SALT LAKE CITY — A week after the Harris campaign launched an advisory committee to target Latter-day Saint voters in Arizona, the Trump campaign is quietly prepping a pitch of its own.

Former President Donald Trump met with a group of Latter-day Saints who work in politics, as well as influencers, at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida Tuesday night, according to an individual with knowledge of the meeting. The purpose was “to strategize how to coalesce and motivate the LDS vote,” the individual said.

Guests included Marlon Bateman, a former State Department official, who was tasked by Trump to head up a “Latter-day Saints for Trump” coalition during a fundraising event in Salt Lake City this month. Bateman declined to comment.

With less than six weeks until Election Day, the Latter-day Saint vote has quickly become an important factor for both presidential campaigns. Whether members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints turn out, especially in Arizona and Nevada, could significantly influence the race: More than 440,000 Latter-day Saints live in Arizona, a state President Joe Biden won in 2020 by less than 11,000 votes; in Nevada, where over 180,000 Latter-day Saints live, Biden won in 2020 by about 33,000 votes.

In recent weeks, the campaigns have begun actively courting these voters. Last month, the Harris campaign hired a director of faith outreach, who has singled out Latter-day Saint voters as a key target. On Thursday, the Harris campaign unveiled its “Latter-day Saint advisory committee” in Arizona, made up of Democrats, Republicans and independents throughout the state.

“I feel very strongly that I need to tell people that it’s OK — and not just OK, it’s great — to be a person of faith and be supporting Vice President Kamala Harris,” Claudia Walters, a member of the advisory committee and former Mesa mayor, said during a launch event last week.

Walters spoke on a Zoom call Thursday, organized by the Harris campaign, targeted toward Latter-day Saints. The campaign held a similar call in August, garnering over 2,000 RSVPs.

A surprise speaker on Thursday’s call? Evan McMullin — the former independent candidate for president in 2016 and the U.S. Senate in Utah in 2022, according to Rob Taber, who organized Thursday’s call. McMullin did not respond to a request for comment.

How will Latter-day Saints vote in 2024?

Latter-day Saints have long been a reliably Republican voting bloc, and those in Trump’s orbit do not see that changing: Trump won 80% of the Latter-day Saint vote in Arizona in 2020, according to exit polls. But Trump began targeted outreach earlier in that cycle, launching a “Latter-day Saints for Trump” coalition in August 2020 and sending both then-Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr. to Arizona for rallies. One Latter-day Saint — Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. — spoke at those events.

The Trump campaign is entertaining the idea of a similar, Latter-day Saint-targeted rally in Arizona, but with a wrinkle: bringing in prominent Latter-day Saint influencers to stump for Trump. Dave Sparks and David Kiley, the Utah-based stars of the reality TV show “Diesel Brothers,” joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago and are participating in the Latter-day Saint outreach effort, a person aware of the conversations said.

Trump now has the endorsement of every sitting Latter-day Saint in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, except Sen. Mitt Romney, who said he would not support Trump.

“I know for some people, character is not the No. 1 issue (when selecting a president),” Romney said in May. “It is for me. When someone has been, well, determined by a jury to have committed sexual assault, that’s not someone who I want my kids and grandkids to see as president of the United States.”

That view was once shared by many Latter-day Saints: in 2016, Trump garnered less than 50% of the vote in ruby-red Utah — the worst performance by a Republican in decades — after a slew of prominent Latter-day Saint officials called on him to exit the race when he bragged about sexually assaulting women.

But Trump performed markedly better in Utah in 2016, and many of his onetime critics — including current Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Sen. Mike Lee — have come around.

“When I got to know him, I realized there’s good in him,” Lee told The Dispatch in July. “He has genuine compassion for people, for what they go through.”

The Utah Republican Party is leading a charge to help its neighboring states — and their large Latter-day Saint populations — back Trump. The Utah GOP is currently recruiting volunteers for all-expenses-paid “door-knocking and canvassing trips” to Arizona and Nevada, according to an email sent to the party’s mailing list this week. Busloads of volunteers will parachute into the neighboring states for weekend trips in October “to help turn these battleground states red,” the email read.

“We certainly have an opportunity and an obligation to help our neighbor states,” Rob Axson, the Utah GOP chair, said. “Many of us are connected by family or by faith (with voters in Arizona and Nevada).”

The first trip is scheduled for Oct. 3-6 — a weekend when many Latter-day Saints will be watching or attending the Church of Jesus Christ’s semiannual General Conference — which creates a “challenge,” Axson acknowledged. “We tried to avoid that, but there are only so many weekends before the election,” he said.

In a statement, Halee Dobbins, the Republican National Committee’s Arizona communications director, said Democrats have “abandoned the Mormon community” and “led the charge on an attack on the freedom of religion and religious institutions” during the Biden-Harris administration.

“Their silence on key issues vital to Mormon values has been deafening,” Dobbins said. “In contrast, President Trump has consistently stood with believers by protecting religious institutions, appointing constitutionalist Justices, and defending Christian values nationally and abroad. He has made it a priority to protect religious communities, not fight against them.”

The Church of Jesus Christ does not endorse government officials or support or oppose political parties, though it encourages its members to be “responsible citizens” and to “engage in the political process in an informed and civil manner.”