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In this interview, Holly Richardson explains how she became involved in politics, how she dealt with situations where her constituents were divided on issues she needed to vote on, and how we need to address the problem of partisan polarization. This interview was conducted on April 5, 2021, by Kate Hall, a BYU student majoring in political science and minoring in civic engagement leadership.

Kate Hall: Before we dive into the deeper questions, if you wouldn’t mind just giving a little background: where you grew up, went to school, a little bit about your family, just some context.

Holly Richardson: OK, so I grew up around the country mostly and some international, because my dad was in the air force. So I was an air force brat. Came out to BYU; I got a degree in nursing from BYU way back in 1984, and then I met my husband at BYU. We got married and started our family, and it became very large. So we’re the parents of twenty-five children. We adopted twenty from eight different countries, and I gave birth to four. We are also raising a granddaughter; we’re her permanent legal guardians. So it gives us twenty-five.

Kate Hall: That is amazing. Wow!

Holly Richardson: It’s unique, right? So, let’s see, do you want me to start with how I got interested in politics?

Kate Hall: Sure. Yeah!

Holly Richardson: OK, so I actually was not that interested in politics for at least part of my adult life and then had something happen that I was like, “That needs a law change.” So I was also a midwife, and there was a midwife who got arrested for practicing medicine without a license in 2000. And there were a handful of us that were like, “We don’t think she was wrong; we think the law was wrong.” And so we kind of jumped in. It took us five legislative sessions to get a bill passed, but we were successful in 2005 getting a bill passed, and I found, during that process, that I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the legislative process, and so I got more and more involved and became a legislative district chair for my district where I live. And then, my representative had to step down in 2011 in January, and I ran and won in a special election that year, so that’s great.

Kate Hall: What made you finally decide to put your name on the ballot and say, “OK, I’m going to actually go for this?”

Holly Richardson: I think the opportunity was there because the representative stepped down and because I had been so involved, and I think people in my area knew me, that I just said, “I am going to put my hat in the ring and run.” And it was a very compressed election because it was right before the legislative session started. In fact, it had already been underway for a week when I was elected. So I was elected on a Saturday night and sworn in on Monday, so that was, you know, really rapid, but I did it because I felt like I had something to offer when I stepped into office, so I did. It was scary though.

Kate Hall: Were there any specific positions that you’ve served in while you were in the House or any positions that you would like to mention?

Holly Richardson: One of the things that I did was I was on the appropriations committee for Health and Human Services, and so that covers everything from funding people with disabilities to looking at expanding Medicaid to how do we best serve our homeless populations. So I really enjoyed that. I actually am the mom of kids with disabilities as well, and so it’s an issue that I really care about. And so that was one thing that I really enjoyed. And I’ve been involved with political stuff for a long time. So I actually only served in the House for one year, but I’ve stayed involved in politics, and right now I’m the editor of Utah Policy, which is a daily newsletter that goes out every weekday morning about Utah politics and some national politics that are of interest here. So I still stay involved, and it’s been twenty years now.

Kate Hall: How did your religion affect your approach to your office?

Holly Richardson: Well, it’s really interesting because as I looked over the questions that you were going to be asking, it reminded me that I had people who literally said to me, “We did not elect you to vote your conscience. We elected you to vote the way we tell you to vote.” And that’s not actually true. We elect people that we believe will go represent our best interest but that have a basis of grounding in values and morals that we align with and that we feel comfortable with. You’re never going to agree 100 percent with anybody, right? But my religion is a huge factor. I don’t separate my religion with the rest of my life, right? I tried to live the whole package. And I heard a statement a long time ago, and I think it was St. Francis of Assisi, who said something like, “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.” It’s not that I’m trying to be preachy; it’s that it just colors everything, right? And so, of course there were times where I prayed a lot over my decisions as a legislator. I certainly did over the controversial immigration bill. And there were several other bills where I was on my knees saying, “This is the direction I feel like I’m going. Is this something that I can feel good about?” And so it not only does religion affect it, but it’s just part of who I am, and so it’s always going to be there. And I find it really interesting that people try to separate the two. And to tell the elected officials, “You can’t bring your religion into any of the decisions that you make,” and that’s just simply not true. We’re not built that way as humans.

Kate Hall: I’d be interested to know if there were any religious or political leaders that influenced you either to run or while you’ve been serving these past years.

Holly Richardson: Yeah, a number of them actually. So, when I ran, Becky Lockhart had just become the Speaker of the House, and so I had known her for close to a decade at that point, and she was really influential on me. She was younger than I am. And yet she was just like, “Look, you got to step up, and your voice is needed, and we need more people who feel passionately to be involved in politics.” And that was me. And she was really influential.

The year that I was in, we had a really hotly contested immigration bill. And it was super interesting to me because the LDS Church weighed in pretty strongly on the side of the bill that was being proposed, which was to have a process in place where we could have people who were undocumented be able to actually get documented within the state of Utah. So they felt like they didn’t have to stay in the shadows; they could just kind of step forward and say, you know, “Here I am.” And we know that most of them are contributing members of society, and sometimes the way they cross the border, they could have been kids, right? They could have been toddlers, even, or babies. And that they are here in our societies, and they’re contributing.

So we were working on that. The LDS Church weighed strongly in favor of that. And I got death threats because I was supporting it. These were from people who were members of the church. And it was like, “This is so weird to me.” In fact, that was the most eye-opening experience for people to say, “I go to church on Sunday, and how dare you? How dare you do this, and the church has no business weighing in on this issue!” And so, that was super eye-opening. But I was really influenced by my own religious convictions that all people are children of a loving Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother and that they deserve to be treated with respect. It did help that the LDS Church took a stance on it, but that wasn’t the only thing, right? It was my own religious convictions.

So the answer to your question is yes. And then, subsequently, one of the things that I’ve been super involved in has been working with refugees. I was particularly influenced by a conference talk by Elder Patrick Kearon in April of 2017. And I went on a humanitarian trip shortly after that talk to go work with refugees in Greece, and I’ve been going ever since around the world trying to work with these populations that have been displaced.

Kate Hall: Did your religious beliefs affect the party that you chose to affiliate with?

Holly Richardson: Yeah, to some degree. I am Republican, although I would consider myself more of a centrist. And I would say that one of the big things that drew me to the Republican Party was an emphasis on family and being pro-life; and I will say now, however, that I feel like that party has veered away from those principles that first drew me to it. And so I look to other people who I think represent what can be good within the Republican Party, and we have current state leaders: Spencer Cox, Deidre Henderson, Mitt Romney. There are people who, for me, represent what the Republican Party can be, but I have been disappointed as a Republican to see how far, I think, we’ve strayed afield. We used to be the party of fiscal conservatism, right? We’re not going to spend money unnecessarily, we’re not going to create these big government programs, but we’ve kind of lost our way.

Kate Hall: Has your approach to particular policy issues been shaped by your religious beliefs?

Holly Richardson: Yes, and I would say especially in my approach to immigration but also my approach to, I think, helping people that we would consider marginalized. I think that’s the lingo people are using right now, right? So whether that’s people who are in poverty or experiencing homelessness or in LGBTQ communities or anything that we consider somehow different than the mainstream. My religion helps me frame how I look at that—how I look at the issues. Because I don’t just look at the issues; I want to look at the people who are affected by these issues, so yes.

Kate Hall: Have you ever faced a conflict between what your religion wants and what your constituents want and, if so, how did you handle that situation?

Holly Richardson: Yeah, sure. So, immigration again, I’ll go back to that. And I would say it was divided because there were definitely people who supported it, but there were also people who were strongly opposed to it. I think, again, because it was a split issue, I never had an opportunity where I said, “Well, everybody wants this one thing, and I’m going to go this other way.” But on that issue, and there are a number of issues where you end up split, you still have to do your best to get input from all sides, which I did, actually. And then talk to other people as well, and then make the best decision for policy that you feel like is the appropriate one.

Kate Hall: We’ve been talking a lot about incivility in politics and partisan polarization, so do you think they’re problems today and, if so, how should we address these problems?

Holly Richardson: They’re absolutely our problems today. In fact, I was listening just recently to the October 2020 general conference from the LDS Church, and I think it was President [Dallin H.] Oaks who talked about it being the most uncivil political discourse that even the old-timers could remember. And it’s particularly very virulent, right? I mean there’s almost no allowance for anybody to have a difference of opinion; you’re either with me 100 percent or you’re evil. And when we treat people with contempt because they don’t agree with us all the time, and in all the ways, that really is a problem. And we have a breakdown of civil society. So there’s a sociologist, or professor of sociology, Robert Putnam, who’s talked about civil society. He wrote a book called Bowling Alone. In the ’60s, we started to become a very individualistic society in the United States, and we started to focus more on the individual rather than the community. And I think we are seeing what happens when you go too far down that road—we’re no longer talking about the greater good. We don’t talk about the greater good, right?

So there’s a little catchphrase: “We don’t need to disagree less; we need to disagree better,” and part of that, I think, is trying to understand why people are approaching a problem the way that they are. Why are they looking at it through that particular lens? And I am a writer, and I am a storyteller, and I know that everybody has a story, and if you can understand their story, which is where they’re coming from, then it really helps change your mind. So if you’re looking at, for example, somebody who says, “All immigrants are bad,” where does that come from? Does it come from a place of fear; did they have a bad experience? Did they know somebody? It’s really a matter of trying to find out what is their perspective, and can you have civil discourse, which means, can you share your ideas without defaulting to name-calling? So I think you have to be willing to sit down, you have to listen, and you have to have the ability to sit with uncomfortable information. Because one of the things that I’ve seen and I continue to see is people have this belief, “If it didn’t happen to me personally, it didn’t happen.” And that’s not true, right? That’s a very self-centric view, but if we can take the time to say, “OK, I’ve never had that experience, but you’re telling me that your experience has been like this,” that’s worth considering, right? Let me think about that.

Kate Hall: What lessons have you learned about politics that you would like to share with young Latter-day Saints considering an involvement in politics or a career in the government?

Holly Richardson: I would say, one, is it’s a long game. So there can be a lot of emotional roller coaster and you can say, “OK, I’m done, I’m out of here.” But it really is a long game. I’ve been playing it for twenty years, and sometimes there is a component of a game to it, right? But a lot of it is relationship building, and it’s bridge building and not bridge burning. I learned early on to never burn a bridge if I didn’t have to. And I tried to find ways not to have to. And what I have found is that over that time, because I was willing to not do a scorched-earth policy in my approach to working with legislators, that even though I couldn’t get support for the initial bill that I was interested in, I was able to get support for other issues that I’d been interested in. And people respect people that don’t burn bridges. So that’s one thing—don’t get discouraged by what seems like setbacks. It’s a long game.

Kate Hall: All right, are there any other stories that you have or experiences you wanted to share?

Holly Richardson: I think one of the things that I wish people knew—you are not going to change anyone’s mind by telling them what a horrible human being they are, right? You’re not going to change their mind by threatening them or their families. It’s really concerning to me that people are not only not willing to see elected officials and other people involved in government as humans, but that they feel free to threaten them. So I’m not alone as a female politician who has had very ugly threats against me and against my kids, and I think that’s not appropriate: (a) it doesn’t make for good government, but (b) it actually is going to increase government cost because then you’re going to start providing security for people who are at higher visibility and potentially at higher risk, right? So I wish people would really consider (a) how they’re going to actually influence people to change their minds, and (b) that the people on the other end of your email or your phone call or your text message or your Facebook post are humans, right? They’re real people with real feelings, and it’s demeaning to say, “Well, if they can’t take the heat, they should get out the kitchen.” No! They can take the heat of disagreement and dialogue, but they don’t need to take the heat of physical threats. So calm down, everybody.

Look, it can be hard, it can be discouraging, it can be frustrating, but it can also be incredibly rewarding. It can really make you feel like you’re making a difference. I haven’t been in elected office for a decade, and I’m still making a difference. I still have influence on Utah’s Capitol Hill. I can still advocate for laws. I can get laws passed or killed, and not by myself but by advocacy work with legislators that I still have good relationships with. So it can be really, really rewarding if you can handle the frustrations.