Udalls in government for 100 years

[No Elephants]

I am torn on this because I like many of Mark Udall's votes, but I so believe that government should not be a family business. Hell, many family businesses don't last 100 years.

As an aside, I did not know the family was Mormon.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udall

[Enthusiast]

1. I remember hearing the name in politics

since I was a child. That is some amazing family history.

[No Elephants]

2. I'm guessing that, as a child, you heard about Mo Udall?

Or maybe Secretary of the Interior, Steward Udall?

Did you know they were Mormons?

Having three cousins in Congress at the same time is unsettling.

[Enthusiast]

3. I did not know they were Mormons.

I remember hearing both the names Mo and Stewart.

[No Elephants]

4. Interesting how we make so much of that today, yet, at that time, they were closer to the

generation of Mormons that went to Mexico, rather than obey the Mormon church and the federal government as to multiple wives.

David King Udall was first elected to office only nine years after the Mormon Church changed its position on marriage in 1890. (His "double brother in law," Tommy Stewart, had been first elected to office threee years before the change.

" All of the Udall politicians descended from David's wife Eliza have been Democrats, while most of the politicians descended from his wife Ida have been Republicans."

(I wonder what, if anything, they did about their wives after the change in policy? And isn't it interesting that a Mormon "multiple wife" circa 1890 seems to have had strong political views independent of her husband's?

Anyway, Mo was the grandson of David King Udall and ran for President in 1976, less than a century after the Mormons got into so many problems, yet, no one seems to have made a deal of Mo's religion, in contrast to Mitt Romney, who ran 36 years later. I don't know if that is progress or the opposite! Intelligent arguments could be made on both sides of that issue, I suppose.