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In this interview, Carlton Wing addresses how he uses church teachings in his legislative role and how it affects his relationship with his fellow legislators. He also discusses how he balances his calling as a stake president with his legislative duties, including the importance of not discussing politics on Sunday. And he explains his views on the importance of civility in public discourse, which was a major theme of his first campaign for office. This interview was conducted on January 16, 2021, by Richard Davis, BYU professor emeritus of political science.

Richard Davis: Carlton, thank you very much for being willing to do this. So where did you grow up, where did you go to school? A mission, your family, just a little background, please.

Carlton Wing: Oh, sure thing. I was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma. My parents were attending Oklahoma State University, and that’s where the missionaries knocked on their door and changed all of our lives. And we moved very shortly after I was born to Arkansas, and I grew up in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

I went all the way through high school here and then went and served in the Idaho Boise Mission and after that went to school at BYU. That’s where I met my wife. I was a broadcast communications major. I worked at KGS in Salt Lake City and then got a job at KREM 2 in Spokane, Washington. And then was able to come back home and work at KARK, the NBC affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas. And that’s what brought us here [North Little Rock] in 1998.

I worked at KARK for three years. I had a great opportunity to jump into the professional fishing circuit and televised professional fishing—really from 2001 until the present. And that’s what I’m doing now.

We’ve had four kids. Three of our children are out of the house. We have one caboose, a high school sophomore, with us right now. I’ve got a son on a mission in Uruguay, a daughter who just graduated from BYU this past spring; she’s living in New York City. And then our oldest daughter is married, and she lives in Temecula, California, with her husband—no grandkids but we’re thinking sooner or later that’ll come. That’s a little bit about where we are.

Richard Davis: So when did you first become interested in politics?

Carlton Wing: That was, really amazingly, at an early age. I was always interested in what was real, and my mother noticed an odd habit that at the ages of six, seven, eight, I would always watch the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. And my favorite regular TV show was Adam-12. But what my mom said that I loved about it was at the beginning of each episode it says, “The story that you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” And I thought that was just fascinating to me that a drama was played out. I’m sure it was all Hollywoodized, but to a kid, I thought that was pretty cool. And in the later stages of elementary school—fifth, sixth grade—I would take political polls of my class during election seasons and find out who they were going to vote for—governor and senator and Congress and president, if that applied—and my teachers thought that was a little interesting.

So I was always interested in politics. I treated it kind of like a game. When I got into broadcasting at BYU, I thought, “Well, I could go into politics and cover politics, or I could cover sports.” And in sports you have games every day; politics was every two years or every four years. And so I ended up taking that love of competition and battling of ideas and moved it into the sports arena, and that was the early part of my career.

Richard Davis: So what was the first time that you ran for office, and why did you do that? What did you run for?

Carlton Wing: I ran for state House of Representatives in the state of Arkansas in 2016. A unique opportunity presented itself, and we thought, Why would we want to jump into this world where there’s conflict and angst and all of that when I had a very nice happy life going? I was in the fishing world. You can’t be upset about that. Even a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work.

But we had this opportunity. The thing that got us involved—and I say us because this is a family commitment—was a desire really to improve the civil discourse amongst our citizens. And here we are, we’re shooting this [interview] in January of 2021, and as bad as it is now, it’s far worse now than it was even in 2016. But in 2016 we could see the dialogue between different viewpoints coarsening and coarsening over time. And I thought, “Most people are actually good on both sides of the aisle, all sides of an issue; most people are genuinely good.” But when you hear them discuss and debate politics in the media, it makes it seem like that’s not the case. And we have become more and more polarized.

And we thought, “Let’s try to build confidence in public service again. Let’s try to help people understand that we the people can elect people who actually serve us and listen to us.” Our campaign slogan was, “Let’s work together.” It was not the product of a focus group or a campaign manager; it was a product of my wife and I sitting down and really coming up with an answer to the question—why are we running for office?

Richard Davis: Do you feel like church teachings had anything to do why you got involved?

Carlton Wing: Oh absolutely, I mean, love your neighbor and serve and all of the things that we are taught in church. The principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ are service oriented, and treating everyone like they are indeed a fellow son or daughter of God helps you see things through the Lord’s eyes. And when you can do that, that really helps you when you start thinking about issues and what is important. And so the church teachings provide a foundation from which all of our decisions arise. And it helps us be able to see someone who may be a political enemy, when I say that in the sense of either they have a different idea or maybe they even might be attacking me because of a position that I have taken, it helps you see that person as a human being. And when you can really try to understand that person instead of judging that person immediately, it helps you in a position, and to get them into a position, where you can both come together and as the Bible says, “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18).

Richard Davis: Has your religion come up, and has it mattered to constituents?

Carlton Wing: You know what’s interesting is I have had one person come up to me and tell me that a friend of theirs was asking who to vote for and he said, “You need to vote for Carlton Wing.” And the person said, “He’s a Mormon,” and it was kind of like, “Is that OK?” And the person absolutely defended me—my family and my faith, I would assume effectively. And that honestly is the only time that I know of that my faith has come up in discussion. Now, who knows what happens behind the scenes, but we’ve been elected three times, so I think it’s been OK.

Richard Davis: And does your political involvement affect members and how they receive you? Do you get a sense that that affects your relationship with them?

Carlton Wing: That is something I try my best to monitor, and I try my best. I am very, very careful when I’m inside any of our church buildings that I do not talk politics. It’s tough sometimes because people want to talk about it. We had a member of our stake come up to my wife and say, “He’s been in the legislature for four years, and how come he never talks about that? We’d like to hear about that in one of his talks.”

We have a very, very strict code, as you know, in the church; we do not discuss that. It’s just inappropriate. But it’s especially inappropriate as a church leader for me to imply any type of endorsement—if they think President Wing is trying to push Representative Wing’s ideology; that’s a big no-no, and we do not do that. So I have to be ultracautious about any kind of a political discussion at all. And I have people come up and ask questions all the time in the foyer and things like that. I try to quickly answer the question and move it along so that nobody ever even overhears anything like that because that is a very strict line that we have to keep.

And I could add though, no doubt people know that I’m a Republican. It’s public record. They can see every vote that I’ve taken, and I have no doubt that there are many people in my stake who will approve of some votes and not approve of others. But that’s Representative Wing, hopefully not President Wing. As President Wing, I’m sure they’ll also look at some of the decisions I’ve made and hopefully they’d approve of some. And they might not approve of all of them, but I think I’ve probably got a greater success rate there than perhaps in the statehouse.

Richard Davis: So talk a little bit about the balance in terms of your political involvement, your office in the state House of Representatives and your church calling and responsibilities. How do you balance that?

Carlton Wing: The legislative session, when we’re in session, is very time-consuming, and it takes about three to three and a half months every other year. Now, on the even number of years, we have what’s called a fiscal session. It lasts about a month, month and a half, and it’s not near as intense. But when we are in our legislative session, it is quite busy. I am just starting my eighth year as the stake president of the North Little Rock Arkansas Stake, and I’ve been in office for four years now; I’m beginning my fifth year in public service.

So, from a time management standpoint, it can get tricky. But the Lord has blessed us to be able to handle this schedule. Things just work. I’m able to scoot most of my business outside of the legislative session. As far as my private business, I still televise outdoors programming. And I’ve been able to handle the church calling as well, especially during that time.

But I will say, in our first legislative session in 2017, I had three stake conferences, and I hosted Elder [Jeffrey R.] Holland and Elder [Dieter F.] Uchtdorf during that time, and my daughter got married. So somehow in that three-month period we were able to get all of that done, and it just lets you know that the Lord’s math and our math are two different things, and the Lord can make things add up in our favor as long as we keep our priorities in line and keep our covenants, we’re able to get the things done that we need to get done.

Richard Davis: So do you find yourself sometimes not being able to go to, let’s say a stake meeting, because of a legislative commitment?

Carlton Wing: You know amazingly, very, very rarely have I had a direct conflict because most of my stake meetings are in the evenings and all of our legislative stuff is typically during the day. I mean, there’s been a couple of times when maybe I’ve had to be a little bit late for a meeting. And I have amazing counselors too. Actually, I’ve had the same two counselors the entire time that I’ve been stake president, which I understand is quite rare but they’re wonderful, wonderful men, and they’re able to cover in case something happens.

I’d say the most common thing is perhaps I might have a legislative conference or someplace where I have to be out of town, and I might miss a Sunday meeting or something like that in the stake. But really I’ve been surprised at how little direct conflict I’ve had with legislative schedule and the church schedule.

Richard Davis: Would you say you seek inspiration regarding the votes you take?

Carlton Wing: Yes, absolutely, unequivocally. Yes, I pray every day, I pray for wisdom beyond my own. I pray for every type of divine help from the other side of the veil that I can. And let me help you with the timing on this. So you go through a yearlong campaign; you get elected in November. And by the time you catch up on sleep after the election is over, you’ve got Thanksgiving, you’ve got Christmas, New Year’s, and then the session starts, in that case it was January 9. So it’s been a whirlwind, and all of a sudden now you are thrown into the chair that has the buttons in front of it and you’re supposed to be casting votes that represent your people, that affect three million people in the state of Arkansas. It’s an ominous responsibility and so you’re just overwhelmed. Your eyes are as big as saucers. They used to say, you’ve heard the phrase, “It’s like drinking from a fire hose.” I likened it more to standing where the Mississippi River enters the Gulf of Mexico, that’s how much the water is coming through.

There’s just so much to learn, and you feel so inadequate at times at the very beginning. And so I prayed mightily. And actually it increased my testimony of the power of prayer as we were discussing important issues that I knew I did not have the background on yet, because of my newness in office. And I would go back and look at some of my votes and see how they were inspired after the fact. In a few cases, especially in that first session, I did not have my own wisdom in that, but I was relying upon the Lord to help me.

Richard Davis: Can you give us an example?

Carlton Wing: Well, there’s actually a couple there. So one of them is—it sounds simple—but there was a bill that came through that expanded government in a way that was a little bit controversial. But not much. The bill passed in the House. We have one hundred members in the Arkansas House. It passed with seventy-three votes. Only six people voted against it. But the governor decided to veto that bill. And you have to be able to overcome the veto, but it does cause a lot of public scrutiny now on this bill. Why did the governor veto it? Now all of a sudden people are paying attention to it. We didn’t think it was that consequential a bill when it went through, but we called an emergency caucus meeting, and we had to decide what are we going do—are we going to try to override the governor’s veto or not?

And our governor is very popular. Do we want to publicly embarrass him by overturning his veto? But then also my colleague who had put this bill up was very passionate about this bill as well. So you’ve got all these loyalties, and all these other things. While you’d like to think every legislator only considers the merits of the bill, we are all human beings. And the governor is a human being, and my colleague who presented the bill is a human being, and we all need each other at different times too.

And some people say, “Hey, are you going to help me out? What kind of loyalty do we have here?” And I thought, "You always try to do what is right; let the consequence follow.” And I thought, “Well, I actually think that that bill shouldn’t pass.” I feel like I was thinking, as I read the bill again, and this was about a month down the road and I thought, “I actually agree with the governor on this. I don’t think this bill should pass.” But I was going to be going against my caucus to do so.

And I thought, “Well, how did I vote the last time?” It was only six people; I couldn’t even remember. I’m a principled person. I was applying the principles as they were presented to me this time. I went back in time a month ago. There were only six people that voted against it. And I was surprised I was one of those six. It made my decision that much easier, but I could see how a month prior when I was that much newer I had been led to the right conclusion, at least based on my principles on that.

Richard Davis: So you mentioned you’re Republican. Did your pick of your party get affected by the fact that you were a Latter-day Saint?

Carlton Wing: Well, I mean I was raised conservatively in my home by my parents. My parents, however, as I was growing up were registered Democrats because that’s what everybody was in the South; everybody was a Democrat. There were very, very few Republicans when I was a young boy, but Southern Democrats have always been different from the rest of the group, for better or for worse. You remember the old Dixiecrats was a different kind of a group as well. But Southern Democrats have always been a conservative group anyway; for the most part, I’ve always been conservative in my beliefs. I’m pro-life. That’s one of the things that I feel very strongly about; and that has a home more so in the Republican Party. Fiscal conservative as well in the Republican Party. When I look at some of the values that our church teaches, I find myself going towards things that I feel like can uplift man.

Now, I obviously don’t mean to discredit anybody who is a member of another party who feels like they’re doing that for the same reasons. And that’s one of the things that I appreciate about what I have been able to see happen when two people get together to actually discuss instead of to debate on a national network television show. But when you actually sit across the room from somebody and I say, “I believe this is the best form of governance to bring out the best outcomes for mankind,” and somebody else presents a different idea perhaps from the left side of the ideology, we find that we want the same thing. We all want mankind to have the best opportunity for success and happiness and us as members of the church to be able to prepare ourselves to return and live with God again. But we might have some disagreements on how to get there.

But I do feel like I am a Republican, and I have chosen that because of the principles and the ideals that I believe reach out best to fulfill the mission of mankind.

Richard Davis: So you know that the First Presidency has said there are elements of the gospel in various parties. Do you think that someone who is not of the same party that you are can be a faithful member of the church, just as you are?

Carlton Wing: Yeah, and it’s interesting because when I was younger, the difference between Democrats and Republicans was, pretty much, how wide did you want to cast the social safety nets? And so Democrats wanted to cast that social safety net a little bit wider than, say, Republicans. And that’s a healthy debate to have at any time. What are we doing to help fellow man? And so then it gets down to the principles of what actually helps a fellow man, and we can talk about it in a very simplistic way. You can say, “Well, am I doing good for my fellow man to give him a fish?” or “Am I doing good for a fellow man to teach him to fish?” I’m just going back to my outdoors analogy since I produce fishing shows.

It’s an overly simplistic way, and there are lots of details on both of those things, but that might be one way that Democrats or Republicans are a little bit different. There are times when you do need to give a fish and there are times when you do need to teach how to fish, and that’s what we do when we get together in the legislature all over the country and also in Congress—oftentimes we’re really just debating that. What makes it a little bit different is when you bring in some of the other social issues, and for me abortion is a key issue, and so that is a delineator for me.

We all have to make compromises within political parties because we are all individuals. A party is a group, and sometimes the party demands 100 percent obedience to everything that they dictate, and so as a member of a party there are things that you might think, “I don’t fully agree with that.” And while I have a fairly strong pro-life position, I do recognize that there are going to be many Democrats out there who embrace a lot of the other ideology that is within their party of giving to mankind and making sure that the marginalized and the minority groups feel like they are a part of things and able to participate in things. They might have different positions on abortion, and obviously this is the kind of thing that you could go back and forth on for a long time. But that would be—probably as a Latter-day Saint in my view—that’s probably a big delineator between the two parties.

Richard Davis: You mentioned earlier your views about incivility in politics today. Do you have suggestions as to how we address these problems of polarization, partisan polarization, that are leading people to be uncivil?

Carlton Wing: Right, I think the key is—if I had all power, I would turn off network news for about a month. Now, that smacks of censorship––that’s not what I’m trying to do––but I think people need to get out of that rut of listening to angry people speak on either side of the aisle. And the same thing in social media—we have got to get to our humanity, and that’s what we are not doing.

There was a fascinating book that I read recently called Crisis Point by Trent Lott and Tom Daschle. Trent Lott, long time Senate majority leader on the Republican side, and Tom Daschle, longtime Democrats’ Senate majority leader as well. And they served at the same time; it’s just whoever had power became the majority leader. I think it flip-flopped once or twice in there.

But they were friends, their ideologies were different, but they were friends and they respected each other, and they talked about why we were losing that, and what happened in that loss. One of the main reasons why they theorize that this was happening in Congress is we turn on our TV and we watch CNN or Fox or MSNBC or whatever, and what we see are people yelling and accusing each other of things and seeing the worst in each other.

And one of the reasons why that’s happened is because Congress has failed to come together and solve the problems together. And they blamed the airplane because the session ends Thursday afternoon, and every congressman gets on a plane and flies home, and they come back in time for the session to begin the next week on Tuesday.

And it used to be that congressmen would stay in Washington, DC, and they would get to know each other, and you’d go out and have dinner together, and your wives get to know each other, or for the wives who were serving in Congress, the husbands get to know each other. And so, then all of a sudden you see that that guy across the aisle is not evil; he just has a different viewpoint than you, and you see the humanity in each other.

The state of Massachusetts, the governor was a Republican and both the Speaker of the House and the senate president were Democrats, and they decided that they needed to have breakfast together every Monday morning. Every single Monday morning, unless one of them had to be out of town for something, they would have breakfast in the restaurant in Boston, and doing so kept them from ever popping off in the media against one of the other people. We have too many people that go for that sound bite; that’s going to be a great bumper sticker, and it’s going to get your base riled up, and it’s going to get you rebooked on that network news show.

And they’re not reaching out and saying, “Mr. Daschle, tell me what’s most important to you about this bill, and what can I do to help you feel comfortable with this bill?” And then Mr. Daschle goes to Mr. Lott and says the same thing, “OK, what’s important to you?” And you come and reason together because you have a spirit of mutual trust. You recognize that Daschle’s not a bad guy, and Daschle recognizes that Lott’s not a bad guy.

But you’re not having that because the base doesn’t like it. It’s seen as weakness if you are even seen reaching to the other side of the aisle. And we have got to get away from that because that encourages the politicians to stay very, very political and extreme in their positions.

Why do we have debates? We have to ask ourselves, why do we even have debates? If we’re not going to be willing to consider an alternative viewpoint, if the debate is nothing more than a speech to rile up your base, that’s not a good system of government. We have debates because I’m trying to make a point; I’m trying to let you know this is a good piece of legislation, and here’s why. And if I think that you’re not even listening to me, then I’m not even going to speak to you.

Richard Davis: Just to wrap up here, what advice would you give to young Latter-day Saints thinking about a career in government or at least being involved in politics? What have you learned that you would like to share?

Carlton Wing: You want to make sure that you’re doing this for the right reason. It is imperative that we have good people in public office who recognize their proper role in public office and are doing it to serve mankind.

You need to stay close to your testimony, stay close to your Heavenly Father, because you need his guidance, and without his Spirit, there are way too many opportunities to deviate from the course and do far more harm than good.

And so it’s imperative that your foundation be rock solid because politics can exacerbate any weakness in your foundation. When it talks about the two houses in the book of Matthew, at the end of the book of Matthew it says that one house was built on the sand and that one house was built on the rock. The difference is not really seen at the beginning; as far as I know they could be two identical houses with all the same accoutrements and everything and luxuries. They’d be very, very nice houses. One, however, is built on sand, and one is built on rock; it’s not until the storm comes that there’s a problem with one of the houses. In politics there are storms every day; there will be challenges to your foundation and your faith every day, and if you have not strengthened your foundation, that storm can blow you away.

It is important that your motives be pure, and that you are a good person who is right before God and keeping the covenants that you’ve made. And if you do that, you’ll be in a position to know what to do, when and how to be able to affect people’s lives in a great way, because what we’re able to do in public service magnifies our good. I like to say votes that I cast affect three million people throughout the state of Arkansas; we are able to magnify good, leverage good. We’ve just got to make sure that what we’re doing is good because we are good.