Liberal Party (Utah)
Though vastly outnumbered, the Liberal Party offered an opposing voice and won several local elections.
The impetus for the setting up of the Liberal Party came from William S. Godbe, a successful businessman and Latter-day Saint who founded a journal called Utah Magazine in 1868.
Corresponding during the winter, key Godbeites and non-Mormons made an uneasy alliance based on their shared opposition to LDS control over temporal matters in the territory.
The Liberal Party formed after a meeting on February 9, 1870 to select independent candidates for the Salt Lake City municipal election.
A crowd of Latter-day Saints, encouraged by local bishops and a Deseret Evening News editorial, attended in numbers and nearly hijacked the meeting.
After the LDS crowd had selected its own slate of candidates, frustrated Godbeite Eli B. Kelsey asked the Mormons to leave, which they did.
Non-Mormons, including R. N. Baskin, George R. Maxwell, and Judge Dennis Toohy of Corinne, played an active role in the party but stayed in the background initially, hoping that ex-Mormon Godbeites would prove more effective leaders and candidates.
Godbeites believed they should reform Utah and the LDS Church to adopt more politically-progressive policies, but the non-Mormon element of the party took a more adversarial line.
Statewide contests produced even more lopsided figures, with Liberals regularly failing to garner 10% of the vote.
The People's Party incumbents, citing fraud, refused to yield their positions even as US Marshals authorized by the 3rd District federal court attempted to intervene and install the Liberal candidates.
Running unopposed in 1876, Liberals held the county until the Utah territorial legislature passed bills in 1878 that required voter registration and instituting women's suffrage.
By 1880, the Liberal Party had become severely atrophied, but it was openly supported by the newly appointed strongly anti-Mormon territorial governor, Eli H. Murray.
The protest listed a dozen claims, chiefly that Cannon, born in Liverpool, England; was not a naturalized alien, and was a polygamist, which was incompatible with the law and a delegate's oath of office.
Each side battled over the position for over a year even despite the assassination and eventual death of President James Garfield.
Enforcement of these bills furthermore put significant numbers of Latter-day Saint polygamists into federal prisons, including one built in Sugar House specifically for that purpose.
Propelled by success in Salt Lake City and Ogden, the Liberal Party won a third of the Utah territorial legislature in the August 1891 election.
The party outspent revenue in Tooele, Ogden, and Salt Lake City, accumulating relatively large public debts.
