more things I need to cover).
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