Salt Lake public relations executive Dale Zabriskie says that getting things done simply involved getting a consensus from those executives and the head of the LDS Church. But according to another Deseret News article, the LDS Church, although a powerful and influential force in Utah, acts in subtle ways, and it only acts infrequently. And that's consistent with my experience. But it depends on the issue. Meg Holbrook, a two-term state chairwoman of the Utah Democratic Party, says that many times the public assumes the Church is behind a political move.
People do talk about the abuse of power by the church.
But I haven't seen it. Look, if we lived in Vatican City people would make the same arguments. The Deseret News' list is also interesting for who was not included. In addition to President Hinckley, the only LDS General Authority on the list was President Thomas S. Monson of the First Presidency, and he was included in the second, unranked ten, not in the ranked top ten. Other prominent LDS politicians, including all three Utah congressmen and every other local government official, did not make the list.