Polygamous sect slowly losing control over remote Utah town
HILDALE, Utah — In a place where political contests are virtually unknown, the campaign signs offer the latest hint that a polygamous group is losing its grip on this remote red rock community straddling the Utah-Arizona border.
“For Hildale mayor vote Donia,” reads one sign featuring Donia Jessop, a candidate pictured with a contemporary hairstyle and a red business suit.
The signs hanging from fences and walls are unusual because elections here have long been decided behind the scenes by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a Mormon offshoot that has made its home among the rocks for more than a century and hand-picked men to run unopposed.
Just five years ago, Jessop was a member of the group also known as the FLDS. She wore the sect’s traditional prairie dresses and her hair in a conservative up-do. Now she is among a swelling number of former members who have returned to buy foreclosed homes, open businesses and try to turn Hildale into a place that resembles a typical Western town, not a cloistered religious community.