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In this interview, Sue Zwahlen recounts how she joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and how the gospel affects her approach to her role as mayor. She also explains how she juggles all the various responsibilities in her life—family, church, and public service. This interview was conducted on July 12, 2021, by Jordan Gygi, a BYU student majoring in political science.

Jordan Gygi: Before we get started into the questions, would you mind just giving us a little bit of a background on yourself, where you grew up, went to school, your family, that kind of information?

Sue Zwahlen: Sure, happy to do that. So I was born and raised here in Modesto, California. My grandparents both lived here, had dairy farms, Portuguese ancestry and Swiss German—sort of the story of the central valley. My mom and dad went to Modesto High School and met. They married and here we have lived, and this is the city that I love. My husband and I met when we were in high school. I first met him, I think, my freshman year in high school. Senior year we started dating. He served a mission for two years in Japan. He baptized me just prior to leaving on his mission; I’m a convert to the church. And I went to nursing school right after high school; he went to BYU on the football team, actually. Played football LaVell Edwards’s first year as head coach, so we have a lot of good memories at BYU. After his mission, we married and he finished BYU. I worked as a nurse in the emergency room at Utah Valley Hospital. We went to dental school after that; he’s a local dentist. And I worked in the hospital here in the emergency room. And we have six adult children and ten grandchildren, with one more on the way. So that’s a quick rundown of a lot of things that have happened in our lives.

Jordan Gygi: So you mentioned joining the church and your boyfriend, future husband, was a member of the church. What drew you to the church? What made you want to join?

Sue Zwahlen: I was raised in a beautiful home; my parents were the two best people that I’ve ever known. So I was raised in an environment where family was really important. Like I said, my grandparents both lived here, we were very close, spent a lot of time together. So family was really important. I just had always observed Lynn and, you know, he was kind of known as a great athlete and everyone knew him. And I watched him, and I just noticed the way he treated people; he was very respectful and kind. And when we started dating and I spent more time around his family, I could see that family was really important to them, and I became very curious about the church and why he was who he was and his family, why they were the way they were. And so when I went to nursing school, I reached out and contacted the missionaries. Well, I first called the Oakland Temple, asked where the closest church was, and took the bus to the church by myself in Oakland. So, I started having the missionary discussions and from there developed a testimony that I knew the church was true and I needed to join. It was difficult for my parents and my family, but I made that decision and was baptized just before he left on his mission.

Jordan Gygi: Thanks for sharing that personal experience. Switching gears to politics, when did you first become interested in politics?

Sue Zwahlen: You know, as long as I can remember I’ve been very interested in politics and in current affairs and who the players were that made change happen that I felt improved our world. It’s just something I’ve been always very intrigued with, and my father was also. We would have lots of discussions about current affairs and what was happening in the world, and since I’m a bit older, I lived through the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War and a lot of things that were happening in our country, so it’s just something I just always found very interesting.

Jordan Gygi: What government or political positions have you served in and when did you serve in them?

Sue Zwahlen: Sure. I was first elected to the Modesto City Schools Board of Education in 2009, served two terms there, which is eight years, so I ran twice and won. It’s a very large school district, over thirty thousand plus students here in Modesto, California, and so it was 2009 to 2017. And then I was just elected mayor of Modesto in a runoff election in February 2021.

Jordan Gygi: What religious and political leaders have influenced you?

Sue Zwahlen: Well, as I mentioned, I’m a convert to the church, and I was raised Catholic, and I’m not sure that this has so much to do with it, but I was always intrigued with Robert Kennedy. And I’d say he had a big influence in my life. And when I was a thirteen-year-old girl on Memorial Day 1968, Robert Kennedy was on his whistle-stop tour running for president of the United States on his way to Los Angeles on the back of a train. And I was able to be right there at the back of the train. I shook his hand three times. I always wanted to have a large family and at the time, his wife, Ethel Kennedy, was pregnant with their eleventh child. And I had read a lot about the Kennedys and their history and what they had advocated for regarding civil rights and other principles that I felt very strongly about. So I had that experience with him. Actually in the crowd I started to fall, and he started to climb out of the back of the train to help me up; it was quite an impressionable experience. And so then, of course, the rest of the story is, we know, six days later he was shot and then died. So that was very impressionable to me and important to me.

Then when I went to nursing school in Oakland, I think this was right after I was baptized and Lynn had left on his mission, I was in an open heart surgery, and the surgeon, who knew I had converted, mentioned he knew President [Russell M.] Nelson had invented the heart-lung machine. And so I did research and have followed President Nelson’s career as a cardiac surgeon. And that left a long-lasting impression on me also, and of course now he’s our prophet and doing a lot of things that I really appreciate, as far as relationships with people in our community and in our world and trying to build bridges. So I followed him also.

Jordan Gygi: Thank you. Did church teachings influence your decision to become involved in politics at all?

Sue Zwahlen: Yes, they did. You know, I feel like we’re taught to be charitable and to help other people on their way and to be a good example in all we do and to be good stewards of our environment and of the land that we have. And public service is one way to do that. So it has really affected my desire to be involved in politics. And I feel like I’m an honest person, and I do my best to live the principles of the gospel and the commandments and to be an example to those around me and to show empathy and concern and just be honest and live the commandments, and so it has affected my role in politics and actually every part of my life.

Jordan Gygi: How do you balance holding church callings and being in office?

Sue Zwahlen: Well, I’ve always accepted every calling that I’ve had, and I currently have three. And, you know, we all have twenty-four hours in our day, so we do the best that we can. I’ve always been very dedicated to my callings, to do the best job that I can, never making excuses, regardless of the circumstances. And the people that I work with are understanding, obviously, of my most recent responsibilities that I’ve taken on as mayor of our city, so that helps tremendously. But I enjoy serving in the church and I’ve served in many, many, many callings and have learned and grown and developed from each of them. And I feel like they have prepared me for political office, and I am really encouraging other women in our church to run as leaders of organizations in our church. We’re presidents of organizations, we prepare agendas, we have to be very organized, and we’re doing all of this with children under foot and lots going on, and we volunteer in the community. So I’m kind of used to juggling all the balls of children, church, volunteer activities––so it’s just a continuation of that, and I just do my best.

Jordan Gygi: Do you seek inspiration to make decisions regarding public policy?

Sue Zwahlen: I seek inspiration for every aspect of my life. Do I ask, necessarily, for specific answers regarding what I’m going to vote on? Not always. But I constantly ask for guidance and the ability to make good decisions, regardless of the situation that comes up. And as an emergency room nurse, I’ve clearly done that every day of my life, because I would walk into work every day not knowing what I was going to be faced with. And I would pray each day to be able to be guided, to make good decisions and treat those crises in my patients’ lives to the best of my ability. And that’s what I continue to do today in this role is to pray for that guidance. And, interestingly and luckily, we’ve had some issues come up locally that have been pretty tough on me as mayor, and it is remarkable how many people, really mostly from different faiths, have reached out to me saying they’re praying for me, and that makes such a difference and really helps.

Jordan Gygi: Thank you. Continuing with policy issues, are there any specific policies or policy issues where your stance has been impacted by your religious beliefs?

Sue Zwahlen: I wrote a few notes here about that, and I wrote down that my religious beliefs are charity, service to others, and easing one another’s burdens. So really all that I do is with those principles in mind. And when I think of the church, you know, the principles of self-reliance and how it’s connected even to political roles, but self-reliance, jobs, economic development, housing, being prudent caretakers of our land and the earth that we have, and helping the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill in our community—those are really all connected to gospel principles. So, in my mind, it’s just a continuation of what I’ve tried to do in my life, whether it’s in my church callings or being a good neighbor, being a good friend, a good daughter, caring for my parents as they aged and then died, and my grandparents years ago, and just family members and neighbors and our citizens now in our community, it’s all tied in together. The principles are the same, and people recognize that.

Jordan Gygi: Thank you. What do you think should be the role of religion in politics?

Sue Zwahlen: I think that every organized religion is free to have the role that they choose. I, in this office, represent everyone. So, in connection with some of my callings in the church, I’ve been very involved with interfaith work and served on our interfaith council, and I have developed very close relationships with our local Jewish congregation and our rabbi and the imam from the Islamic center and Buddhist leaders and people from all different faiths; and I, as mayor, represent all of them. So that’s how I make decisions in this role as mayor. I promote religious freedom. I have made statements on our center plaza when there was some Asian hate going on; I made a public statement regarding that. So I represent everyone. I guess I can’t emphasize that enough, and that that’s how I make my decisions.

Jordan Gygi: So along the same lines, did church teachings have an impact on the political party that you chose to affiliate with?

Sue Zwahlen: Yes, it did. I am a Democrat; I feel like it is in best alignment with what’s important to me. As I mentioned, civil rights are extremely important to me, freedom of religion, inclusion, protecting our environment. I have followed very closely the church’s teachings in all of these areas and, as I mentioned, especially even more recently with President Nelson’s outreach with the NAACP. I have a very strong relationship with our local NAACP leaders, and they were just ecstatic when he spoke at the convention in Detroit and it’s made a huge impact, even locally here in Modesto. So I do feel that my political party aligns with what’s really important to me and is in alignment with what our church teaches.

Jordan Gygi: Do you believe that active members of the church can be members of any political party?

Sue Zwahlen: I 100 percent agree with that, yes. And it’s kind of shocking how often I have been asked at times how I could be a Democrat and be a member of the church. That’s something I’ve gotten rather accustomed to being questioned about. But what’s interesting is one of the missionaries that taught me, this is also during the election in 1972, was a Democrat. It came out somehow in our discussions. And he was a member of a quite influential family in our country and in the United States and in Utah specifically. So we had lots of discussions about that. So early on in my learning about the gospel and about the church, it just didn’t seem foreign to me. And I might add that my husband’s a strong Republican, and in my own home my mother was a strong Republican, my dad was a strong Democrat; my grandparents were in different political parties. So it’s the way I was raised, and to me it’s OK. We can all have different political beliefs and how we should come to solutions to problems in our country.

Jordan Gygi: Thanks for those insights. What advice do you have for young Latter-day Saints who are interested in becoming involved in politics or working in government?

Sue Zwahlen: Oh, goodness, we need you. I really, really want to encourage people, younger people, to get involved, jump in. I think that the key to that is having the support system to make it happen. When I first got involved, I just wanted to make the world a better place. I was really pretty naive to the fundraising that’s necessary, to the operation that has to be developed to build a campaign, to the time that it would take to edit mailers and focus on a message and a whole marketing campaign that surrounds that. So it takes kind of a machine to make it happen, so I think that even if someone’s not the person that wants to be the face of it or run for public office, there are so many other ways that we can support other people who do choose to do that.

And I’d like to really see the statistics on this, but they say that if you tell a man one time to run for office, he’ll do it. It takes a woman seven times, they say, to actually do it. So I think as women we especially need to encourage each other. And we’re needed. We are so needed. We have the experience, especially in the church, as I’ve said, teaching lessons, preparing agendas as leaders in the church, studying issues, being involved locally. So many strong women are involved in their school’s PTAs and on decision-making boards and policy organizations within school districts. We need to just continue to be involved more and more in that. And then take the leap of faith; do it. Put your name out there and people will support you. And I just can’t say enough about how important that is.

We need more people in our church especially to be involved. And we have such great principles to share with the world and it doesn’t have to be specific gospel topics, but in my opinion, like I mentioned before, charity, easing one another’s burdens, being good stewards of the environment, caring for others. You know, make policies that actually affect our entire community, and the way we can do that is by being in offices. That we bring these principles to light and are willing to say there’s problems in our communities and in our society and we need to do something to make it better. But put yourself out there; have the courage to do it. Believe me, I did, and it’s nerve-racking. Every day it’s stressful, and it can be very, very challenging. There’s always a lot going on, a lot of decisions to be made. But there again, even as mothers, we make decisions like that every day. It’s the same thing, it’s just more of the same, and we have the ability to do that. So I really encourage everyone to get involved to the ability that they can and their health allows them. And I was grateful I was born with a lot of energy, and I still have a lot I want to do to make the world a better place.