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Karen Hale served as a state senator and in various appointed positions in city and county government, which she describes in this interview. She recounts how a newspaper article about Elder Marlin K. Jensen’s encouragement to become politically involved as a Democrat spurred her to run for office. She also explains how the Book of Mormon, particularly the account about King Benjamin, influenced her approach to public policy. This interview was conducted on February 2, 2021, by Kate Hall, a BYU student majoring in political science and minoring in civic engagement leadership.

Kate Hall: If you wouldn’t mind telling us a little bit about your background: where you grew up, went to school, about your family, just some background information.

Karen Hale: Great! Well, in fact I’m sitting in a room just in the middle of two homes that I had—one home on one side where I lived when I was in junior high, and the other home just a block down from where I was raised earlier on, and so you would think that I really haven’t expanded my circle much. I’ve lived in this area—the area which I represented in the state senate—for a really long time. I grew up in a really wonderful, loving family where politics actually was a big topic. We discussed politics a lot; my dad was really involved in politics.

So anyway, we lived here until I finished junior high school, and then we moved to Arizona. So, I went to high school in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I returned to Utah after I graduated to go to Brigham Young University where I studied mass communication and broadcast journalism. And I was at the Y for three years, and then I was married to my husband, who was a University of Utah student, so I transferred to the University of Utah for my senior year. And I graduated there in mass communication. After that I worked with some freelance writing. I did a little local news segment for NPR, just the local news section of Morning Edition. I did that for about a year or so. I really loved that. And then began our family. I have five children. Our kids were close in age and kept us all busy, and it was really great! We had them all under my wing and it was really great raising our children.

So then we moved to California. However, we’ve lived in California a few different times, and then, when we came back, we came back to the same area where I’d grown up. So me and my husband now are living in the house that was my husband’s childhood home. So here we are, and we have nine grandchildren now, and politics is a great topic of discussion even now.

Kate Hall: When did you first become interested in politics?

Karen Hale: Well, I think I always had an interest in politics. Like I say, politics was omnipresent in our home, but I’d never really considered running for an office at all. It just had never entered my mind. I was happy doing what I was doing. I was, you know, doing some writing. I was doing some editing and publishing when I was approached by the Democratic leader in the Utah state senate to run for office. He was busy recruiting candidates. This was in 1998, and so he kept talking to me about it and kind of, you know, twisting my arm a little bit. But the more I thought about it and really, really thought, “Is this something good? Is it something that I feel like I could make a difference somewhere?” There were certainly issues I felt strongly about, and so I decided that I would run.

It was interesting because there were a few things that were going on that year as well. So this was 1998, and there was an interview that had been published in the Salt Lake Tribune, and it was an interview with Elder Marlin K. Jensen, who was then a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. And he talked about party affiliation. I think he was interviewed to comment on a statement the church had put out saying that people need to be civically active—that it’s really important for us as church members to be civically active, to really do what we can in our own way to build community and strengthen the communities in which we live. So I think he was commenting on that statement from the church. And so an article was written from the interview, and it really created kind of a firestorm and for me—I mean, some members of the church, I think Republicans, maybe took a little offense to it. Elder Jensen stated then that he was a Democrat in this article, and it probably was uncomfortable for some people to think that a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy was not Republican but was a Democrat.

But I read this interview, and it really spoke to me, and as I was really wondering whether or not I should run—what I should do. . . This interview really, like I say, it really spoke to me, and I felt good about running with the Democratic Party. I felt good about the issues that I felt strongly about, and I felt good about finding some way that I could make a dent in something. And I knew that education, for example, was something that was an issue that is really very important to people in my district, and other issues too. It wasn’t just one issue. But there were issues about which I felt strongly, and I thought, “OK, this is really an opportunity that is before me, and I feel great about doing this. Who knows if I’ll win or lose.” So I decided to run. I decided to put my name on the ballot—went down to sign up, to put my name there making a statement that I was indeed running for the state senate. And it turned out to be just an incredible experience for a few reasons.

I think we all have our thoughts and opinions. Sometimes we don’t share those thoughts and opinions; we keep them to ourselves. And sometimes we just think about things, and they’re just passing thoughts. But when people are asking about your opinion, and you have to come forward as a candidate and state where you stand, then you really need to be reflective and think about where you stand and why you stand for something. So, because I had to articulate those thoughts, I think I really learned a lot about myself. And then, as I was running and as the campaign went on through the fall, I was determined that I was going to walk my senate district and that I would meet the people of Utah Senate District 7 and that I would learn from them. And it was a learning experience. I think, actually, we started in July walking up until probably November 2nd. We walked, I think, four nights a week and Saturdays. So anyway, I learned a lot about my community. You could tell what the pulse of the community was too, just what was going on in the news and what people were thinking about because I was at their doorsteps every night learning from them and trying to understand what issues were important to them and how they wanted to be represented.

So election day came, and I thought, “OK, I have no idea if I’m going to win or lose.” All I knew is that we had worked our tails off and that I had learned so much about myself and so much about community. And so it was really a great experience, and I had met so many wonderful people. It was great to get to know my opponent; we would see each other a lot, and it really was a positive experience. So when the election day came, I thought, “OK, win or lose this has been a total plus,” you know, “I’m really glad I did this!” And that night as we watched the polls come in, we learned that I won, and I think I was as surprised as anybody else.

So anyway, so that’s kind of how I stepped into it. But, like I say, this article with the interview with Elder Jensen really did give me a nudge. Also, that fall I attended an event that the Democratic Party puts on—the Eleanor Roosevelt Award luncheon. One of the speakers was Aileen H. Clyde, who had been a counselor in the General Relief Society Presidency of the church, and she spoke about why she is a Democrat. And again, here was another person who was obviously actively engaged in the church and speaking to this group about why she was a Democrat. And again, that was another thing that just really spoke to me because she felt strongly about certain issues, including the environment. And it was really great for me to hear people I respected, people who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ, and who were just putting it out there, saying they’re Democrat, and why they’re Democrat, and I loved it.

Kate Hall: What are all the government or political positions that you’ve served in, and what years did you serve in them?

Karen Hale: So I was elected to the senate in 1998, and it is a four-year term. I was elected then, and then in 2000 I was asked by the party to join former Congressman Bill Orton on the gubernatorial ticket. He was running for governor, and I was running as his running mate as lieutenant governor. We were running against Governor Mike Leavitt when he was running for his third term. And that, again, was a really positive experience just to get to know Governor Leavitt and his team. It was just a positive experience; it was really a great education.

We didn’t win that race. I was up for reelection to my senate seat in 2002, so I decided to run again for reelection. I won that election and then in 2004, two years later, I was asked to run with Scott Matheson Jr. as he ran for governor, and I ran as his running mate for lieutenant governor. And again, that was an incredibly positive experience. The Matheson family is probably one of the finest families of the state, I think perhaps the country. And we ran, and our opponent then was Jon Huntsman Jr., and so again, that was, just like I say, a really positive experience. Our campaigns had a lot of respect for each other. It was a wonderful, wonderful campaign, and even after the election there were articles galore about what a civil race it was.

So anyway, I retained my senate seat, and in 2006, I decided not to run for reelection. I felt like two terms were great. I felt like my experience in the senate had been awesome; it had been a great education. I’d met wonderful people, and I felt like I had been able to impact certain areas for good. And I felt good about my work there.

Yet there are struggles being in a minority party, especially when there’s a supermajority or a majority. When I was elected to the senate in 1998, we had eleven Democrats in the senate, which was great! That was a great number because the Democrats actually had some relevance in the senate because anytime a two-thirds vote was needed, certainly there would need to be some Democratic votes. And there were a lot of really great people in the senate serving—both Republican and Democrat—at that time. So anyway, it was just really a positive experience. Also, I have to admit that it’s also a challenging experience, you know, frustrating at times, but overall just really great.

But I remember just the first year I was in office thinking, “Wow!” When I drive by a school building or a government building or something, I will never think the same about those things again just having that added information and knowledge. So I left the beginning of 2007, and later that year my friend Ralph Becker was elected as mayor of Salt Lake City. It was somebody with whom I worked with in the legislature; he’d been the minority leader, the Democratic leader in the House at the beginning of 2008. I worked for him while he was there for two terms, so eight years at Salt Lake City; I was communications director and also director of community relations.

So again, another great experience—I love working with Mayor Becker, and a lot of things happened for Salt Lake City then. Mayor Becker was a great leader, and I felt too, one thing I really liked—there are many things I liked about serving with him—but one thing I think really stood out was that he recognized that living in a city where there’s such a great influence by an institution like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there was great responsibility that the church had. And the church did a lot for Salt Lake City, and he wasn’t afraid to recognize that.

Mayor Becker is not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he recognized too that a lot of people in Salt Lake felt like the church has too much force in Salt Lake City or that the church just tries to be in charge of everything and do everything. And I really liked that Mayor Becker was not afraid to recognize all the good that the church brought to Salt Lake City. For instance, we were going through a deep recession in 2008, and the City Creek project was going on at that time. That was bringing a lot of money into our economy because of the great building that was going on. And we were one of the very few cities that were able to move forward and stay afloat during that really hard time.

So anyway, that was just a really pleasurable experience working with Mayor Becker for eight years. He ran for a third term and did not win. So when he left the city, I left the city and I went to Salt Lake County, where I worked with Mayor Ben McAdams. Mayor McAdams had formerly worked for Salt Lake City as a government liaison there for the city, and then he’d also been an intern up at the senate when I was in the senate. So I knew Mayor McAdams well and went to work for him at Salt Lake County where I was deputy mayor of community affairs.

And that, again, was another positive, wonderful experience. I finished Salt Lake City at the end of 2015, and in spring of 2016 I went to work for Mayor McAdams. In 2018 Mayor McAdams decided that he would run for Congress. So he ran for Congress, and he was victorious and was a wonderful representative for Utah and for the 4th District. And when he won, though, I decided to stay at the county. So I stayed at the county another year and a half and worked there as special initiatives director under a different mayor. I left the county in June of 2020 just because I thought, “Oh, it’s just time for a change.” I really loved my experience there, loved working with all the different people there, but I just felt like, “OK, it’s time to maybe do something else now.”

Kate Hall: Did you have any church teachings, specific church teachings, that influenced your decision to become involved in politics? Again, you mentioned the article by Elder Jensen, but were there any other teachings?

Karen Hale: Yeah, I mean this gets into really some of the core things that I really feel strongly about. Going back to Elder Jensen’s interview, he talks about how there’s not going to be one party that is going to envelop every single issue or represent each issue the way you would like it to be represented. It’s not going to be the end-all—one party just can’t represent everything you believe. And there may be a few things that you may take issue with there, but there may be a majority of issues and you’re thinking, “OK, this is where I feel like my party really represents what I feel from a religious standpoint, even.”

Elder Steven Snow has called it a moral imperative of environmental stewardship. I feel that strongly. I feel like the earth is a beautiful gift to all of us. It represents our Creator, and I feel like we have a responsibility to our earth, that we have stewardship over that and that the Lord expects us to practice good stewardship. And so I feel like areas or votes or issues that came up that had to do with preservation or conservation or protection, I felt like those issues went along with my personal religious beliefs of stewardship for the earth. So that’s one area.

Another area—I believe if I had to choose a favorite book from the Book of Mormon, it would probably be Mosiah and King Benjamin’s teachings, and then we go into Alma and what we read there. And I really feel like those scriptures specifically spell out how we need to take care of each other. And, you know, people will say, “Well, government certainly can’t do everything,” and I certainly agree: government cannot do everything. There are some things that we can do, and that we can be effective as we work together as a community, as a city, as a county, or as a state—that we can do to help people. We can help people live rewarding lives; we can help people live healthier lives; we can help people appreciate the beauties around them or appreciate their families in ways.

There are things that we can do to help them recognize and achieve success in different ways, and I feel like, for a lot of different social issues, there was a lot of legislation that came up where I could really go back to those teachings. Those scriptures spoke to me, and it would really dictate how I would vote on those issues and where I would stand on those issues.

Kate Hall: How did you balance holding church callings while being an office?

Karen Hale: It’s hard. I just think basically balance, finding a good life balance for a lot of people is really difficult, so I’m not going to say that it’s ever easy. But I have a great spouse. I have a fabulous husband who helped with that. But also, I felt like it kind of grounded me. So, for instance, at that time I was running for office, I was the stake Young Women president at the time. After I was elected, I was called into Young Women but also then as the Gospel Doctrine teacher.

And I just felt like that was good grounding, you know, just to be able to have those really rich discussions with members of my ward over the weekend, to have the spirit and the energy of young women. Those church callings were really fulfilling to me, and I think it kind of grounded me a little bit, especially in the middle of an intense legislative session. So I appreciated having those comments, and I think callings are really important. I think you need to have a good mix of what you’re doing in life, so it was really helpful for me to have that spiritual base.

Kate Hall: Do you believe that Latter-day Saints can belong to different political parties and still be faithful members of the church?

Karen Hale: I definitely do. Yes, strongly! I think there are members of the church all over the world that belong to different parties as well. And, like I say, one party is not going to encapsulate all of your beliefs, and I think you need to find a place where you feel comfortable. But, too, I think all of us need to check ourselves so that we’re not running to the edges, maybe of extremism.

Certainly, we all have different opinions, different thoughts, and I actually think that those differences make us all stronger. And having those differences of opinion represented, especially when you’re forming public policy—you need those different perspectives. That’s what makes public policy good and strong—when all of those different opinions or those different perspectives are really talked about and thought about and considered before something is in its final stage of creation—you know that you’ve really looked at all different sides.

And those differences are really what strengthen us, and the differences of opinion and perspective strengthen our public policy. So we need those differences, and we need strong people and good people represented in all different parties. Just having a supermajority or having just one party doesn’t do any of us any favors at all. And I just really appreciate the good men and women with whom I’ve been able to work, who have shared their perspectives with me.

Kate Hall: Did your religious beliefs affect which party you chose to affiliate with, like when you’re choosing your party?

Karen Hale: Yes, very much so. I did talk about that a little bit, I just felt like certainly, for me—like I say, everybody’s different—that the Democratic Party really did represent my views as far as specific issues go. And I just happen to have right here, because I was thinking about this a lot, and I go back to these scriptures a lot, and like I said, they’re scriptures from Mosiah, they’re scriptures from Alma. I love this from Alma 1:27–28, “And they did impart of their substance, every man according to that which he had, to the poor, and the needy, and the sick, and the afflicted; and they did not wear costly apparel, yet they were neat and comely. And thus they did establish the affairs of the church.” There was the effort to help all of those who were needy, who were sick, who were afflicted.

And I feel like we have opportunities, through different volunteer organizations, through faith organizations and also through government to do that. And we all need to work together to do that. I think that one of those entities can’t do it, you know, respond to all the needs. So we need all of these different groups: we need individuals; we need families; we need communities; we need faith organizations; we need other volunteer organizations, community organizations, and government to work together to find ways that we can uplift those around us.

And then, when we get to Mosiah, and what does King Benjamin teach us? He’s saying well, are we not all beggars? And we all need each other, and we all need something at some time or another, and we can work together, we can work together from different parties, we can work together from different organizations, to find ways that we can meet the needs of all of our brothers and sisters.

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

Karen Hale: Well, first, as we kind of talked a little bit about, we need good people in politics. I remember, like I said, I was just so like a sponge the year that I was running and the very first year that I ran for public office, which was 1998. And I was reading all these articles and all these different things that have really stuck with me, and one of those articles I read was an interview with John Glenn, the former astronaut, US senator. And he was retiring from the senate and there was an interview—Time magazine—and the reporter was asking Senator Glenn, “What do you think about the fact that there are lots of young people who are shying away from politics, who don’t want to get involved, they have apathy or they’ve seen how dirty it can get, how messy it can get, and, what do you say to them?”

And Senator Glenn said, “You know, it saddens me, because we need good people, and we all need to remember that politicians are the personnel of democracy.” And I just always remembered that statement, that “politicians are the personnel of democracy.” We need politicians. The way we’re set up, we need people to run for office. We have a representative form of government. We need people, good people, to represent us, to help push and move our democracy along.

And certainly our democracy has been tested this last year, and there have been some good people that I think keep reminding us we have something so precious, and we need to work for it, and we need good people who not only believe in democracy but believe in the process and believe that we can work together—that recognize that our country is made up of people from all different walks and differences and beliefs but that we can work together. That’s what makes our country strong, and we need those good personnel in there.

And if good people don’t run, then our democracy is going to fail. And, like I say, we’ve seen it tested. And if I were talking to a group of young people, I would say, “You need to be in the ring, you need to jump in with both feet. Study hard, study history, study the process, listen to other people, recognize that there are differences, learn from the differences, and find ways—despite those differences and because of those differences—to affect good public policy.”