Bill Clinton to campaign for Hillary in Utah

Bill Clinton will campaign on behalf of his wife next month in Utah, a state traditionally considered a lock for Republicans in the general election.

The former president will travel to the Beehive State to campaign for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on Aug. 11 for several events, according to BuzzFeed.

{mosads}Utah is one of nine states to have voted Republican in the past 12 presidential elections, but GOP nominee Donald Trump is unpopular in the state, scrambling the race.  

In a RealClearPolitics average of polls, Trump narrowly leads Clinton in Utah by 7 percentage points. But a survey from early June found Trump leading Clinton by only 3 points in a three-way contest with Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson.

“The state is in play,” said Jenny Wilson, Utah delegation chair to the Democratic National Convention, who told BuzzFeed that the state’s large Mormon voter bloc doesn’t “like [Trump’s] abrupt nature, they don’t like the ‘build a wall’ — the persecution.”

Trump finished third in the the Utah caucuses during the primary process, taking only 14 percent of the vote. 

The businessman’s struggles in Utah could be the result of his bitter public feud with Mitt Romney, a native son who was the first-ever Mormon to be nominated for president by a major party. Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, has refused to endorse Trump.