The rambling letter, from an organization calling itself the Freedom Defense Advocates, alleges Romney is running for president at the bidding of church leaders and that Mormons are a violent people who want to overthrow the U.S. Constitution.
"Help me sound the alarm that one day the Mormon Church plans to replace the Constitution with a Mormon theocracy," reads the letter, signed by John Boyd.
"Mitt Romney's political success indicates this may be sooner than most have thought. Do you really want a president who believes he will someday become a god? Is that who you want occupying the most powerful position in the world . . . the United States presidency?"
It was unclear Monday how many voters received the mailer, though the group said it was "widespread." The Romney camp said it had only heard of one recipient.
Boyd says he runs a political action committee, though no group by that name has registered with the Federal Elections Commission or the Internal Revenue Service.
The letter - which is also posted on the group's Web site and makes a plea for donations - is one of a string of attacks on Romney's Mormon faith in the past few months in the states with the earliest presidential primary balloting. South Carolina voters received a Christmas card raising the specter of plural marriage, and phone calls critical of the Mormon faith were reported in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Romney traveling press secretary Eric Fehrnstrom said the letter was a ''contemptible piece of literature and whoever is behind it ought to be ashamed of themselves.''
But Fehrnstrom said the campaign is not going to ask for an investigation and is focused on winning the early Iowa caucus and other primaries and not on the dirty politics going on under the radar.
"Is it a concern? Sure. Whenever people engage in this type of gutterball politics, that is a concern," Fehrnstrom said. "But the vast majority of people that we meet, either in South Carolina or other parts of the country, they don't look so much to what church Mitt Romney belongs to, but they look at the values that he shares with them. Mitt Romney's values are as American as you can find."
Boyd, from Lynchburg, Va., declined to say who belongs to his group or how many mailers went out and to where, but he said it is ''widespread all over the U.S.'' and in the thousands.
He said he shipped out the letters "because Romney is a member of the Mormon cult" and people need to know his plans so he can be stopped. He accuses the campaign of a direct connection to the LDS Church, but offered no direct evidence.
"We just want to alert the voters in these early states, in these key states, the truth of what the church is," Boyd said. Asked what he thought of the Romney campaign's response, he said, "It's not despicable. [But] if telling the truth is despicable, I guess we're guilty."
The St. Petersburg Times first reported on the letter on Monday and noted that the group's Web site was registered Dec. 6 - the day that Romney gave a much heralded speech in College Station, Texas, on the role his faith would play if he were elected.
tburr@sltrib.com
