I’m sure nobody meant to suggest any ill of Nephi Morris. The good works listed by Jeff in #2 are an indication of his character and the life he led.

What is an ‘ankle bracelet’ candidate, pray tell? Being well into middle age these youthful euphemistic innuendoes escape me. Ardis, are you aware of any unsavory elements in the life of Nephi Morris to which this might apply?

I have heard so often that Utah history was free of anti-Semitism (“hey, look! we elected a Jewish governor!”) that I was not at all aware either of the “anti-Semitic overtones” of the campaign (the Utah History Encyclopedia, by the way, is a reliable general source) and didn’t pick up the cue from the ad.

I’ll scan through the Salt Lake papers for that election and see what I can find in the next few weeks. Some of my best projects have been doing research poached from other people’s good ideas, like this one.

I did find this at a site called “Utah History Encyclopedia”:

Despite an election with anti-Semitic overtones, and a successful challenge in the Republican convention by Nephi Morris to incumbent William Spry, who lost support because of his veto of a prohibition bill, Bamberger defeated Morris by a vote of 78,502 to 59,522. Socialist candidate F.M. McHugh polled 4,391.

This suggests a couple of things: first, that the first two advertisements were from 1916–either that or the church magazines printed their ads awfully late; second, that Nephi Morris’s claim to be a “one hundred percent American” may well have been intentionally anti-Semitic, or at least intended to pull in the anti-Semitic voters (although Bamberger’s being an immigrant–born in Germany–may have been the target of Morris’s ad); and third, that the Bamberger statement about Prohibition may have been a slap at the apparent Republican change of heart about Prohibition. (I confess I don’t know if Morris’s attitude was different from his party’s or just from the incumbent governor’s, whom he defeated in the primary.)

Not me, that’s for sure. (But what in particular are you looking for?)

The Bamberger “Prohibitionist by principle” may have been to counter claims that he had just become a dry to try to get the Mormon vote. Because he wasn’t a Mormon, some might have thought otherwise.

(Who has access to all the SL Trib archives? Inquiring minds want to know.)

That does make Nephi Morris’s statement that he is “one hundred percent American” slightly troubling. Or maybe a little more than slightly troubling.