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In this interview, Deidre Henderson recounts how she never planned to go into political life or run for office. She also discusses her challenges as a Latter-day Saint woman involved in the Republican Party and the legislature. And she addresses how she took positions against her constituents’ views when they conflicted with her personal views of what was the right course to pursue. This interview was conducted on July 9, 2021, by Richard Davis, BYU professor emeritus of political science.

Richard Davis: Deidre Henderson, thank you very much for taking the time to be with us. So, just a little bit of context, could you tell us where you grew up, where you went to school—a little bit about your background?

Deidre Henderson: Yes, sure. Thanks, Richard, I appreciate it. So I was actually born in the Netherlands as my dad served in the United States Air Force and was stationed at a NATO base in the southern part of the Netherlands, Limburg Province, and so I was born there.

My parents are both from Idaho Falls, and they divorced when I was a baby, and I ended up being raised primarily in Utah. But my mother remarried when I was about four years old, and I ended up living for about seven years in Taylorsville. We lived for a time in Colorado and also in Minnesota. I finished high school in Minnesota—went to my last two years of high school in Minnesota. The day after I graduated from high school in Minnesota, we hopped on a plane and moved to Hartford, Connecticut.

And then I came back to BYU for my freshman year, and that’s where I met my husband. He was born and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, but we met out at BYU. And then we actually did move back to North Carolina for a couple of years while he attended physical therapy school, and then we moved back to Utah and have lived in Spanish Fork since 1998, where we’ve raised our five kids.

Richard Davis: When did you become interested in politics?

Deidre Henderson: Well, growing up, my family never talked much about politics, except my grandmother—my mom’s mom. The family was really worried about her because she was really into Rush Limbaugh, and this was back in the late ’80s, when I think he had a TV program back then. So my grandma would talk to me about politics occasionally. That was really the only time I ever talked about politics. But I was very interested in it as a young mom. I kind of paid attention. I considered myself to be a bit of a political junkie.

When my youngest child started preschool, I really wanted to get more involved in the community. I wanted to get involved in politics. I had no idea how to go about doing that. I had never done anything more than vote as far as my political engagement. But in January of 2008 I met Jason Chaffetz, and it was kind of funny how I met him. He was running for Congress, and my grandmother—different grandmother—moved to Springville. Her new Relief Society president had come over to her house to visit her, and the new Relief Society president was working on Jason Chaffetz’s campaign. And my grandmother said, “My granddaughter in Spanish Fork. She loves politics.” And so this Relief Society president of hers got my name and number from my grandma and cold-called me and said, “Hey, I understand you like politics. You ever heard of Jason Chaffetz?”

I’d never heard of Jason Chaffetz, and she said, “Well, we’re having a cottage meeting for him at my house in Springville tonight—love to have you come and meet him. And, you know, we’re looking for volunteers,” and whatnot. So I like—what the heck—went over there, and I met him, volunteered to make some phone calls for him—never done anything like that before. One thing led to another—this was January of 2008—I ended up working for an entire year for free for him, basically. He didn’t have the money to pay people, so he’s looking for volunteers, and he got some. I got a lot of really great experience that I really wasn’t qualified to get because he was desperate for just whoever would do stuff for free.

And so I ended up becoming his political director that year. After he was elected to Congress that fall, he hired me to run his political operation, which I did for the next few years out of my laundry room in Spanish Fork; that was where I had my office. Again, I never ever expected to run for office myself, but in 2012 redistricting had opened up a new senate seat in South Utah County, and I decided to run for it, and I won. So that’s how I got involved in politics and state government. It was kind of by accident, and it was never a really a conscious choice to get involved and someday, you know, run for office or anything, but it just happened.

Richard Davis: Did somebody recruit you to run for the state senate as well? Like they did to help Jason Chaffetz?

Deidre Henderson: No, in fact a number of the people in the legislature, who I did know because I was working for Jason (and I’m dealing with that redistricting because the congressional districts were being restricted as well) let me know that the senate seat was for a particular guy that they kind of wanted to run and who’d been a member of the House. And there was an open house seat, and I should just run for that, I was told.

And I said, “You know, it’s not someone’s seat. It’s the people’s seat, and it’s an open seat, and I like and respect this gentleman, and he’s, of course, welcome to run for it, but I’m going to run for it as well.” And he ended up not running for it. He ended up supporting me, and so, no, I wasn’t really recruited; I just kind of elbowed my way into it. And I almost didn’t. I mean, there really was a time, Richard, where I thought, “You know what? I’m not going to do that.” It was scary. I mean, it was; it just seemed like an uphill battle and a lot of work, and I had a lot of self-doubt, and I almost didn’t. But it was at that point where there were a couple of people, including this gentleman who ended up not running for it, who said, “Look. If you’re going to do this, I’ll support you.” So I wasn’t necessarily recruited, but I did have some really good support once I had made that decision to do it.

Richard Davis: Now tell us a little bit about becoming lieutenant governor. How did that happen?

Deidre Henderson: So I had been serving in the state senate for eight years. I was up for reelection in 2020 for my third term in the Utah senate. It would have been a nice easy race, not a lot of problems or sweat involved in running for reelection there in my neck of the woods. But after the legislative session ended in 2020 (ended mid-March on a Thursday) and the filing deadline opened up the next day for running for reelection, I went and filed. And I had been in a couple of meetings with some of Spencer Cox’s campaign folks just kind of talking about, you know, possibilities. But there was no ask; there was no certainty. I was in a tough spot because I didn’t want to put my senate district in a bind.

We needed to make a decision, and I didn’t have a decision to make at that point. But then the next day, a Saturday, I think it was March 14, Spencer and Abby invited Gabe, my husband, and me to come down to Fairview, and that’s when he asked me officially to join his campaign.

And so it was a tough decision because there wasn’t any kind of guarantee. I had to pick. I couldn’t run for both my senate seat and lieutenant governor because, again, I didn’t want to play games with my constituents. I wanted to make sure that they had good representation and that there was some time for candidates to file to run for my seat who might have wanted that. And I had to make a decision pretty quick and take a big risk and a big chance on joining Spencer or play it safe and stay in the senate, which I had loved. I’d loved being in the senate; I’d loved state government. I’d loved being able to solve problems, and get things done, and felt like I was very successful doing that in the senate.

But ultimately I decided to take a chance on Spencer and join with him. The pandemic had come full force at that point, and he was helping to run the state’s pandemic response. And he really couldn’t do any campaigning. So all that fell on me. And, you know, we ended up winning the convention pretty significantly. And then we had, of course, a primary election that we also won, but it was a squeaker. And it came down to just a few thousand votes, and a lot of hard work. But that’s how I became lieutenant governor. It almost didn’t happen a couple different times, and I’m really grateful to be here in this spot.

Richard Davis: So who has influenced you? I assume Jason Chaffetz. Are there others in politics who you kind of look at as models for you?

Deidre Henderson: Well, yeah, I mean, I’ve learned a lot from different people along the way. Yes, of course, I was influenced by Jason, and he remains a good friend to this day. And, you know, Becky Lockhart is one. Becky was Speaker of the House; she was the first woman elected to be Speaker of the House when I was elected to the senate. And I really looked up to her and admired her, and I got some good advice from her. It was really good practical advice as a mom with young kids and a woman in the political sphere in Utah, which isn’t always a very comfortable place for a woman to be. It’s not always an easy space for a woman to be in, especially a Republican woman, and sometimes it’s kind of a lonely space to be in.

I’m sure it’s not just me. But maybe everybody feels this way to a degree, but I feel like sometimes mothers feel especially this way, where we feel guilty about doing things. At least I did. That took me away from my family. And I had to overcome that sense of guilt. And then, if we’re only doing family stuff, I would feel guilty that I wasn’t more involved in the community. I had a really hard time being, I guess, present, and not feeling that sense of guilt like I should be doing something different, or something more than what I was doing. And Becky pulled me aside really early on, and she told me about the time when she first was elected to the House, and her youngest son was three years old. And when she left the house, he clutched on to her leg, and was crying, and didn’t want her to leave, and her mother was there and had to pull him off and hold him. That was difficult for her. But she said, “Deidre, you have been elected to a job, and during the legislative session, during those seven weeks, you need to stay downtown. You need to stay in Salt Lake City and do what you were elected to do during that time, because if you go home at night, you’re going to be mom. You’re going to be dinner; you’re going to be laundry; you’re going to be homework; you’re going to be all these things. But you’re not going to be a state senator, and you need to be a state senator during that time, that critical seven-week period of time to do what your constituents need you to do and to be present for them.”

And that was really good advice for me, and good permission for me to say, “OK. Yes, I will be sacrificing some time with my family during this time, but it’s really important. They’ll survive and they’ll be fine, but I need to be present for the job that I was elected to do.” And so I did. I always stayed downtown at the Little America Monday through Friday. I’d come home on the weekends and go back up on Sundays, and really for just about every year, maybe not the last year. I just had one teenage daughter left at home. At that point she was a junior in high school, and it wasn’t quite as hard to leave. But the first few years every Sunday night when I would drive back up to Salt Lake, and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing my family again for a week, I would cry on my drive back up to Salt Lake because I did feel bad about missing out on them, and I did feel guilty about leaving them. But I was also very grateful for the opportunity to have an influence in policy and in the things that were happening at the state level, and I know that I made a difference, and I was present for other people who needed a voice through me.

Richard Davis: What have been your experiences, your challenges, as a female political leader in Utah? What’s it been like for you?

Deidre Henderson: Well, I really did expect, right off the bat, to be kind of “pat on the head and sit in a corner,” and that wasn’t my experience. There are some really, really great leaders in the state who are very much aware that they need to give opportunities to people who don’t necessarily look like them or think like them.

President Wayne Niederhauser is another person that was a real great influence on me, and a great role model and mentor. He was a newly elected senate president and really gave me opportunities that maybe other senate presidents wouldn’t have given me. And I know he did that, not because I was the token Republican woman, but because he did believe in my abilities to do the tasks that he gave me. I was put on the Revenue and Taxation Committee, which was one of the two committees I wanted to be on. It was a committee that I cared about and that I wanted to serve on. He not only put me on that committee, but he also made me the chair of it. And this was before I was ever even sworn in. It was really intimidating for me because I was the only woman on the committee, and a lot of the other people on the committee, the other senators on the committee, were like tax professionals. You know, we had a tax attorney, we had an accountant, we had the president of the Utah Taxpayers Association—all these guys on this committee—and then there’s me, and I have not even graduated from college. I knew nothing about tax policy, and here I was supposed to chair this committee, and I didn’t even know how to chair a committee.

So what I did was I worked really hard. I worked really hard between the time I was given that assignment and the time that my first legislative session started. Before I was ever even sworn in, I sat down with committee staff. I had long policy briefings on state tax policy. I read the tax code, which is thrilling, riveting really. My staff did mock committee hearings for me where they would present bills, and substitute them, and amend them, and all of these things so that I would be prepared. On the second day of the legislative session was my first time chairing this committee, and I was so nervous, but I worked really hard to be prepared. And a few years later, one of my colleagues who was on that committee said to me, “You know, it was just so incredible how you just stepped into that role. You knew exactly what to do; you were such a natural! You just intuitively knew how to do everything.”

I laughed and I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” There was nothing intuitive about this. There was nothing natural about it. I worked really, really hard to learn my job, to overcome the challenges that I had, which was I didn’t have experience in these areas, and I had to make sure I knew what I was doing, and I knew procedurally the rules and how to conduct a meeting and what good tax policy was. I took a lot of effort to look like I naturally knew how to do it, and it just really made me laugh when he said that.

And that’s one thing I think, I’m sure men do it too, but one thing I feel like I’ve had to really do as a female in this space is to really make sure that I’m prepared and that I know what I’m doing and what I’m talking about. Because I feel, and maybe this is just my own perception and it’s not reality, but I feel sometimes that women are judged a little bit harsher than men if we don’t know what we’re doing, or we don’t know what we’re talking about. It doesn’t just reflect badly on us, but it may reflect badly on women in general, and I’ve always been very worried about that. I want to pave the path a little bit better so that the women coming behind me have an easier way to walk, and so I’ve always been very cognizant of trying to make sure that I’m representing not just myself, but women in general in a way that is helpful and provide opportunities down the road for more women.

Richard Davis: So do you think that church teachings influenced your interest in politics, your interest in government, your interest in public service? Did that have an impact on you deciding to become involved and try to make a difference?

Deidre Henderson: You know, I really want to say yes, but I think the answer to that is probably no. There has been, recently, a more concerted push—an effort to empower women and help them understand how critical their voices are in the public sphere, and how important they are in the public sphere. But that really has happened, I think, since I’ve become involved in politics and not before.

I remember growing up reading about other church leaders from the ’70s and ’80s talking about how women really shouldn’t—I can’t remember the exact quote, but there is a quote, and it’s not a great one—about women not goofing off basically, in politics and stuff like that. They just need to be home. And so that kind of was what I grew up in. Also growing up in my era, my generation, kind of feeling like my own education isn’t very important and that if I do higher education for me it would be selfish, it’s not necessary, because I’m just going to be home having kids, and why is that needed?

I had to actually kind of overcome a lot of those feelings of “This is not your space to be playing in. You are not necessarily needed here.” But I didn’t agree with that message. I did not agree. I thought that I was needed, that women were needed; our voices were very important. And the more I got into this space, especially after I was elected to the Senate, the more I realized that having only one type of people largely making policy decisions for an entire state—it’s kind of like walking around with one eye open. It’s there, it’s their perspective, it’s good, but it’s not complete. And you’ve got to have both eyes open in order to be able to really see what’s there. And so I realized that my eyes and my perspective, my voice was very important. You can have total agreement on principle with people, but you have a different life experience, and that different life experience is incredibly valuable when you’re talking about how to solve problems, and what kind of laws and public policies to put in place. The whole story needs to be told, and everybody’s perspectives need to be considered when we’re making laws that affect everybody. And that has really been missing in Utah public policymaking. And I pretty much immediately started to see that lack and how important my voice and my perspective was, and I’ve been trying really hard to normalize, at least within my party, the idea that different perspectives are necessary and are good because for too long my party would say things like, “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman, if you’re a minority or not, it doesn’t matter. What matters are principles.” And yes, principles are important, but perspectives are also very important, because there may be a thousand different ways to solve a problem, and coming to an agreement on what’s the best path forward takes many different perspectives and not just one perspective.

Richard Davis: So you’re really talking about teachings of the role of women in public life, also kind of a culture of implementing those teachings in a way that that can discourage. It sounds like it sort of discouraged you, although not enough to keep you from doing this, but probably does discourage, you think, a lot of other women from being involved.

Dieidre Henderson: I think so, and I think that we’ve been doing better lately; we still have a long way to go. And it’s always this, “Yes, we need more women, but women need to be home with their kids.” Which, if that’s a woman’s choice, that is great. I was a stay-at-home mom too, and I think that’s fantastic. But I feel like you still have that cultural, “You don’t want to let them go too far,” or, “We don’t want too much.” You know, “We’ve got to still make sure that people understand their place.” And so I think it still makes it hard, and it still makes a lot of women feel that same sense of self-doubt and guilt. We don’t want them to feel guilty either way, whatever their choices are.

Richard Davis: Does your faith affect the way you approach your office?

Deidre Henderson: Yes, absolutely. My faith is my foundation; it’s the lens through which I see a lot of things, the lens through which I really see everything. And it’s also, I think, helped me to place a value on things that maybe as a Republican I wouldn’t necessarily naturally place value on and helped me push some boundaries there—insofar as we have refugees and, you know, minority communities and immigrants and things like that.

I remember a few years ago, I had to vote on a bill. It was nondiscrimination. It was a nondiscrimination bill for LGBTQ. And I had to vote on that in a committee hearing. And I remember the process that I went through with that was very much for me a spiritual process. It was obvious to me that the best path forward was the Christlike path of loving your neighbor, and so it has helped me push some boundaries that maybe as a Republican I wouldn’t have necessarily been naturally inclined to push because of my foundation of faith. So, yes, it has had an impact, a positive impact, on me. Also helping me really want to make sure that I get proximate with people and understand their perspectives and their point of view from a place of love and wanting to make sure that the unseen are being seen and the unheard are being heard.

Richard Davis: Right. So you’ve mentioned several times you’re a Republican. Did your religious beliefs affect the decision to affiliate with a particular political party? If so, why?

Deidre Henderson: I’ve always been a Republican. I told you we didn’t talk much about politics growing up, but my parents loved Ronald Reagan. My grandmother, of course, loved Ronald Reagan when I was a kid, and so I just kind of naturally grew up that way. I’ve always been one who chafes at being told what to do, so I kind of have that Libertarian streak in me, and so it just kind of naturally has fallen that way as I became an adult.

And I am Republican, I am conservative. You know, there is no one political party that corners the market on all good ideas. And good things and truth can be found on both sides, and I truly believe that. And there are a lot of changes I would love to see happen on the Republican side, and there’s, of course, a lot of changes I would love to see happen on the Democratic side, if I had my way.

But yes, I’ve always been. I don’t know that necessarily it was religion. Although it might have been for my parents, which, you know, grew up when they were talking a lot about communism. And in the ’60s and ’70s, there was just kind of a lot of talk that I think, maybe, influenced my parents and my grandparents and therefore also influenced me.

Richard Davis: So, given what you just said, how would you address someone who says, “You can’t be a Democrat and be a good member of the church”?

Deidre Henderson: Well, I think that’s a really dangerous position to hold. And I think as we’ve seen over the past year, or maybe more especially this year with, there’s been a lot of polarization to extreme sides, and extremism is never healthy, no matter which side it’s on. And when politics becomes a religion, and the two are conflated, really bad things can happen. And it’s really dangerous. So President [Dallin H.] Oaks had a talk this last April addressing this very subject. And he was very clear that you cannot suggest that being a good Latter-day Saint means belonging to, or not belonging to, a certain political party. That’s very wrong; it’s very dangerous, it’s bad. And you can belong to a political party even if there are some things in that party you don’t agree with.

It’s OK to vote for candidates even if there may be one or two things that they do that you really think are wrong and don’t agree with. But there may be overall, overriding reasons to do that, and it’s totally fine. And I have loved seeing this. I think it’s a bit of a shift in the church, talking about politics over the past number of years, to help people feel like you’re fine to believe what you want to believe when it comes to politics. You’re not fine to suggest that other people are bad or wrong or not good members of the church because they might believe in a different political party or have different thoughts than you have. That’s not OK.

Richard Davis: Have you faced a conflict between what your constituents wanted and what your religious faith tells you is right, and, if so, how did you handle it?

Deidre Henderson: Yeah, the first example that comes to mind is the nondiscrimination issue. I had a lot of constituents saying, “Don’t you dare vote for that. Don’t.” And I really did, I think in that instance, go against what my constituents wanted because I believed, ultimately, I had to be able to live with myself, and I really wanted to do the right thing. And that was voting in favor of the nondiscrimination bill, which the church did have a big influence on.

You know, another more recent example is dealing with mask mandates and vaccines in the current pandemic that we’re in. And I had a lot of constituents who were very much opposed to any kind of government intrusion—telling them that they had to wear masks or encouraging them to get vaccinated. But I’ve also seen our church leaders really take the other approach, which is, “Look. You’ve got to do these things if you want to be Christlike. You’ve got to be concerned about your neighbors, and you’ve got to take these steps that are very appropriate and helpful for the community as a whole.” So, yes, there are a number of times where I’ve had to go against, I think, what my constituents, at least in the state senate, in my senate district in particular, wanted.

Richard Davis: So imagine that there’s a Latter-day Saint woman out there who’s interested in politics and public service. How would you advise her on whether to get involved?

Deidre Henderson: Well, I would tell her first and foremost that she’s needed. Her voice is needed. Her experiences and her perspective are very much needed. And second, I would advise her not to feel like she has to know everything about everything before stepping into that space. She can learn as she goes. She’s very much capable of learning along the way. And that fear of not knowing and not having confidence that you can tackle these things—that’s a real obstacle for a lot of women. It’s an obstacle for me; it’s something that I’ve had to overcome throughout my life, that fear.

James E. Faust was speaking at some sort of a regional priesthood conference that my then boyfriend, now husband, was at, and he told me about it. And one of the things that James E. Faust said was “Don’t take counsel from your fears,” and that has played in my head and been an influence in my life ever since. So that’s the third thing—don’t take counsel from your fears. You’re needed. You can learn along the way. Don’t let that stop you. And don’t take counsel from your fears. Step in and do the things that scare you, and all sorts of doors will open up.