The First Mormon Presidential Candidate

Jerome · Nov 5, 2012

Joseph Smith himself ran in 1844; his running mate was a former Baptist pastor:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Joseph Smith was nominated by the Mormon Reform Party in a political caucus at the Nauvoo, Ill., headquarters of the church on Jan. 29, 1844, as the party's candidate for president of the United States. The selection of Sidney Rigdon as the vice presidential candidate would have particular significance for Western Pennsylvania history.
. . . . .
Rigdon was born in 1793 in what Pittsburghers know today as the South Hills -- Library, in what was then St. Clair Township. He came of age in the wilderness that surrounded Pittsburgh and the convergance of the three rivers and became a self-taught biblical scholar and a charismatic reformed Baptist preacher.
His biographer, Richard van Wagoner, writes that after Rigdon's conversion to Mormonism, "his influence with the Prophet Joseph Smith was unrivaled" and that many non-Mormons (or "Gentiles") thought that the articulate and imposing Rigdon was the leader of the church.
. . . . .
when Smith was killed in Carthage, Ill. by an armed mob. . . .Rigdon rushed to Nauvoo on horseback to the assembly of the Saints called to decide the succession after Joseph as leader of the Mormons. His eloquence did not persuade the elders, however, and Brigham Young was declared as the new Prophet. Within weeks the former First Counselor to the founder had been excommunicated
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tomana · Nov 9, 2012

a former Baptist pastor, converting to Mormanism :tonofbricks:

The First Mormon Presidential Candidate

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