from corporate boardrooms to the high court · 2011-08-10 · this dramatic political shift....

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer AuH20@100 Conference Do not cite/distribute without author’s written permission

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From Corporate Boardrooms to the High Court: Barry Goldwater and the Arizona Republican Party in Postwar Politics Historical assessments of modern conservatism are misshapen. Recent work has, for the

most part, focused largely on the racial and cultural politics of the 1960s and 1970s to explain

this dramatic political shift. Frustrated homeowners, militant housewives, dogmatic Birchers,

racist blue-collar workers, evangelical Christians, abortion opponents, and other crusaders in the

dramatic culture wars populate these narratives. The American South also casts an, arguably,

overly-long shadow over the field. Scholars, for example, have delved into the apparent “south-

ernization” of American politics, the infamous Southern strategy, the inflammatory politics of

school and neighborhood desegregation, the trajectory of state Democratic parties, and the ap-

parent need for Southern politicians on Democratic presidential tickets.1

1 See for example: Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascen-

dancy in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996); Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America; Leo Ribuffo, “Conservatism and American Politics,” Journal of the Historical Society, 3 (Spring 2003), 163-175; Jonathon M. Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 2001); On scholarship on race and anti-communism in the Right, see: Jonathan Bell, The Liberal State on Trial: The Cold War and American Politics in the Truman Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Thomas Bryne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: Norton, 1992); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2001); Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Post-war Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Thomas J. Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Michael Kazin, The Populist Per-suasion: An American History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); See also Kazin’s review of the proliferation of this literature, “The Grass-Roots Right: New Histories of U.S. Conservatism in the Twentieth Century,” American Historical Review 72 (February 1992), 136-155; On the South see: Bruce Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Free Press, 2001); Joseph E. Lowndes, “The Southern Ori-gins of Modern Conservatism” (Ph.D diss., New School University, 2003); Dan T. Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996); Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); Lassiter, The Silent Majority; Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Prince-ton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Earl Black and Merle Black, The Vital South: How Presidents Are Elected (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); Alex Lichtenstein, “The End of Southern Liberalism: Race, Class and the Defeat of Claude Pepper in the 1950 Democratic Primary,” unpublished article in author’s possession, presented at the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy’s Speakers’ Series, University of California, Santa Bar-bara, September 26, 2008; Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of the Southern Republicans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), esp. 72-138; Merle Black, “The Transformation of the Southern Democratic Party,” The


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There is (and has been) far less attention to the power and place of business-minded con-

servatives and Western Republicans within the conservative movement. Yet, the scant work done

has shown, decisively, that both warrant more inquiry. Kim Phillips-Fein and Mark Tushnet, for

example, have demonstrated that the modern Right has been the most successful in unraveling

the essence of New Deal liberalism: a powerful, interventionist federal state that polices and

regulates industry, empowers the citizenry, through the trade union movement, to help direct

economic development, and redistributes wealth through an expansive social safety net. Indeed,

the business Right’s success is clear by the very absence of mainstream questioning of or schol-

arly inquiry into a hyper-capitalism built on deregulation, privatization, low taxation, and union

insecurity.2

Journal of Politics 66 (November, 2004), 1001-1017; Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000); Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976); Michael Lind, “Conservative Elites and the Counterrevolution against the New Deal,” in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (eds.), Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2005), 250-285; Bruce Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Free Press, 2001); Thomas F. Schaller, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006); Joseph E. Lowndes, “The Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism” (Ph.D. diss., New School University, 2003); Steve Jarding and Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland (New York: Touchstone, 2006); Augustus B. Cochran, III, Democracy Heading South: National Politics in the Shadow of Dixie (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2001); Peter P. Applebome, Dixie Rising: How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture (New York: Random House, 1996).

2 Both Phillips-Fein and Tushnet highlight this glaring absence in their respective works, Kim Phillips-Fein, In-visible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009) [see especially Phillips-Fein’s bibliographic essay for a broad survey on the literature on the American Right, 321-330]; Mark Tushnet, A Court Divided: The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005); On the salience of economics in postwar politics, see: Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 2004); Risa Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 2005); Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); James Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1997); Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); On conservative attack on unions, see: Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (New York: The New Press, 2001); Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Sell-ing Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Sanford Jacoby, Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Andrew Kersten, Labor’s Home Front: The American Federation of Labor during World War II (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Jennifer Klein, For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America’s Public-Private Welfare State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Nelson Lichtenstein, State of


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Some of the most famous spokesmen for this particular entrepreneurial gospel were

Western Republicans, the “cowboy conservatives.” Still, relatively little attention has been paid

to the constant presence of a Sunbelt-Westerners on the GOP’s slates. Although only two, Barry

Goldwater and John McCain, called Phoenix home, scholars have often invoked both Goldwater

and Ronald Reagan as paragons of this anti-liberal economic doctrine. These two figures were

not outliers but representatives of a broad movement coming out of Chambers of Commerce, city

governments, and state legislatures throughout the Southwest. In this proto-Sunbelt, there was a

genuine boom economy sustained by a commitment to unorganized labor, deregulation of busi-

ness, low income taxes, and laissez-faire attitudes towards income inequality. The basis for this

Sunbelt hyper-capitalism was two-fold: boosters wanted industrial development but also had a

fundamental distrust, if not open hostility, to liberal economic orthodoxy. These businessmen

found common cause with CEOs eager to move out of the Steelbelt and coastal California that

liberal politicians, voters, and unionists had refashioned in the 1930s and 1940s.3

Booster-politicians endeavored to refashion their locales in both the South and Southwest

but the Phoenix Chamber men were perhaps the most successful. In the South, urban business-

men and professionals had far less control over state politics, which frustrated and slowed their

the Union: A Century of American Labor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight against Organized Labor, 1903-1947 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2001); Kimberley Philips-Fein, “Top-Down Revolution: Businessmen, Intellectuals and Politicians against the New Deal” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2005); David Witwer, “Westbrook Pegler and the Anti-union Movement,” Journal of American History, 92 (September 2005), 527-552. 3 On Western Republicans, see: Robert Alan Goldberg Barry Goldwater (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Rick Perlstein Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001); Thomas Dye, Who’s Running America? (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1983); Carl Oglesby, “Yankees vs. Cowboys,” Guardian 20 (1968), 28-30; Carl Oglesby, The Yankee and Cowboy War (Kansas City: Sheed, Andrew and McNeel, 1976); Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift (New York: Random House, 1975); Leon-ard Silk and Mark Silk, The American Establishment (New York: Basic, 1980); J. Craig Jenkins and Teri Shumate, “Cowboy Capitalists and the Rise of the ‘New Right’: An Analysis of Contributions to Conservative Policy Forma-tion Organizations,” Social Problems 33 (December 1985), 130-145; Jeff Roche, “Cowboy Conservatism,” in David Farber and Jeff Roche (eds), The Conservative Sixties (New York: Peter Lang, 2003); Robert Alan Goldberg, “The Western Hero in American Politics: Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and the Rise of the American Conservative Movement” in Jeff Roche (ed), The Political Culture of the New West (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008), 12-50.


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efforts to remake Southern politics. Their Southwestern counterparts enjoyed earlier victories

both politically and economically. During the 1940s and 1950s, there was a revolution in mu-

nicipal governance throughout the region. Anglo businessmen pushed for new charters that mar-

ginalized the Anglo and non-Anglo working-class electorate, rolled back zoning restrictions,

shifted the tax burden from business and individual homeowners, and gave themselves the politi-

cal power to deliver whatever else industrial recruitment scouts demanded. By the mid-1950s,

this general zeitgeist became known as an area’s business climate, which encompassed land

giveaways and tax breaks but was built, fundamentally, on the political power and will to place

business first. Though boosters throughout the South and Southwest endeavored to transform

their entrepreneurial environs, Phoenix Chamber men were among the most successful. They at-

tracted over 700 manufacturing outfits in the postwar period. Phoenix quickly grew into a center

of high-tech manufacturing, finance, and population.4

The Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and the Arizona Republican Party were deeply en-

twined with both this local, state, and regional industrialization initiative and the broader trans-

formation of the American political landscape. In the early 1930s, both the state GOP and the

Phoenix Chamber were small and ineffective. But a new generation of boosters set out to refash-

ion both. From the start, their vision of a bright, industrial future and a decidedly anti-liberal Re-

publican Party were interconnected. Moreover, these Chamber men looked beyond their imme-

diate surroundings and sought to fundamentally alter the broader political economy. And, they

4 Amy Bridges, Morning Glories: Municipal Reform in the Southwest (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1997); Carl Abbott, The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, “Counter-Organizing the Sunbelt: Right to Work Campaigns and Anti-Union Conservatism, 1943-1958,” Pacific Historical Review (February 2009), 81-118; Shermer, “Origins of the Conservative Ascendancy: Barry Goldwater’s Early Senate Career and the De-legitimization of Organized Labor,” Journal of American History 95 (December 2008), 678-709; Shermer, “Archetypal and Atypical: Sunbelt Capitalism and Growth Politics in Phoenix, Arizona and the Developing South & Southwest, 1932-1969” in Mi-chelle Nickerson and Darren Dochuk (eds), Sunbelt Rising (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forth-coming); Shermer, “Creating the Sunbelt: The Political and Economic Transformation of Phoenix, Arizona” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009).


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were, in fact, successful. Chamber men and Phoenix Republicans made their way into leading

business associations, forged important alliances with other conservative businessmen with a

broader agenda, and found places for themselves and each other in the national government. In-

deed, as Senators and Supreme Court justices, these Phoenicians did, perhaps, the most to roll-

back the liberal regulatory state and provide the broad conservative movement with its most tan-

gible, long-term victories.

A NEW PHOENIX CHAMBER AND ARIZONA GOP

The transformation of Arizona politics, the state GOP, and the Phoenix Chamber of

Commerce was rooted in the New Deal. Phoenix’s emergence as a metropolis might well have

followed New Deal prescriptions for growth and development. In an attempt to transform the

South and West into centers of industry, which unchained both from dependence on tumultuous

commodities markets, New Dealers laid the foundation for Phoenix and the rest of the proto-

Sunbelt to grow along a labor-liberal pathway. Massive infrastructure spending, huge agricul-

tural subsidies, and the state-sponsored protection and encouragement of unionism made Arizona

a solidly Democratic state in the 1930s and 1940s. A vigorous organizing effort also transformed

the Arizona trade union movement, which had tremendous success in organizing both the private

and public sector.5

By the early 1930s interest in diversifying the area’s economy was widespread among

Phoenicians. Many sought to end the city’s dependence on the agricultural and mining sectors of

the economy and also to open the door to a set of unionized, high-wage jobs not only in factories

5 William S. Collins, The New Deal in Arizona (Phoenix: Arizona State Parks Board, 1999); Nancy Anderson

Guber, “The Development of Two-Party Competition in Arizona” (M.A. thesis, University of Illinois, 1961); Gerald Nash, The Federal Landscape: An Economic History of the Twentieth-Century West (Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1993); Gerald D. Nash, The American West in the Twentieth Century: A Short History of an Urban Oasis (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977); Nash, World War II and the West: Reshaping the Economy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990); Shermer, “Creating the Sunbelt,” Chapters 1-2.


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and mines but also in the high-profile service sector, namely the city’s hotels, bars, and clubs but

also in the municipal government. The presence of a powerful organized working class made

possible the attempt to democratize municipal governance, exemplified by efforts to abandon the

town’s Progressive-Era, “good-government” charter. On the horizon was also an amelioration of

the racism that kept the town divided between the wealthy Anglo population north of the railroad

tracks and those of African, Mexican, Asian, and Native descent living on Phoenix’s south side.6

This genuinely New Deal for Phoenix and Arizona generated an intense, aggressive reac-

tion from urban businessmen and professionals. These mostly Anglo men did not eschew indus-

trialization or more moderate fiscal reform per se but did reject the more radical elements of the

liberal experiments. For the town’s young retailers, lawyers, newspaper owners, and bankers, the

collapse of the agricultural and mining economies was devastating. Yet, union empowerment,

regulation, taxation, and a general expansion of the federal government seemed equally alarm-

ing. One of the most outspoken critics was young retailer Barry Goldwater. His dramatic explo-

ration of the Grand Canyon, the screenings across Arizona of the subsequent film, and his fam-

ily’s department store, Goldwater’s, made him a household name across the state. His notoriety

also gave him a pulpit in the Phoenix Gazette, one of the town’s dailies. One of his editorials, “A

Fireside Chat with Mr. Roosevelt,” was a powerful statement of a worldview openly hostile to

all New Deal policies, initiatives, and programs. “I would like to know,” Goldwater demanded,

“just where you are leading us. Are you going further into the morass that you have led us into or

are you going to go back to the good old American way of doing things where business is

6 Shermer, “Creating the Sunbelt,” Chapters 2-3; Matthew C. Whitaker, Race Work: The Rise of Civil

Rights in the Urban West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), esp. 15; Mary Melcher, “Blacks and Whites Together: Interracial Leadership in the Phoenix Civil Rights Leadership,” Journal of Arizona History 32 (Summer 1991), 195-216; Mary Ruth Titcomb, “Americanization and Mexicans in the Southwest: A History of Phoenix’s Friendly House, 1920-1983 (Master’s Thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1984); Preisler, “Phoenix, Arizona During the 1940s,” 48-50; Collins, Emerging Metropolis, 50-52.


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trusted, where labor earns more, where we take care of our unemployed, and where a man is

elected to public office because he is a good man for the job and not because he commands your

good will and a few dollars of the taxpayers’ money?” “Your plans,” the Phoenician declared,

“called for economy in government and a reduction in taxes.” “In five years my taxes have in-

creased over 250 per cent and I fear greatly that ‘I ain’t seen nothin’ yet’!,” he exclaimed. Gold-

water accused the president of “jump[ing] down the throats of everyone in business.” And now,

he claimed, the American businessman “distrusts you and fears your every utterance.” The worst

move, from Goldwater’s standpoint, was “turn[ing] over to the racketeering practices of ill-

organized unions the future of the working man. Witness the chaos they are creating in the east-

ern cities. Witness the men thrown out of work, the riots, the bloodshed, and the ill feeling be-

tween labor and capitol and then decide for yourself if that plan worked.”7

This portrait of the New Deal as dangerous earned Goldwater acclaim and helped unite

Valley business owners also weary of New Deal policies. George W. Mickle of the Phoenix Title

and Trust Company, whose facilities housed the city Chamber of Commerce, wrote to Goldwater

personally to commend him for taking a stand in the pages of the Phoenix Gazette. Phoenix

lender George O. Ford praised the merchant’s writing as “logical, fearless, and as far as it goes,

truthful.” “Compared with the average citizen, as your writing shows, you are a goliath,” Ford

gushed, “and I say to you openly and fearlessly and would publish it now if possible, I hold the

masses in contempt and their leaders and masters.” Goldwater’s outspokenness even earned him

attention outside of Arizona. For example, Henry A. Morgan of the Pacific Branch of the Spring-

field Fire and Marine Insurance Company wrote to Goldwater thanking him for taking a stand.

7 Shermer, “Creating the Sunbelt,” Chapter 3; Barry M. Goldwater, “A Fireside Chat with Mr. Roosevelt,” June

23, 1938, no page number on clipping, frame 94, ibid.


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“If business men[sic], over the United States would follow your example and publish articles of

the kind,” Morgan theorized, “it would in my opinion have a very beneficial effect.”8

Yet, these businessmen found themselves frustrated with both liberals and their fellow

businessmen, who seemed uninterested in politics or industry. In one of his earliest editorials,

“Scaredee-Cat (1939),” the merchant lashed out at businessmen for not challenging the “minor-

ity groups who are causing the tax increases” and “wagging their tongues where they will do the

most good: in political offices.” His disgust for the “American businessman,” “the biggest man

in this country…afraid of his own shadow,” was palpable. “He is the man who condemns, and

sometimes justly so,” the Phoenician charged, “the politician over his luncheon tables and his

desks and in his other very private conversations, but never in the open where his thoughts and

arguments would do some good toward correcting the evils to which he refers in private.”9 Yet,

his remonstrations were not just directed at national CEOs who worked with the New Dealers in

Washington. Goldwater and other young boosters were also frustrated with the Old Guard who

controlled the Chamber of Commerce. For example, in 1946, Goldwater chastised the Chamber

openly for failing to fully engage with the business of running Phoenix. “Everything which has

been done to advance the city commercially both from a standpoint of bringing in new business

and in improving existing business has been done by an energetic Chamber of Commerce and

you are to be complimented,” he declared in 1946. Yet, the their work was not enough because

“Phoenix has retrogressed morally and I might say spiritually. This is a community in which vice

is rampant, in which squalor exists where there was formerly beauty, and there is very evidently

more interest in the almighty dollar than the almighty man.” The Chamber of Commerce, he be-

8 Geo. W. Mickle to Mr. Barry Goldwater, June 24, 1938, frame 88, ibid.; George O. Ford to Mr. Barry M. Goldwater, June 24, 1938, frame 90, ibid.; Henry A. Morgan to Mr. Barry M. Goldwater, June 24, 1938, frame 89, ibid.

9 Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 47-48; Barry M. Goldwater, “Scaredee-Cat,” Phoenix Gazette, June 23, 1939, page number missing from clipping, frame 79, Scrapbook CD 1, Goldwater Papers.


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lieved, had to intervene because “I feel that every unit of organized business in this country

should do all it can to maintain and strengthen our system of free enterprise.” He was confident,

“We can become a model for the rest of the country,” but only if the Phoenix business commu-

nity would “take a firm stand against evils which threaten our communities.”10

Goldwater’s indictment came at the height of his contemporaries’ efforts to substantively

refashion the Phoenix Chamber. Local Phoenix merchants founded the organization, which at

one point during the 1910s was called the Phoenix Board of Trade, in the territorial days when it

was primarily preoccupied with promoting agriculture. According to the original by-laws, mem-

bers deemed themselves interested in “all matters regarding the welfare of the city of Phoenix

and the county of Maricopa.” Early activities, for example, included petitioning the federal gov-

ernment for water storage facilities to improve the Valley’s agriculture. Chamber members also

kept tabs on the Valley’s agricultural, mineral, and manufacturing output in order to distribute

this information in its promotional literature. The Chamber remained small throughout the inter-

war period. In 1925, twenty-one men sat on its Board of Directors. There were just four commit-

tees, which were concerned with traffic, agriculture, membership, and information. Members

formed a fifth in 1926 to oversee the “Valley Beautiful Movement,” which pledged to make

Phoenix “the city of trees” and “Do Away With the Desert.”11

Such a limited scope was an affront to the ambitious plans that Goldwater and the other

young retailers, newspapermen, and bankers had for Phoenix. They prioritized broadening Phoe-

10 Board of Directors, Minutes of Meeting, July 16, 1948, pp. 1-3, bound volume labeled “1948-1949,” Board of

Directors Records; Barry M. Goldwater to Mr. Norman Hull and Board of Directors [of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce], December 26, 1946, 1-2, folder 1, box 4, series 4, S.S.G I, SG II, William Saufley Collection (Arizona Historical Foundation, Tempe) [Note: Since my initial research trip, the archivists have taken a part much of this collection and put it other collections, including the Goldwater papers and the Shadegg collection].

11 Mawn, “Phoenix, Arizona,” 220-291, esp. 289; Judith Anne Jacobson, “The Phoenix Chamber of Commerce: A Case Study of Economic Development in Central Arizona” (M.A. thesis, Arizona State University, 1992), 6-11, esp. 10; Luckingham, Phoenix, 80.


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nix’s economic base away from agriculture, mining, and cattle both to separate their businesses

from these fickle commodity economies but also because they held a desire to build and live in a

modern dynamic metropolis. Indeed, by the end of the 1930s, they commissioned, published, and

distributed a 300-page study and plan for Phoenix’s economic development that prioritized wa-

ter, power, and manufacturing. Water resources and projects would no longer just service the

surrounding agricultural fields but also generate jobs for 200,000 people and thereby stimulate

growth for all sectors of the economy. Water also delivered electric power to help individual

households but also attract wholesale, distribution, and manufacturing businesses, which were

unconnected to cotton, copper, or cattle, the mainstays of the Arizona economy. Above all else,

the boosters espoused a sense that Phoenix could and must become a regional economic power-

house.12

Yet, their entire plan was also centered on a fundamental distrust of New Deal economic

policy. In his report on the future of retail, Goldwater, for example, warned: “It is sheer folly for

any of our numerous branches of business to consider this money as a permanent source of in-

come to business. If it continues, it will be at the expense of business and is, so to speak, robbing

Peter to pay Paul.” Other reports were an even more overt call to action. One young Phoenix

lawyer prioritized a revitalized, politically-active business community. “The business of running

our city is one worthy of the best business minds and talent in our city,” he argued, “and instead

of adopting an attitude of ‘Let George Do it,’ we should adopt one of ‘What can I do to help my

city?’ ” Moreover, he made governance synonymous with doing business. “We are all stock-

holders in a $70,000,000 corporation, a municipal corporation to be sure, but nevertheless a

business one,” he asserted. “As stockholders,” he continued, “we are all interested in the conduct

12 Shermer, “Creating the Sunbelt,” Chapters 3-4.


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of its affairs, we are all interested in its welfare for if the corporation should be improperly con-

ducted all of us would suffer in proportion to our investment. We must learn to recognize that the

city government is our affair and we must not treat it lightly.” Phoenix’s future depended, then,

upon a new, vastly-expanded economy, built on science and manufacturing, and a invigorated

business elite, who used the state to reverse almost a decade of liberal policies.13

The Chamber’s transformation during the 1940s was dramatic. This younger generation

of businessmen began the formal process of reorganizing the Chamber into much large organiza-

tion dedicated to the material and political work necessary to build an industrial metropolis. In

1939, when lawyer Frank Snell assumed the presidency, he set out to address his compatriots’

complaints that members did not take an active part in the organization, the leadership had not

given business owners an opportunity to be involved because “special interests and small groups

have dominated the Chamber and its Board of Directors,” official events were merely “

‘hoopala’ with no real or constructive purpose behind them,” and the organization itself was

poorly administered with $18,000 in outstanding bills and just $8,000 in accounts receivable.

Under Snell, the Chamber paid its debts, began a membership drive, generated a list of 300

members eager and willing to become involved in committee work, and passed new by-laws to

provide structure and accountability in all activities and programs. His stint, then, was a water-

shed moment that redirected the organization’s mission and modus operandi. The old guard lost

control of the committees to the younger upstarts, who wanted to distance the town from its reli-

ance on cotton, cattle, and copper.14

13 Record of Commission, Vol. 18: Aug. 9, 1939-Feb. 12, 1941, pp. 519-520, 535, City Clerk Official Records

(Phoenix City Hall, Phoenix); Arthur G. Horton, An Economic, Political, and Social Survey of Phoenix and the Val-ley of the Sun (Tempe: Southside Progress, 1941), quoted on 145 and 197.

14 Frank Snell, “Program for the Chamber of Commerce,” June 23, 1939, folder 10, box 1, Snell Papers; Frank Snell, “President’s Report for Fiscal Year May 1, 1939 – May 1, 1940,” April 26, 1940, folder 15, box 1, ibid.


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By 1945, there was enough momentum within the Chamber to push through changes to

the organization’s by-laws. These revisions formalized more than a decade’s worth of private

remonstrations against the Chamber’s interwar leadership, liberalism’s encroachment, closed-

door discussions of industrialization plans, and public denunciations of liberal-left modernization

schemes. The revisions to Article III included a strong restatement of the organization’s purpose

and committed the group to “promote and foster the civic, economic, and social welfare of its

members and the City of Phoenix, the Salt River Valley, and the state of Arizona, and to acquire,

hold, and dispose of property, and to do any and all things necessary or suitable to those ends.”

This new property clause was critical for the Chamber’s new industrial program. Phoenix’s vast,

undeveloped surrounding lands were a major draw for the military bases and defense plants that

relocated to the Valley. Yet, during the war, both the Chamber and the local government had to

work out complicated, costly, in terms of both time and money, deals to buy this property either

from private owners, the city, the county, or the state of Arizona. Now, under the revised frame-

work, the Chamber could simply buy parcels and sell them directly to firms, which thereby

streamlined the industrial recruitment process. Leaders also worked out new membership quali-

fications, changes in the Board of Directors’ duties, a $32 thousand dollar budget increase

(bringing it to $70,000 a year), and new paid staff positions for the management of the associa-

tion’s day-to-day operations. To better carry out its new growth agenda, the number of commit-

tees also tripled. Specific departments now addressed industrialization, retailing, conventions,

public relations, membership, and statistical information. The Post-War Development Commit-

tee even had subgroups, which included task forces for aviation and tourism.15

15 Jacobson, “Phoenix Chamber of Commerce,” esp. 6-26, quoted on 25; Matthew Glenn McCoy, “Desert Me-

tropolis: Image Building and the Growth of Phoenix, 1940-1965” (Ph.D. diss., Arizona State University, 2000), 99-100; For report on early efforts and plans of re-organization committee see Walter Martin, untitled report of the re-organization committee of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, March 22, 1934, bound volume labeled “1932-


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The Phoenix business elite’s profound sense of themselves as the city’s natural leaders

drove this reorganization. The Chambers’ heads began to proclaim the association the guardian

of the city and state’s economic future. For example, in a recruitment brochure heralding the ar-

rival of 290 manufacturers, the head of the Industrial Development Committee declared the or-

ganization to be “constantly vigilant to see that no detrimental changes occurred in Arizona in-

dustrial tax laws or the enactment of nuisance laws affecting the many fine industries already

here or to come to Arizona.” In the postwar period, leaders described this aggressive agenda as

necessary for themselves and the larger polity. For example, as president, banker Carl Bimson

told new members, “If we do not continually work at making our community a better place in

which to live and work, we will soon find that no one loses by our lack interest except ourselves

– because after all we make up the community.” Unity of purpose was a central theme for Bim-

son and his peers, who believed, “As a united group, we can accomplish much that would be

practically impossible for one individual or for even the small number of paid staff members

which make up your Chamber organization.”16

Within two years, the Chamber’s new leadership had altered the organization irrevoca-

bly. From its formal re-organization in January 1946 to the start of the 1948 fiscal year, member-

ship grew from roughly 800 to almost 2,800 and income rose from $38,000 to $140,000.17 The

Chamber’s formal Industrial Development Program began in March 1948. Although members

1933” Board of Directors Records; For extent of activities see entire bound volume of Board of Directors’ Meeting Minutes/Activities labeled “1932-1933,” ibid. Because of the expense and time involved for reorganization, the most important changes and the formal reorganization waited until January 1946, see: Board of Directors, Minutes of Meeting, April 16, 1945, May 7, 1945, June 18, 1945, July 16, 1945, July 18, 1945, August 13, 1945, November 15, 1945, bound volume labeled “1945-1946,” ibid.; Board of Directors, Minutes of Meeting, July 16, 1948, pp. 2-3, bound volume labeled “1948-1949,” ibid.

16 Industrial Department, Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, 290 New Manufacturers in the Phoenix Area Since March 1, 1948 (Phoenix: Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, 1960), 1; Carl Bimson, “Remarks Before Membership Committee Meeting,” September 17, 1952 in Carl Bimson, Addresses of Carl A. Bimson, Vol. 2 (Self published, 1960), n.p., (Arizona Historical Foundation, Tempe).

17 Board of Directors, Minutes of Meeting, July 16, 1948, pp. 1-3, bound volume labeled “1948-1949,” Board of Directors Records.


14

had been actively seeking industry during the Depression and World War II and had already be-

gan to re-engage with local and state politics, the formal start of this initiative inaugurated a co-

hesive, systematic effort to industrialize the Phoenix area. Leading Chamber members worked

on the Industrial Development Committee, including air-conditioning manufacturer Oscar

Palmer and retailer Barry Goldwater. Committee heads recognized the importance of manpower

and immediately declared a need for fifty men to take on the duties of industrial recruitment.

Within the larger committee, sub-groups tackled compiling information for new firms, advertis-

ing and publicity, industrial outreach, coordination with other Arizona business organizations,

and fundraising for recruitment campaigns. Still, other Chamber committees, such as the adver-

tising workgroup, attributed to the overall campaign. As the organization grew with the influx of

hundreds of new members, many more area businessmen became a part of the growing effort for

development.18

The Chamber’s national campaign for manufacturing grew into a multifaceted juggernaut

to attract investment. Leaders transformed the organization into a well-organized, efficient, and

powerful lobbyist for Phoenix. Their recruitment efforts included increased spending for adver-

tisements that targeted both manufacturers and their workforce, extensive trips to sell Phoenix as

a lucrative investment for East and West Coast firms, lavish parties for visiting industrial scouts,

and assurances that the Chamber and the city’s electorate would deliver whatever the firm

needed or demanded in their investment terms. The latter underscores how important politics

was to the Chamber’s plans and Phoenix’s development. Businessmen utilized political power

through their efforts to foster, protect, and improve, what they called, Phoenix’s second climate,

its business climate. This business-friendly atmosphere was designed to provide for those high-

18 Board of Directors, Minutes of Meeting, July 21, 1947, pp. 1-3, October 20, 1947, pp. 5-6, bound volume la-beled “1947-1948,” Board of Directors Records (Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Phoenix); “Industrial Program Hits Full Stride,” Whither Phoenix, 3 (April 1948), 1.


15

tech, lucrative firms that provided the proper stock for Phoenix’s new suburbs. Such businesses

and workforces had a variety of needs, including: taxes, labor laws, zoning clauses, regulations

on business, schools, and recreational opportunities. Most aspects of this environment’s mainte-

nance required governance, either through the enactment of new statutes, the repeal of older

laws, or implementation of new policies. Politics, then, mattered to these boosters and imbued

their far-ranging drive for modernity and industry.19

The proper political climate headed the Chamber of Commerce’s industrialization agenda

for good reason: local, state, and federal governments could either hinder or enable their ability

to promote Phoenix and compete for investment. Indeed, the very first chairman of the Cham-

ber’s Industrial Development Committee recognized the importance of politics. He warned ex-

ecutive officers that “industry must have the assurance it will receive a fair deal from the locality

in which it locates” and thus prioritized convincing voters to support the Chamber-CGC indus-

trialization philosophy. Boosters celebrated their political achievements as a part of their broad

push for investment. For example, when the Chamber published their list of accomplishments for

the 1948-1949 fiscal year, the president included not only recent advertising initiatives and new

branch plant openings but also successful efforts to pressure the governor to appoint a 15-person

tax committee to study the state’s industrial tax structure and to persuade state legislators to pass

new zoning and planning regulations and amend the workmen’s compensation law.20

Control of the city government was high on the entrepreneurial agenda. In 1949, the

leaders of the Phoenix business community, including Goldwater, seized the city council and

mayor’s office by ousting a coalition composed of small-business owners, who had dominated

19 Shermer, “Creating the Sunbelt,” Chapters 6-8. 20 Board of Directors, Minutes of Meeting, October 20, 1947, pp. 5-6, bound volume labeled “1947-1948,”

Board of Directors Records (Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Phoenix); C. E. Van Ness, “1948-49: A Great Year of Accomplishment,” Phoenix Action!, 4 (May 1949), 1-2.


16

city government since Phoenix’s first charter revisions in 1915, as well as a new set of New Deal

reformers who held power briefly in the mid-1940s. Organized into the, supposedly, nonpartisan

Charter Government Committee, Goldwater’s generation of businessmen-politicians created a

political machine that held power for more than a quarter century. As such, these earliest politi-

cal campaigns and industrial recruitment initiatives were both the groundwork for their business

climate but also important, pragmatic ideological work that would shape the city’s future pro-

foundly.21

Yet, boosters also channeled their energies into party politics, particularly in the creation

of a viable, anti-New Deal state GOP. Chamber members saw the Democratic majorities in gov-

ernment as a hindrance, not an asset, and set forth to take control of the state by building a strong

Republican Party. The drive came out of Phoenix. Since the 1930s, top businessmen had es-

poused an interest in building a viable Republican Party that would offer a real alternative to

modern liberalism. Both Goldwater and jeweler Harry Rosenzweig, for example, considered the

creation of a true “two-party” system imperative. In building a challenger to the seemingly-

hegemonic state Democratic Party, the childhood friends focused on providing voters with a

genuine choice on Election Day. Newcomers shared their vision. Shortly after he took control of

the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, Midwestern newspaper titan Eugene Pulliam

published an editorial summarizing the Phoenix Right’s ambitions: “In a state where Democratic

21 Brent Whiting Brown, “An Analysis of the Phoenix Charter Government Committee as a Political Entity”

(Masters thesis, Arizona State University, 1968); Luckingham, “Phoenix: The Desert Metropolis” in Richard M. Bernard and Bradley Robert Rise (eds.), Sunbelt Cities: Politics and Growth since World War II (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 309-327; Michael F. Konig, “Toward Metropolis Status: Charter Government and the Rise of Phoenix, Arizona, 1945-1960” (PhD diss, Arizona State University, 1983); Michael F. Konig, “The Election of 1949: Transformation of Municipal Government in Phoenix” in G. Wesley Johnson, Phoenix in the Twentieth Cen-tury: Essays in Community History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 167-177; Phillip R. Vander-Meer and Mary VanderMeer, Phoenix Rising: The Making of a Desert Metropolis (Carlsbad, California: Heritage Media Corporation, 2001); William S. Collins, The Emerging Metropolis: Phoenix, 1944-1973 (Phoenix: Arizona State Parks Board, 2005); Shermer, “Creating the Sunbelt,” Chapter 5.


17

success is inevitable, the citizen has no choice...The party out of power should always be a pow-

erful threat to the party in power...This is not a plug for the Republican party. It is not a plug

for the Democratic party. It is a plug for good government in Arizona and in the United States.”22

Goldwater and his peers shared a common sense of urgency in creating an oppositional

party. He even argued politics was more important than their personal ventures. “I don’t think

the future of Goldwater’s means a thing,” he told reporter, and future Republican governor,

Howard Pyle, “unless we insure the political future of Arizona and the country.” This concern

ran so deep that boosters pooled their resources to make up for the personal financial losses that

came along with holding office. For example, Goldwater and his friends in the Republican Party

so feared Pyle’s interest in leaving public office in 1954 that Bimson even offered the ex-

radioman a standing job at his bank in order to assuage the governor’s fears that he would not

have earned enough for his retirement.23

All those involved later claimed the creation of a strong state GOP and the development

of a “two-party” system as one of the hallmark of their careers. For example, the Senator called

his work, “the one thing I could try to do for Arizona that would mean more to it than anything

else.” Pyle shared this sentiment. In the mid-1980s, he remarked: “I have a strong sense of pride

in having been privileged to lend a hand in maturing two-party government in Arizona.” Still, at

the same time, he celebrated the year the number of registered Republicans finally eclipsed the

Democratic majority. “Great feeling,” he stated simply. Though Pulliam, Goldwater,

22 Quoted in Earl Zarbin, All the Time a Newspaper: The First 100 Years of the Arizona Republic (Phoenix: Ari-zona Republic, 1990), 185; Nancy Anderson Guber, “The Development of Two-Party Competition in Arizona” (M.A. thesis, University of Illinois, 1961), 33-34.

23 Barry Goldwater to Howard Pyle, May 1, 1954, folder 3, box 1, Howard Pyle Collection (Department of Ar-chives and Special Collections, Arizona State University, Tempe); William Saufley to Barry Goldwater, May 10, 1954, typescript, p. 1, folder “Saufley, William E. (Goldwater Store Manager), 1939-1958 (1 of 3),” box 7, Personal and Political Papers of Senator Barry M. Goldwater (Arizona Historical Foundation, Tempe); Orme Lewis interview with Kristina Minister, April 14, 1988, audiotape, side 2 tape 2, Chamber Centennial Oral History Interviews, (Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Phoenix).


18

Rosenzweig, and others involved in GOP politics referred constantly to “good government” and

“two parties,” their political activities shifted the balance of power between the parties dramati-

cally. During the war, the outnumbered GOP met at the Adams Hotel. One member recalled,

“We had a room that was, ohhh, very, very small, for the state meeting.” By the mid-1950s, ob-

servers contended that a genuine balance existed. By 1958, this equilibrium evaporated. Pundits

declared that the electorate favored Republicans. By 1960, the Arizona GOP was not only

stronger than the Democratic Party but also much more cohesive than their opponents had been

at the close of World War II.24

The Phoenix business elite’s growing influence within the state GOP had an almost im-

mediate affect on the party’s overall agenda. In 1948, Republicans adopted a state platform that

led with labor and their support for the recently-passed Taft-Hartley Act as well as their opposi-

tion to labor’s efforts to repeal the state’s right-to-work law, which vastly restricted union secu-

rity and power. The party also asserted that current taxes were too burdensome on state property

owners. Their only attention to industry was one of the last planks, which asserted that the GOP

“will support a comprehensive program aimed at the development of aviation, both civil and

military.” In contrast, the Republicans’ 1950 state platform put industrialization at the top of its

agenda. Indeed, this new platform echoed the Phoenix leadership’s economic policies. Labor, for

example, was still a major concern. Yet, just two years later, Republicans had inserted a state-

ment that labor unrest was harmful to the state’s economic welfare. Industrial expansion came

second only to the Republicans’ war with organized labor. In this section, the party not only as-

24 Barry Goldwater to Jack Williams, June 5, 1968, typescript, p. 1, folder “Goldwater: Personal, Alpha Files –

Williams, Jack, 1 of 7, 1955-1968”, box “W”, Goldwater Papers; Howard Pyle, “Making History: Good, Bad, and Indifferent,” March 6, 1985, p. 7 typescript, folder 6, box 12, Oral History Collection (Arizona Historical Founda-tion, Tempe); Ruth Adams interview by G. Wesley Johnson, September 29, 1978, p. 19, Phoenix History Project (Arizona Historical Society, Tempe); Guber, “The Development of Two-Party Competition in Arizona”; Ross R. Rice, “The 1958 Election in Arizona,” Western Political Quarterly 12 (January 1959), 266-275.


19

serted, “future development of Arizona is dependent upon the industrial expansion of our state,”

but also contended, “industry goes where it is invited.” To attract manufacturers and distributors,

Republicans promised new favorable tax laws, studies and statistics for potential new investors,

and “counsel and advice in securing land or facilities for their use.” Such changes in the platform

not only highlighted the Phoenix boosters’ influence over the state party but also demonstrated

the extent to which party politics and industrial development were intimately connected.25

Re-founding the state GOP required organization. Core members credited the right-to-

work campaigns in 1946 and 1948 with building institutional momentum. “The activities on be-

half of getting that Act passed,” O. D. Miller remembered when discussing his run for state Sen-

ate, “got me interested…in running as one of the Republican crusaders, as we called ourselves.”

To build a challenge to the Democrats, Goldwater and Rosenzweig started a policy of “drafting”

candidates hostile to mid-century liberalism. Prior to their efforts, many state and local positions

were unopposed. The Phoenix retailers theorized that they would capture voters who voted a

straight ticket. Goldwater explained to John Rhodes in 1949, “You know in this state we have

the straight vote and the people at the top of the ticket really can’t do very well with the straight

vote until they have all of the positions filled down underneath.” To combat this problem, Gold-

water relied on picking young, energetic Republicans to fill out the ballot. Prior to the 1950 elec-

tion, he told young transplant John Rhodes, a lawyer cum long-serving Representative to the

House, “I’m drafting you to run for Attorney General,” which led to the following exchange: “

‘Mr. Goldwater, there is something you need to know. I don’t want to be Attorney General.’ And

he said, ‘Mr. Rhodes, there’s something you should know. You won’t be.’ ” Pulliam was an as-

set to the cause. Famously, he forbade his reporters from publishing the names of Democratic

25 “Republican Party Platform – 1948,” p. 2, folder 4, box 7, Orme Lewis Collection (Arizona Historical Foun-

dation, Tempe); “Republican Party Platform – 1959,” p. 1, folder 13, ibid.


20

candidates in his papers. Pulliam did not restrict himself to local politicians. John F. Kennedy’s

press secretary singled out the Arizona Republic as one of the worst examples of biased reporting

during the 1960 election.26

Old-fashioned registration drives were hallmarks of the GOP’s re-emergence. During the

1950s, the GOP took steps to campaign and recruit effectively. Stalwarts created detailed volun-

teer lists. Officials recorded not only the names of those who “offered assistance” but also of

their interest in party politics and ability to contribute. For example, the office staff noted that a

woman volunteer “offered services” and “can type.” Strategists also paid attention to occupa-

tions. An operative, for example, noted that that an Arizona State University student could

“round up student volunteers.” Many members expressed an unfailing interest in helping the Re-

publican Party. One Tucson Republican pledged, “You can count on my undivided help and sup-

port in any of your future programs and plans.” Others made their pledges directly to the party’s

most prominent spokesman. “Barry,” a Tucson Republican wrote, “if there is anything that I can

do to help you here please feel free to call on me.” Phoenicians even crossed party lines for the

Senator. “I am a registered Demo[crat],” one wrote, “you may count on my continued assis-

tance.”27

Professionalization was, as with the Chamber’s refashioning, key. In 1961, there was a

concerted effort to modernize the party’s organizational apparatus. Republicans created a new

bookkeeping system to better process contributions, began IBM card files of registered Democ-

rats and Republicans in Maricopa and Pima counties, completed systematic voting analysis on

26 O.D. Miller interview by Karin Ullmann, June 29, 1976, transcript, p. 28-30, esp. 29, Phoenix History Pro-ject; John J. Rhodes interview by Dean Smith, transcript, May 1, 1991, pp. 11-12, ASU Oral History Collection; Royal D. Marks interview by Karin Ullman, June 25, 1976, transcript, pp. 18-23, Phoenix History Project; “Censor-ship and the Pulliam Press,” Arizona Frontiers 2 (December 1961), 3-4; Zarbin, All the Time a Newspaper, 183.

27 “Pima County Volunteer Help,” [1958], p. [1-3], folder: “Volunteer Lists,” Box 3H489, Stephen Shadegg/Barry Goldwater Collection (The Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, Austin); “Maricopa County Volunteer Help,” [1958], p. [1-3], folder: “Volunteer Lists,” Box 3H489, ibid.


21

past major elections, held a statewide fundraising drive, surveyed all Republican households,

began clipping files on major events and issues, established a party newspaper, generated mail-

ing lists for all members, helped start Young Republican clubs across the state, and sent officials

to speak before audiences in each county. Efforts to revamp the party paid off, Arizona Republi-

cans had established themselves as a major force within the national party apparatus. In 1961,

they also hosted, for the first time, the annual gathering of Western Republican state parties.

Goldwater, then serving as the Republican Senate Campaign Committee’s chairman, was the

headliner.28

Yet, the creation of a viable challenge to Democratic rule was not an insurmountable

task. The party seemed monolithic. There were many more members in the Democratic Party

than in the GOP. Plus, these figures seemed to entice many new residents, as Rhodes had been

pressured, to register as Democrats. “Most of us here,” one Phoenix transplant quipped in 1947,

“do three things automatically. We get vaccinated, join a church[,] and register as Democrats,”

even if they had been registered as Republicans elsewhere. Moreover, liberal Democrats began a

sustained campaign to gain solid control over the state’s party. “We have much new blood in the

Arizona Democratic party organization,” a Democratic activist reported to Carl Hayden. This

official promised these young Dems would help the “old guard” create “another Democratic

stronghold.”29

Such strategies strengthened the Arizona GOP. Since the 1930s, “pinto” Democrats had

hoped to “purge the Democratic party of those Democrats of convenience who crawled aboard in

28 “Projects Accomplished By Republican State Committee in 1961,” [1962], 1-3, no folder, box 68, Stephen C.

Shadegg Collection (Arizona Historical Foundation, Tempe) [Archivists will begin processing this collection in 2010].

29 Milton MacKaye, “The Cities of America: Phoenix,” Saturday Evening Post, October 18, 1947, esp. 93; Barry De Rose to Carl Hayden, August 23, 1960, folder 7, box 547, Series I, Carl Hayden Papers (Department of Archives and Special Collections, Arizona State University, Tempe).


22

1932.” Democrats began leaving the party even before Goldwater and Rosenzweig started court-

ing them. Frank Brophy, for example, an executive at the Phoenix National Bank and a leading

member of the state GOP, had supported Roosevelt and the New Deal. “I voted for him the sec-

ond time because his first term, in the first New Deal, was extraordinary,” Brophy explained,

“They did some remarkable things. They cleaned up.” The banker broke with the Democrats in

1938 after the Roosevelt Court Packing plan because “that gave me a pretty good insight into

what sort of man I later believed Franklin Roosevelt to be.” Those “Jeffersonian” Democrats

who stayed came to reject the party’s new liberalism by the end of the 1940s. “I am a registered

Democrat,” a Tucson resident admitted, “and hoping the Republicans offer a platform or plan a

bit improved ove[r] the welfare and booze program of the Dems.” The Phoenix Republicans’

attacks on the federal government’s increasing power won over many. “I am registered as a De-

mocrat,” one Phoenician wrote to Pyle, “but, I’d like to see you win. I liked what you said about

Jefferson and the Jeffersonian philosophy of government. I liked what you said about ‘too much

government.’ ”30

The GOP chipped away at the Democratic Party’s tremendous number of registrants. In

1948, there were more than four registered Democrats to every Republican. Republican member-

ship rose steadily during the 1950s while the number of Democrats increased at a much slower

rate. Democratic ranks even declined briefly in the mid-1950s. Though the GOP’s ranks swelled

dramatically, the continued increase, though small, in the number of Democrats prevented the

Republican Party from obtaining a larger pool of registrants until 1985. Many political watch-

dogs blamed new arrivals from the Mid-West on the surge in Republican registrations. This in-

30 Columbus Giragi to W. P. Stuart, August 28, 1935, folder 5, box 1, Stuart Family Papers (Department of Ar-

chives and Special Collections, Arizona State University, Tempe); Frank Brophy interview by Patricia Clark, n.d., transcript, p. 2, ASU Oral History Collection; Ruth B. Fitzgerlad to Howard V. Pyle, October 9, 1950, p. 1, folder 1a, box 19, Pyle Collection; [Unsigned letter] to Howard Pyle, June 20, 1950, p. 1, ibid.


23

flux alone cannot account for the seismic shifts in Arizona’s politics. The GOP’s growth came in

part from the further political realignment of the state’s populous, which had been overwhelm-

ingly Democratic since Bull Moose Republicans began abandoning the GOP for the Democratic

Party in the early 1910s. By the 1960s, there were fewer “pintos” in the organization, which left

both parties much more ideologically cohesive.31

BEYOND PHOENIX

But the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and the Arizona GOP also had a broad impact on

the national political landscape. Other proto-Sunbelt boosters had an aggressive, anti-New Deal

agenda but the Phoenicians enjoyed some impressive victories that made them the envy of many

businessmen across the nation. Because Phoenix was already a state center of population by

1945, and would only grow more so over the next thirty years, the booster-politicians had more

sway over the legislature than in other states. This disparity was most pronounced in comparison

to the political power of Southern boosters and California businessmen, who suffered under state

Constitutions that gave rural areas disproportionate power. Phoenicians’ relative power proved

cyclical as it made industrial recruitment easier, which in turn made them into role models for

their peers, helped catapult them into leading positions within national business organizations,

enabled them to make important connections with leading CEOs and politicians, furthered their

power in national Republican politics. Indeed, this entire confluence of events was in part re-

sponsible for William Rehnquist’s and Sandra Day O’Connor’s Supreme Court nominations.

It all began with the Phoenix boosters’ industrial recruitment initiative. From the stand-

point of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, their efforts to develop a second climate, the city’s

business-friendly environment, were a resounding success. Between 1948 and 1964 alone, over

31 Ross R. Rice, “The 1958 Election in Arizona,” 267; J.E. Woodley to Howard Pyle, October 9, 1950, f33 box

74, Pyle Collection; Pyle, “Making History,” 7.


24

700 firms relocated to, opened branch plants in, or started up in Phoenix.32 By 1962, Phoenix

was one of the centers for electronics in the entire West, which was particularly astounding be-

cause interwar El Paso and coastal California had substantially more industry and political power

than the Arizona capital. By the 1960s, the two regional giants were Los Angeles and San Fran-

cisco. The City of Angels had $1,868,000,000 in yearly sales, 595 plants, and 137,000 persons

employed in the industry. San Francisco was a distant second, its electronics industry generated

$739,000,000 in sales, was home to 180 plants, which employed just 47,000. Phoenix and San

Diego were well behind, both cities had $185,000,000 in sales but Phoenix had slightly more

workers in the sector, 12,000 to San Diego’s 11,800, while San Diego had more production fa-

cilities, sixty-two in comparison to Phoenix’s forty-five. But, unlike defense-dependent San Di-

ego, only half the firms in Phoenix produced products under government contracts because

Phoenix’s boosters had gone after many types of manufacturers in order to have a diverse indus-

trial base. There was also a real range of high-tech enterprises in Phoenix. Factories produced

airplanes, aircraft parts, aluminum products, chemicals, gases, electronics components, gears,

controls, scientific instruments, metal parts, machinery, missiles, rockets, plastics, plating, tools,

and dies. Light electronic output included sensors, small power sources, environment control

systems, and tracking devices.33

Phoenix’s development dismayed El Paso business leaders whose town had been the

dominant force in the region. In the early 1960s, an El Paso booster lamented that compared to

32 Judith Anne Jacobson, “The Phoenix Chamber of Commerce: A Case Study of Economic Development in Central Arizona” (M.A. thesis, Arizona State University, 1992), 38. Jacobson undertook an extensive effort to cata-logue each new investment or start-up during this period.

33 Bradford Luckingham, The Urban Southwest: A Profile History of Albuquerque, El Paso, Phoenix, and Tuc-son (El Paso, Texas: Texas Western Press, 1982); Roger W. Lotchin, Fortress California, 1910-1961: From War-fare to Welfare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); “Electronics Industry in Arizona,” n.d., p. 1-2, folder 1, box 4, Paul Fannin Papers (Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records, Phoenix); James A. Rork, “Estab-lishments in Arizona Providing Products and Services Directly Involved in or Allied to Aerospace and Electronics Industries,” December 1963, p. 2, folder 1, box 4, ibid.; “Arizona State Board of Technical Registration,” [1962], p. 1, folder 1, box 4, ibid.; James Rork to Paul Fannin, December 2, 1963, p. 1, folder 2, box 4, ibid.


25

Phoenix, “El Paso does nothing to get new industries. We are likely to give executives the cold-

should treatment. Instead of luring them with special tax deals, we're likely to push them away

by throwing all kinds of problems at them. Zoning, water, things like that. Problems that could be

easily overcome if we wanted them to.” He envied his Phoenix counterparts who could introduce

industrial scouts to the Goldwater family, promise them land, and guarantee them tax concessions

because they had an “electorate willing to approve $209 million in business-backed bond issues

in two years.” “El Paso has already lost its spot as the number-one city in the Southwest,” he

complained, “Unless we start hustling after new industry, we're going to wind up in serious trou-

ble.” “I hate to express it publicly,” an El Paso bank president confided, “but it’s true that our

leadership has been sort of mediocre. We didn’t have the influx of well-educated people in the

industrial and commercial world. Phoenix did.” “We haven’t always done a selling job of what

we’ve got,” another El Pasoan admitted, “Phoenix has done a better job”34

The mighty California Chambers of Commerce were also envious of Phoenix’s success.

For many business owners and executives, the Golden State stood for everything that they de-

spised about doing business in modern America. California, of course, had continued to prosper

but neighboring states, and Phoenix in particular, had lured a significant share of California’s

existing and potential industry away. Even coastal business organizations recognized that they

were less competitive than when they had laid the groundwork for the emergence of military-

industrial complex in the first half of the twentieth century. The Industrial Commercial Coordi-

nator for San Bernardino, for example, hoped to meet with Gibbons personally. “California does

34 Bradford Luckingham, The Urban Southwest: A Profile History of Albuquerque, El Paso, Phoenix, Tucson

(El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1982), 80-86; Mark Adams and Gertrude Adams, A Report on Politics in El Paso (Cambridge: Joint Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, 1963), V-26-V-27; Quoted in Luckingham, Phoenix, 187.


26

not have the best business climate desired by industry,” he explained, “We would consider this

trip very beneficial and at some later date maybe legislation could be introduced at our own State

Capitol.” The head of the San Diego Chamber’s Industrial Department also expressed envy of

the Phoenix miracle when he visited Phoenix in 1963. “The businessman’s approach to economic

development,” he remarked, “is surely one to be commended. We were thoroughly impressed

with what you gave us and everyone we talked with the rest of the day was also impressed with

this businessman’s approach in[sic] attracting industry to the State of Arizona.”35

This attention helped bring these local businessmen into national business organizations.

Two of the most powerful were Walter and Carl Bimson, brothers who saved Phoenix’s strug-

gling Valley National Bank in the 1930s and remade it into the largest bank in the Rocky Moun-

tain West and one of the most formidable in the nation after World War II. Both brothers had

broad political influence. Walter directed the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of

San Francisco, served on the American Bankers Association’s Small Business Commission, and

also joined the Department of Commerce’s Business Advisory Committee.36 In all of these roles,

he protested state regulation of the financial sector vigorously. He defamed liberal economic

policies before fellow business owners and promoted an alternative path to economic prosperity

in his writings and political work. When speaking on America’s rapid conversion from a war to

consumer economy, Bimson dismissed the efforts of liberal policymakers such as Henry Wallace

and Marriner Eccles and congratulated “the American businessman,” who “constructed new

plants, re-equipped his factories, with new machines, built millions of new homes, poured out an

endless stream of cars, radios, [and] refrigerators.” In surveying the new U.S. standard of living,

35 Blake L. Johnson to Boyd H. Gibbons, Jr., June 28, 1963, folder “Chambers of Commerce Out-ofState[sic] –

Misc.,” box 315, Governor’s Files; John E. Harter to Boyd Gibbons, November 21, 1963, folder “Chambers of Commerce Out-ofState[sic] – Misc.,” box 315, ibid.

36 Ernest Jerome Hopkins, Financing the Frontier: A Fifty Year History of the Valley National Bank (Phoenix: Valley National Bank, 1950), 200-204, 268-270.


27

Bimson credited the “system of democratic capitalism and individual freedom” and thus found it

“difficult to have any patience whatsoever with those who would discard a proven and successful

system and attempt to make America over along lines that have failed again and again.”37

Bimson’s brother Carl also became a major figure in American banking. Throughout the

1950s and 1960s, the younger Bimson espoused the Phoenix business elite’s anti-liberal mod-

ernization doctrine before fellow Westerners as well as peers in the South and Northeast. In Ari-

zona, he continued to work for VNB but also had leadership positions in Phoenix’s Chamber of

Commerce, Clearing House Association, Credit Bureau, Better Business Bureau, Red Cross, and

YMCA as well as the Arizona Bankers Association. On the national level, he continued to speak

before business groups to advocate political activism and the rollback of liberal-regulatory eco-

nomic policy. He often focused on consumer credit, which was a hallmark of both brothers’ ap-

proach to modern banking. In 1960, for example, he appeared before the Ohio Bankers Associa-

tion to advocate for financiers to take a greater role in politics. Echoing Goldwater’s Depression-

Era remonstrations against apathetic business owners, Bimson called the assembled, and their

peers across the country, “Probably the best hope for stopping the present political drift toward a

government-controlled economy.” When traveling, he also advocated bankers’ active involve-

ment in making communities hospitable to industry. He argued: financiers “should muster the

economic power of his business behind causes, activities, and organizations designed to improve

the efficiency of government and the climate of business.”38

37 Walter R. Bimson, “Talk Before Convention of General Insurance Agents of Arizona,” October 15, 1948, p.

1, folder 238, box 29, Valley National Bank Collection (Arizona Historical Society, Tempe). 38 “Meet President Bimson,” Banking: Journals of the American Bankers Association (October 1960), pp. 1-7,

folder 6, box 1, ibid.; “Surtax or Chaos: Valley Bank Official,” Arizona Republic, April 7, 1968, 1-F and 6-F; Carl Bimson, “Handling Loans to Small Business” The Burroughs Clearing House, January 1945, p. 18-20, 37-39, folder 934, box 68, Valley National Bank Collection; Carl Bimson, “A Banker’s Participation in Public Affairs,” February 12, 1960 in Carl Bimson, Addresses of Carl A. Bimson, Vol. 9 (Self published, 1960), n.p., Arizona Historical Foun-dation (Tempe); Bimson, “Paying Our Way,” May 17, 1960, ibid.; Bimson, “Westward Ho!,” May 20, 1960, in ibid.


28

Carl was also an active member in several national business groups. For example, he di-

rected the National Retail Credit Men’s Association in the mid-1940s, held leadership positions

in the Financial Public Relations Association throughout the 1950s, and also served on the U.S.

Chamber of Commerce’s Finance Committee (and chaired its Sub-committee on Credit Unions)

in the late 1950s. He also took on a prominent role in the American Banking Association (ABA).

In 1955, he accepted its president’s request to head the ABA’s Installment Credit Commission,

which made him a member of the Executive Council and Credit Policy Committee. In the year

that he served as vice-president, he logged 70,000 miles on his way to twenty-three separate

meetings. Due to his work and service, the 10,000 delegates at ABA’s 1960 convention elected

him president. After his one-year term, he remained an integral part of the association as a mem-

ber of its executive council and administrative committee.39

Such renown helped forge important connections with those leading executives, who

shared the Phoenix businessmen’s antipathy towards working within the confines of the liberal

regulatory state. The relationship between Valley boosters, who themselves came, increasingly,

from leadership positions in the area’s branch plants, and prominent CEOs, who managed these

outposts from afar, was reciprocal. Phoenix’s Chamber men wanted to attract high-tech, profit-

able firms, which, by the very nature of their desirability, were able to elicit impressive deals

from many communities eager to attract large, revenue-generating businesses. Executives also

needed, both from an ideological and a material standpoint, to shift operations to areas where

they would be able to increase their profit margins and also do business as they saw fit. Both

sides, then, needed to keep the electorate convinced that business interests should come first for

the good of the entire community. As such, the heads of corporations in the Valley became im-

portant spokesmen for the Phoenix leaderships’ policies to further development and keep the

39 “Meet President Bimson,” 1-7; “Surtax or Chaos: Valley Bank Official,” 1-F and 6-F.


29

Chamber’s hold on city hall. For example, in 1956, GE chairman Ralph Cordiner came to Phoe-

nix to campaign for John J. Rhodes and speak against the local trade union movement’s push to

repeal the right-to-work law. In no uncertain terms, Cordiner declared that the anti-union legisla-

tion was vital to Phoenix’s development. He told voters that GE would never invest in a state

without such restrictions on union security.40

The Phoenix leadership’s connection to the directors of GE proved a direct boon to their

long-range desire to expand their anti-liberal politics. GE’s Vice President for Employee and

Public Relations, Lemuel Ricketts Boulware, was their most important ally in the East and within

the ranks of American CEOs. Boulware, who hired Ronald Reagan as a spokesman for GE’s

brand of anti-government, anti-union free enterprise, was a strong supporter of Phoenix-style

modernization. Boulware orchestrated visits from GE executives to Arizona, where these corpo-

rate officials reminded voters that the state could attract good manufacturing jobs only if its low-

tax, pro-business agenda were maintained.41

Boulware’s own visits to the city probably did the most to promote the worldview he

shared with the most-powerful Phoenicians. In May 1958, Boulware delivered one of the most

important addresses of both his political and business career before the Phoenix Chamber of

Commerce. In essence, he urged members to continue to build and protect the “business climate”

that led GE to select Phoenix for its computer branch plant. He beseeched the assembled busi-

nessmen to defend and preserve your chance to “serve all Arizona citizens through your growing

and advancing businesses” and “go on to improve and expand that opportunity so you and your

40 Goldwater, “Whose Union, Whose Money, Who is Boss,” p. 14, loose in box 145, Stephen C. Shadegg Col-

lection (Arizona Historical Foundation, Tempe) [Archivists will begin processing this collection in 2010]. 41 Sanford Jacoby, Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1997); Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA’s 70-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (New York: New Press, 2001); Kim Phillips-Fein, “American Counterrevolutionary: Lemuel Ricketts Boulware and General Electric, 1950–1960,” in Nelson Lichtenstein (ed.), American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 249-270, esp. 264, esp. 354 fn 90.


30

businesses can live up to the full potential of your usefulness to all the public here and in the rest

of our still privileged land.” Boulware’s core concern: business leaders had failed “to have busi-

ness and our economic system understood,” which meant, “We businessmen have become the

whipping boys for opponents.” Moreover, they had not fought labor’s power at the bargaining

table or in the political arena. “We businessmen cannot look elsewhere for citizens to blame,”

Boulware admitted, “We have long had the opportunity and responsibility to do our considerable

part…in restoring the balance needed in this situation.” “Not only money—and lots of it—but

lots of volunteer leg-work[sic] and mental sweat [sic] is needed to restore the balance,” he con-

cluded.42

Boulware’s speech, “Politics…The Businessman’s Biggest Job in 1958,” echoed the ma-

jor tenets of the Chamber’s industrialization program. Boulware admonished those owners and

managers who stayed out of politics and demanded they make political activism a priority. He

claimed that business’s complacency had allowed citizens to make “fresh mistakes” “again—in

spending, inflation, taxes, productivity, and freedom.” He shared with the assembled Chamber

members a firm belief that business should and did have the power to dictate proper economic

policy and alluded to their place at the top of American political, economic, and social hierarchy.

In regards to the rest of the citizenry, Boulware claimed, “We do not help them see and appreci-

ate all the claimants, all the something-for-something arithmetic, and all the other compelling

circumstances we face…and, in particular, what’s the good of what we meanwhile are doing for

the many.” Boulware, like the Phoenix boosters, attacked liberals: “We businessmen have be-

come the whipping boys for opponents who have a different ideology from the one on which the

42 L.R. Boulware, “Politics…The Businessman’s Biggest Job in 1958,” in Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol.

XXIV, No. 19, 588-593, folder 453, box 18, Lemuel Ricketts Boulware Papers (Annenberg Rare Book & Manu-script Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia); “Politics Called ‘Business of All,’ ” Arizona Republic, May 25, 1958, n.p.; Boulware; “Politics Held Industry’s Job,” Arizona Republic, May 22, 1958, n.p.; Boulware; “The Only Alternative,” Arizona Republic, May 23, 1958, p. 6, folder 453, box 18, Boulware Papers.


31

unprecedented services of American business to the public have been based.” Organized labor’s

political platform served as one of the executive’s best examples. He lambasted the trade union

movement for waging its negotiations in Congress and in newspapers but blamed his brethren

more for allowing labor to go seemingly unchallenged. “You have only to look at who’s overly

prominent now in community chest and civic affairs…and with whom the top politicians want

their pictures takes…as well as at what kind of economics is being taught in too many schools

and from too many platforms…to see how completely successful has been this investment by so

many union officials in their public or community relations programs,” he concluded, “In too

many instances these programs take the form of relentless ideological warfare.” He ended his

remarks with a call for retaliation. He directed the assembled to dedicate themselves to politics in

order to ensure “what is economically sound and morally right will, as it should, be politically

invincible.”43

Boulware’s 1958 speech received much attention both in and outside Phoenix. The Ari-

zona Republic excerpted large portions of the address under the heading, “Politics Called ‘Busi-

ness of All.’ ” Reporters offered little editorial comment and just filled out the story with com-

ments from the audience, a summation of the Chamber president’s annual report, and a brief de-

scription of ASU’s pep band’s performance. Boulware’s call to arms also reached politically-

minded business owners across the country. GE printed over 200,000 copies of the address.

Senators and Representatives approved its inclusion in the Congressional Record. The editors of

American Business reprinted the piece in its entirety. The bi-monthly publication Vital Speeches

of the Day also included Boulware’s words alongside talks given on the education gap between

the U.S. and the Soviet Union and foreign aide to the Philippines. A board member of the Na-

43 L. R. Boulware, “Politics…The Businessman’s Biggest Job in 1958,” typescript, May 21, 1958, pp. 1-2, 4,

folder 453, box 18, Boulware Papers.


32

tional Association of Manufacturers even cribbed off Boulware’s text for his own speaking en-

gagements. Businessmen also asked for copies to distribute amongst their peers.44

Boulware’s increasing notoriety and grander ambitions made him a vital ally for the

larger ambitions of Phoenix’s Republican businessmen. For example, he poured time and money

into Goldwater’s presidential campaign and later runs for the Senate. More importantly, the

Senator bent the GE executive’s ear about up-and-coming Republicans elsewhere and beseeched

him to work on their behalf when Boulware left GE to spend the majority of his energies on poli-

tics.45

Boulware was not the only rising political luminary who found common cause with the

Phoenix booster-politicians. Three years after Boulware spoke before the Phoenix Chamber, the

host of General Electric Theatre, Ronald Reagan, also made an impassioned plea before the

business group, which gave members’ more credibility with the Phoenix electorate and broad-

ened their political connections outside Arizona. Reagan issued a general warning about the

state’s growing power over private enterprise. He was most concerned that liberals were, in fact,

Communist subversives. Reagan had faith that true Americans would never vote for socialism

but had and would continue to come to accept all of its policies and directives under the name of

liberalism. Liberals, he concluded, “Appeal[ed] not to the worst, but the best in our nature, they

have used our sense of fair play – our willingness to comprise[sic], and have perfected a tech-

nique of ‘foot in the door’ legislation. Get any part of a proposed program accepted, then with

44 “Politics Called ‘Business of All,’ ”; “Politics Held Industry’s Job”; Lemuel R. Boulware to J. Harvie Wil-

kinson, Jr., July 17, 1958, folder 453, box 18, Boulware Papers; Charles R. Sligh, Jr. to Lemuel R, Boulware, May 29, 1958, folder 429, box 17, ibid.; Charles Johnson to Lemuel Rickets Boulware, July 30, 1958, ibid.; Vital Speeches of the Day, July 15, 1958, ibid.; John D. Hoblitzell, Jr. to L. R. Boulware, June 17, 1958, ibid.; Carroll Reynolds to L. R. Boulware, June 26, 1958, ibid.

45 Barry Goldwater to L.R. Boulware, December 10, 1971, folder 1040, Box 38, Boulware Papers; Barry Gold-water to Lemuel R. Boulware, September 22, 1980, ibid.; Barry Goldwater to Lemuel R. Boulware, April 27, 1978, ibid.; Barry Goldwater to Lem Boulware, June 13, 1983, folder 1040, Box 38, ibid.; Lemuel R. Boulware to Barry Goldwater, June 20, 1983, ibid.


33

the principle of governmental participation in the field established, work for expansion, always

aiming at the ultimate goal – a government that will someday be a big brother to us all.” Reagan

held that much ground had been lost, especially in regards to saving capitalism. “Today, no one

denies the American people would resist the nationalization of industry,” he allowed, “But, in

defiance of this attitude the federal government owns and operates more than 19,000 businesses

covering 47 lines of activity from rum distilling to the manufacture of surgical equipment.” “The

estimated book value of 700 governmental corporations is $260 billions[sic]. Operating tax free,

dividend free, rent free in direct competition with its own citizens,” the future-president con-

cluded, “the government loses billions each year in these businesses.” Modern liberalism, for

Reagan, had left Americans powerless under “a permanent structure of government beyond the

reach of Congress and actually capable of dictating policy.” “This power, under whatever name

you chose, is the very essence of totalitarianism,” he concluded.

Reagan’s exposure to the Phoenix business elite proved important for his political career.

Both Boulware and Goldwater made a profound impression upon Reagan. In the 1950s, desper-

ate for work, the veteran Hollywood actor, former Screen Actors Guild president, and self-

described New Deal Democrat found work hosting General Electric Theater. But his contract

also demanded he tour GE facilities, speak to workers, and deliver the anti-union messages at the

core of Bouldware’s management philosophy. But during the 1950s, he also began frequenting

Phoenix. His new wife’s family had a vacation house in the Valley and were friendly with

Goldwater and his family. In a later interview, Reagan deemed the Senator “a very pleasing fel-

low to be with” and also credited Conscience of a Conservative for helping him realize where his

party and ideological loyalties lay. “I had been a lifelong Democrat,” he remembered, “and then I

was on the mashed potato circuit and doing my own speeches and my own research and every-


34

thing. I was getting further and further away from the Democratic philosophy until I became a

Republican, but ‘The Conscience of a Conservative’ was a very great factor in all of that in help-

ing me make up my mind.”46

Reagan’s vacations in Phoenix corresponded to Goldwater’s emergence of the national

scene as the new conservative standard bearer. His rise was built on a decidedly anti-liberal poli-

tics, particularly a critique of the empowered trade union movement. Indeed, his 1958 re-election

campaign was, in effect, a national showdown with UAW president Walter Reuther, whose vi-

sion for the national political economy differed sharply from Goldwater’s, and a state-level ref-

erendum on the new, empowered Arizona GOP. Goldwater emerged victorious on both counts.

Arizona Republicans did well that year, Phoenix propane retailer and former Industrial Recruit-

ment Committee head Paul Fannin was elected governor, and Goldwater new respect from na-

tional Republicans.47

His 1958 electoral coup turned into a national “Draft Goldwater” movement. Shortly af-

ter his victory, another disaffected Eisenhower supporter, Clarence Manion, began a search for a

presidential nominee to challenge the Northeastern Republicans. Manion hosted a well-known

weekly radio show, The Manion Forum, which featured a phalanx of individuals hostile to mid-

century liberalism, including Goldwater who appeared in a 1957 broadcast. The Arizonan be-

came the frontrunner for Manion’s initiative after Goldwater won over a meeting of South Caro-

lina Republicans with a declaration that the Brown v. Board of Education decision was unconsti-

tutional. Afterwards, Manion contacted the Senator to pen a manifesto for the coalescing conser-

vative movement. Goldwater, as he admitted, was no great writer. So, Manion hired William F.

46 Ronald Reagan Interview by Robert Goldberg, August 7, 1991, transcript, p. 1, Robert Goldberg Collection

(Arizona Historical Foundation, Tempe) [This collection is unprocessed and lacks box and folder information]. Thomas W. Evans, The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Con-version to Conservatism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

47 Shermer, “Origins of the Conservative Ascendancy.”


35

Buckley’s brother-in-law, Brent Bozell to pen Conscience of a Conservative. As a result, the

book was less an exact reflection of Goldwater’s philosophy than a kind of fusionist manifesto,

which Buckley and his partner Frank Meyers had set out to create when they began publishing

National Review. The small volume offered a litany of complaints against modern liberalism,

which ranged from the balance between states’ rights and civil rights, the increase in taxes and

farm subsidies, as well as the expansion of the labor movement and the welfare state. Clearly, the

“Freedom for Labor” chapter, states’ rights section, and material on Arizona’s refusal of Federal

Aid to Education targeted Goldwater’s wing of the broad conservative movement. Yet, the injec-

tion of Christian rhetoric was an obvious nod to Buckley’s crowd. There was also an obvious

adoption of Ayn Rand’s bifurcated language of collectivism versus freedom in the discussion of

the welfare state’s threat to free enterprise. Still, less than a decade after McCarthy’s censure,

Soviet commissars and domestic Communists did not make an appearance in Conscience.48

The small book became a sensation and positioned Goldwater to wrest control of the

GOP, perhaps even preside over the federal government. When Richard Nixon secured the

nomination in 1960, Goldwater challenged his supporters to “grow up.” Although he intended

this message to rally them to work for the nominee, many took it as a challenge to prepare for

1964. Through Kennedy’s first term, Goldwater continued to have the support of Manion’s audi-

ence, largely Midwestern mid-sized business owners, members of the Young Americans for

Freedom and the Young Republicans, and readers of the National Review. By the summer of

1961, leading businessmen began organizing amongst themselves to build a coalition of busi-

nessmen within the GOP. Conservative CEOs donated thousands to the cause, including the du

48 John A. Andrew, III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conserva-

tive Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), esp. 53-74; Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 118-180; Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 68-86, 115-149; Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 17-32, 39-53, 63-80; Perlstein, Before the Storm, 3-42, 61-98.


36

Pont and Eli Lilly families as well as Walt Disney, Walter Knott, Charles Edison, and Boulware.

Leading economists also lent their support, including the University of Chicago’s Milton Fried-

man. Goldwater also attracted white suburbanites, both the male breadwinners and their wives,

who had the time to go door-to-door for Goldwater. Indeed, their daughters were often the famed

“Goldwater Girls,” who stood on the convention floor in their cowgirl outfits. These young

women and the Senator’s delegates, predominately white men under 50, were responsible for

much of the celebrating at the GOP convention in San Francisco. There, Goldwater supporters

drank the carbonated beverage Gold Water, wore clear-plastic water-drop-shaped jewelry with

gold flakes inside, and plastered their cars with AuH2O bumper stickers.49

The Goldwater campaign relied on his Phoenix compatriots but also strayed from his

bread-and-butter politics. The candidate shocked liberals when he declared in his acceptance

speech: “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!” and “moderation in the pursuit of justice

is no virtue!” He left his campaign to Arizona Republicans, including his long-time campaign

manager Shadegg, Tucson-native and Goldwater staffer Dean Burch, Richard Kleindeinst, and

Dennison Kitchel, who referred to themselves as cowboys and were deemed, by those outside the

tight-knit group, as the Arizona Mafia. Harry Rosenzweig was also a principle fundraiser. The

jeweler resisted basing his campaign in the Washington and still managed to raise over $500,000

from his offices in Phoenix. But the pro-business issues responsible for the state GOP’s growth

and popularity in Arizona had less resonance on the national scene, especially when Lyndon

Baines Johnson courted the business vote. Indeed, the president solicited corporate support and

coffers openly. He met with influential executives, promised specific cuts to the federal budget,

49 Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties, 169-220; Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 149-240; Phillips-Fein, Invisi-

ble Hands, 115-149; Perlstein, Before the Storm, 99-488; Michelle Nickerson, “Moral Mothers and Goldwater Girls” in David Farber and Jeff Roche (eds.), The Conservative Sixties (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2003), 51-62.


37

and assured them of his support for his predecessor’s tax cuts. LBJ enjoyed both these CEOs’

backing and contributions, in large part, because many businessmen, who may have agreed with

Goldwater politically, feared wasting their vote on the obvious loser and thus sacrificing their

influence on the president.50

Without this constituency, Goldwater’s handlers pushed him to court the white working-

and middle-class voters who looked at desegregation with alarm. In an internal memo, staffer

Clifton White urged Goldwater to campaign on “the moral crisis,” which included a broad attack

on “crime, violence, riots (the backlash), juvenile delinquency, the breakdown of law and order,

immorality and corruption in high places, the lack of moral leadership in general, narcotics, por-

nography.” The Senator gave White the go-ahead to make a documentary, Choice. Over shots of

a topless dancer, dancing teenagers, arrested black protestors, the narrator announced, “There are

two Americas.” The film was sent to Citizens for Goldwater groups. NBC refused to air the spot

because of the graphic images. When Goldwater saw it finally, he refused to any mass showings.

“I’m not going to be made out to be a racist,” he declared. Still, though he separated himself

from messages that he associated with backwards segregationists, he continued to issue state-

ments that fell in line with an argument that he considered fundamentally different from the seg-

regationists’ politics and positions. For example, besides his rants against drug abuse and urban

riots, he rallied against busing as an infringement on individual liberty and local control. Still,

despite the allegiance of diehard followers, Goldwater suffered a tremendous loss. He only car-

ried only a few states, Arizona, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina,

50 Harry Rosenzweig interview by Kristina Minister, March 27, 1988, audiotape, side 1, tape 13, Chamber Cen-tennial Oral History Interviews (Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Phoenix); Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 115-149; Perlstein, Before the Storm, 99-488, quoted on 391; Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties, 169-220; Gold-berg, Barry Goldwater, 149-240; Mary C. Brennan, “Winning the War/Losing the Battle: The Goldwater Presiden-tial Campaign and Its Effects on the Evolution of Modern Conservatism” in Farber and Roche, The Conservative Sixties, 51-62; Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties, 169-220; Robert D. Novak, The Agony of the GOP 1964 (New York: Macmillan, 1965); Stephen C. Shadegg, What Happened to Goldwater? The Inside Story of the 1964 Republi-can Campaign (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965).


38

and garnered less than 40% of votes cast. On election night, he learned from his Arizona Bilt-

more suite that Democrats had won 68-seat and 295-seat majorities in the Senate and the House,

respectively.51

Despite this defeat, Goldwater went on to find a home within post-1970 mainstream poli-

tics. His hyper-growth, anti-union, low-tax, de-regulated philosophy became increasingly ortho-

dox. Indeed, the major political fights of the day shifted from questions of economic policy to

individual rights. The Senator became the seemingly unlikely champion of liberal causes, such as

abortion and gay rights, because he continued to oppose the federal government’s intrusion into

the personal lives of its citizens. Goldwater supported the right for a woman to choose. In fact, he

had facilitated his daughter’s safe, medical abortion in Mexico in the mid-1940s. He remained

steadfast on this issue, though he did equivocate publicly when he needed the endorsement of

Arizona’s growing pro-life contingent when faced with re-election in 1980. He became brazen

on these issues once leaving the Senate in 1989. In Arizona, he railed against a 1992 proposition

to ban abortions unless needed to save the mother’s life and threw his support behind a city ordi-

nance that prohibited discrimination against gays and lesbians in employment, housing, and pub-

lic accommodations. He became a national spokesman for both issues. In 1993, he lambasted the

ban on gays in the military and dismissed Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” compromise as a

farce.52

ARIZONANS ON THE HIGH COURT

Still, the Phoenix GOP’s, and Goldwater’s, real legacy were their growth politics. Indeed,

perhaps his greatest success was the place that he made in DC for his fellow Phoenix Republi-

51 Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 115-149, quoted on 143, 145; Perlstein, Before the Storm, 99-488; Andrew,

The Other Side of the Sixties, 169-220; Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 149-240; Brennan, “Winning the War/Losing the Battle,” 51-62; Andrew, The Other Side of the Sixties, 169-220; Novak, The Agony of the GOP 1964; Shadegg, What Happened to Goldwater.

52 Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, 241-338, esp. 116, 308, 330-2.


39

cans. The Senator had tremendous political clout, which helped bring Phoenicians as well as

young Goldwater loyalists into prominent positions within the GOP. Richard Nixon gave many

of Goldwater’s disciples (including those who were not originally from Arizona) important posi-

tions within his administration, including Dean Burch, who chaired the Federal Communications

Commission, Richard Kleindienst, William Rehnquist, and Richard Burke, who all served in the

Department of Justice.

Goldwater, himself, was perhaps proudest of the Phoenicians, William Hubbs Rehnquist

and Sandra Day O’Connor, whom he helped name to the Supreme Court. Upon O’Connor’s con-

firmation, Goldwater stated, “I think of all the things I have done in my life, this one topped

them all because she is not only a complete woman, but a dear friend and an Arizonan of whom I

will always be proud.” Both jurists probably did the most to install and enshrine the fundamental

aspects of Phoenix’s particular brand of conservatism into mainstream American politics and

into the federal government. Still, most research has detailed their votes on social issues, which

have distorted both jurists’ overall record and judicial philosophy. Such scholarship has often

cast the pair as near opposites. Only recently have scholars begun to probe their record on ques-

tions of economic policy and governance. These new assessments of the Rehnquist Court have

noted that the Court did not fundamentally advance the conservative movement’s social agenda

but has enshrined its economic and governmental philosophy. Though commentators have noted

divisions between the post-1991 conservative bloc on social issues, O’Connor, Rehnquist, An-

tonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and, until the mid-1990s, David Souter, voted

consistently to devolve more power onto the states except in cases where these governments at-


40

tempted to regulate business. On these issues, Rehnquist and O’Connor have almost identical

voting records.53

Both Rehnquist and O’Connor were not native to central Arizona but came from families

and areas with a strong aversion to mid-century liberalism. As such, their jurisprudence and poli-

tics were certainly not rooted in Phoenix. Still, it is significant that both chose to relocate to

Phoenix, where they joined native and transplanted Republicans eager to be a part of a vanguard

53 Barry Goldwater, untitled note: “This is for the Alpha File,” n.d. folder: “O’Connor, Sandra Day 1972-1994,”

box 14, Alpha Files, Goldwater Papers; In their years on the Court, there has been much disagreement regarding both Phoenicians’ jurisprudence. For example, many scholars struggled to show that O’Connor’s sex influenced her decisions, see Sue Davis, “The Voice of Sandra Day O’Connor,” Judicature 77 (November-December 1993), 134-139; Barbara C. Shea, “Sandra Day O'Connor — Woman, Lawyer, Justice: Her First Four Terms on the Supreme Court,” University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review 55 (Fall 1986), 1-32; Suzanna Sherry, “Civic Virtue and the Feminine Voice in Constitutional Adjudication,” Virginia Law Review 72 (April 1986), 543-616; Karen O'Connor & Jeffrey A. Segal, “Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the Supreme Court's Reaction to Its First Female Member,” Women and Politics 95 (1990), 95-102; Barbara Palmer, “Feminist or Foe? Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Title VII Sex-Discrimination, and Support for Women's Rights,” Women’s Rights Law Reporter 13 (June 1991), 159-170; Susan Behuniak-Long, “Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the Power of Maternal Legal Thinking,” Review of Poli-tics 54 (Summer 1992), 417-445; Jilda M. Aliotta, “Justice O'Connor and the Equal Protection Clause: A Feminine Voice?,” Judicature 78 (March/April 1995) 232-235; Judith Olans Brown, Wendy E. Parmet, and Mary E. O'Con-nell, “The Rugged Feminism of Sandra Day O'Connor,” Indiana Law Review 32 (1999), 1219-1293.

Others, particularly after Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the bench, have contended that O’Connor’s political leanings and background in state government provide a much better explanation of her crucial role in redefining federalism, pointing out that this so-called liberal voice had much in common with the other con-servatives on the Court. Indeed, scholars have noted that both Phoenicians shared a very similar voting record, espe-cially in regards to criminal procedure, federalism, and regulation. Some have even intimated that the Court is most accurately described as the O’Connor Court for she was the crucial fifth vote on decisions that either strengthened states’ rights or business. See Robert W. Van Sickel, Not a Particularly Different Voice: The Jurisprudence of San-dra Day O’Connor (New York: Peter Lang, 1998); Sue Davis, “The Voice of Sandra Day O’Connor,” 134-139; Erwin Chemerinsky, “Justice O’Connor and Federalism” McGeorge Law Review 32 (Spring 2001), 877-954; Brad-ley W. Joondeph, “The Deregulatory Value of Justice O’Connor’s Federalism” Houston Law Review 44 (Fall 2007), 507-551.

In regards to the conservative bloc’s development and post-1990 interest in deregulation over federalism see Mark Tushnet, A Court Divided: The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), 1-22, 249-318; Linda Greenhouse, “The Supreme Court: Federalism; States Are Given New Legal Shield by Supreme Court,” New York Times, June 24, 1999; Richard A. Epstein, “The Federalism Deci-sions of Justices Rehnquist and O’Connor: Is Half a Loaf Enough?” Stanford Law Review 58 (April 2006), 1793-1827; Chemerinsky, “Justice O’Connor and Federalism,” 877-954; Joondeph, “The Deregulatory Value of O’Connor’s Federalism,” 507-551; Ruth Colker and Kevin M. Scott, “Dissing States?: Invalidation of State Action During the Rehnquist Era,” Virginia Law Review 88 (October 2002), 1301-1386; Richard H. Fallon, Jr., “The ‘Con-servative’ Paths of the Rehnquist Court’s Federalism Decisions,” The University of Chicago Law Review 69 (Spring 2002), 429-494; Charles Rothfield, “Federalism in a Conservative Supreme Court,” Publius 22 (Summer 1992), 21-31; Sue Davis, “Rehnquist and State Courts: Federalism Revisited,” The Western Political Quarterly 45 (September 1992), 773-782; Herman Schwartz, “The States’ Rights Assault on Federal Authority,” in Herman Schwartz (ed.), The Rehnquist Court: Judicial Activism on the Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), 155-168; Eleanor M. Fox, “Antitrust and Business Power,” in ibid., 213-226.


41

state GOP, do business in the Valley, or take part in the construction and preservation of the

area’s entrepreneurial climate.

Rehnquist grew up far from the desert in Shorewood, Wisconsin. Though an affluent sub-

urb, the mansions along Lake Michigan dwarfed his small brick home. His father, the child of

Swedish immigrants, never attended college and sold paper wholesale. His wife, in contrast, was

a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, spoke five languages, and freelanced as a translator,

which left her plenty of time for civic affairs. Rehnquist's parents discussed politics openly and

imbued in their two children a political philosophy that borrowed from Wendell Willkie, Herbert

Hoover, and Robert Taft. During World War II, Rehnquist, then a high school student, volun-

teered to be the neighborhood civil-defense officer. When he graduated, he spent just one year at

Kenyon College before joining the Army Air Corps in 1943. Although he spent much time in

North Africa, hostilities had ended when he arrived. But this stint left him with at least one tan-

gible desire, “I wanted to find someplace like North Africa to go to school.” With the G.I. Bill,

he enrolled in Stanford, graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in political science in 1948. He

went on to earn Masters degrees at both Stanford and Harvard before returning to the Bay Area

to obtain his law degree. At Stanford, he graduated first in his class and went on to clerk with

Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson.54

After his clerkship, Rehnquist moved to Phoenix. In some accounts, he was most con-

cerned with living in a warm climate. Thus, he flipped a coin to decide between Albuquerque

and Phoenix. In later writings, he cited a deep attraction to the city’s political climate. He cele-

brated Phoenix as “the lost frontier here in America….and by that I mean not just free enterprise

in the sense of a right to make a buck but the right to manage your own affairs as free as possible

54 Donald E. Boles, Mr. Justice Rehnquist, Judicial Activist (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1987),

12-16, esp. 13.


42

from the interference of government.” He did more than just practice law. He became active in

the state's Republican Party and blended these two interests when he opposed a local public ac-

commodations law and an integration plan for the city's public school system. His stance sepa-

rated him from the architects of the CGC, who had always attempted to present at least the illu-

sion of diversity or walked the line between their perceptions of the differences between de facto

and de jure segregation.55

Rehnquist’s first public statement against Civil Rights legislation came in 1964 when the

City of Phoenix passed a Public Accommodations Ordinance that desegregated public accom-

modations. During public hearings, he rooted his opposition in individual property rights and

free enterprise. He defined the latter broadly as “the right to manage your own affairs as free as

possible from the interference of government.” He argued, “The thousands of small business pro-

prietors have a right to have their own rights preserved since after all, it is their business.” His

letters to the Arizona Republic had the same refrain. He called the ordinance's passage a “mis-

take” because it “does away with the historic right of the owner of a drug store, lunch counter, or

theater to choose his own customers.” Indeed, he invoked the Founders and stipulated that they

“thought of it as the 'land of the free' just as surely as they thought of it as the ‘land of the equal.’

” He also opposed busing to better integrate schools because supporters “concern themselves not

with the great majority, for whom it has worked very well, but with a small majority for whom

they claim it has not worked well.”56

But his involvement with efforts to keep African American from voting dogged his career

the most. The Arizona NAACP charged that Rehnquist, as early as 1958, was involved with a

55 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Nominations of William H. Rehnquist and Lewis F. Pow-

ell, Jr.: Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 92 Cong., 1 sess., November 3, 4, 8, 9, and 10, 1971, esp. 305.

56 Ibid., 305, 307, 309; Boles, Mr. Justice Rehnquist, 16-17.


43

group of Anglo lawyers who challenged African American voters at the polls. According to the

head of the Maricopa County Democratic Headquarters, “voters were being challenged in several

precincts in South Phoenix….I was told it was William ‘Bill’ Rehnquist for one he was asking

people standing in a long line waiting to vote, to read printing on a white card[.] People were

leaving the lines and were not voting.” “I also had calls from…a precinct committeeman[,] a

black woman[,] who said her people were frightened and afraid to vote,” the witness added. The

Democratic activist was convinced the move was political. “We had a big Registration drive that

year and a lot of the People were voting for the first time after the challenging started we no

longer had people waiting in line the voting was real slow,” she explained, “I tried to get the pre-

cinct people to go door to door to get out the vote but word was out they were afraid to vote.”57

Despite this controversy, Rehnquist became enmeshed in the business elite as well as the

state’s influential Republican Party. He served eagerly and willingly in Goldwater’s presidential

bid. He wrote speeches, counseled the Senator on his famous vote against the 1964 Civil Rights

Act, and provided Goldwater with the legal, constitutional argument against the bill that the

Senator used. Rehnquist also worked with political scientist Harry V. Jaffa to draft Goldwater’s

subsequent speeches on the matter. Though Goldwater had supported the Phoenix ordinance and

had long disdained those defenders of de jure segregation, he embraced Rehnquist’s arguments

in his efforts to win over the solid South.58

Rehnquist’s involvement served him well. Upon Richard Nixon's election in 1968, Kle-

indienst, whom the President appointed the deputy attorney general, hired Rehnquist as the head

of the Office of Legal Council. Rehnquist, now one of the President’s lawyers, was instrumental

57 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Nomination of Justice William Hubbs Rehnquist: Hear-

ings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 99 Cong., 2 sess., July 29, 30, 31 and August 1, 1986, 1152; Boles, Mr. Justice Rehnquist, 16-17.

58 Tushnet, A Court Divided, 10-24.


44

in Nixon efforts to “unpack” the Court, an effort to appoint, in John Dean’s words, “strict con-

structionist” judges, who would “interpret the Constitution rather than amend it by judicial fiat,”

in order to undo the liberal, activist jurisprudence of the Warren Court. Although other members

of the Attorney General’s office undertook efforts to pressure liberal jurists, most notably LBJ-

appointee Abe Fortas, to leave office, Rehnquist’s task was to identify potential nominees by

studying their records and writings, make recommendations to Mitchell, and conduct subsequent

interviews. In an internal memo, he defined a desirable candidate as “A judge who is a 'strict

constructionist' in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims

of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs--the latter two groups having been the prin-

cipal beneficiaries of the Supreme Court's 'broad constructionist' reading of the Constitution.”59

Rehnquist’s appointment was serendipitous. In the Fall of 1971, Justices Hugo Black and

John Marshall Harlan’s resignations surprised the Nixon Administration. At first neither

Rehnquist nor Powell were on the shortlist. During the vetting process, Rehnquist dismissed the

idea that he would be a nominee because “I’m not from the South, I’m not a woman, and I’m not

mediocre.” Nixon, championed Richmond lawyer and Virginia Congressman Richard Poff, Cali-

fornian William French Smith, or Philadelphia prosecutor Arlen Specter but only because

Nixon's aides reminded him that he had not appointed a Jew. Nixon responded: “He's strong on

law enforcement, and the rest, and I might consider him, if we went to play the Jews.” But in

discussions with Secretary General John Mitchell, the two men named dozens of potential jurists.

There was pressure to name a woman but Nixon opposed the idea: “I don't think a woman should

be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly be-

cause they are erratic. And emotional. Men are erratic and emotional too, but the point is a

59 John W. Dean, The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Su-

preme Court (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 15-27, esp. 15-16.


45

woman is more likely to be.” In a memoir, John Dean took credit for first mentioning Rehnquist

as a possibility. Reportedly, he told a Nixon advisor: “The president has a perfect candidate right

under his nose....Bill Rehnquist makes Barry Goldwater look like a liberal.” Indeed, Goldwater

told Nixon, “He’s probably the greatest authority on the Constitution in the country today.” Still,

Nixon equivocated until after the American Bar Association rejected his list of other nominees

and he learned of Rehnquist's experience as a clerk.60

Rehnquist's confirmation to the Court and to the position of Chief Justice, though some-

times described as quick, generated tremendous controversy. In the hearings for his initial ap-

pointment to the bench, the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee were very concerned about

both Rehnquist’s and Poff’s nominations. One admitted, “the consern [sic] many of us have here,

that at least the President has thought that the whole purpose for these nominations is to turn

around the Court and thus turn around the series of interpretations that have been put on the laws

over the past 20 years.” On the first day, Senators John McClellan, Gary Hart, Gary Ervin, and

Edward Kennedy grilled Rehnquist about overturning past precedent and limiting Congressional

powers because of his political beliefs. McClellan even asked “Would you be willing...to disre-

gard the intent of the framers of the Constitution and change it to achieve a result that you

thought might be desirable for society?” “No; I would not,” Rehnquist replied.61

In both hearings, Senators focused on his anti-desegregationist views and political activi-

ties. In 1971, for example, Kennedy opened with his concerns about a letter that Rehnquist had

sent to the Washington Post, within which Rehnquist admonished editors for assuming opposi-

tion to Civil Rights legislation was automatically based in “an anti-Negro, anti-civil rights ani-

mus, rather then because of a judicial philosophy which consistently applied would reach a con-

60 Dean, The Rehnquist Choice, 34, 113, 129, 132; Boles, Mr. Justice Rehnquist, 5. 61 Committee on the Judiciary, Nominations of William H. Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell, Jr., 16-52, esp. 180,

esp. 19.


46

servative result both in civil rights cases and in other areas of the law.” Committee members also

discussed his public opposition to the Phoenix Public Accommodations Act and the integration

of Phoenix public high schools as well as his reported attempts to stop non-Anglo Phoenicians

from voting. Rehnquist stipulated that he no longer opposed the Accommodations Act. “I think

the ordinance really worked well in Phoenix,” he explained, He remained steadfast on busing,

which he dismissed as “artificial.” Throughout the hearings, he never admitted to voter intimida-

tion and repeated that his “responsibilities, as I recall them, were never those of challenger, but

as one of a group of lawyers working for the Republican Party in Maricopa County who at-

tempted to supply legal advice to persons who were challengers.” Rehnquist also stated that he

did not target minority voters but devoted “to areas in which heavy Democratic pluralities were

voting together, with some reason to believe that tombstones were being voted at the same

time.”62

Denials and backtracking were a major part of Rehnquist's turns before the Senate. In

1986, Senators questioned Rehnquist on all of his opinions but once again his attitude towards

Civil Rights legislation was at the center of the hearings. Now, more witnesses came forward

with new evidence to discredit him. One of the most-closely scrutinized documents was a short

memo, with his initials, titled “A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases,” which maintained

that “I fully realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been

excoriated by liberal colleagues, but I think Plessey v. Ferguson was right and should be reaf-

firmed.” Controversy erupted, and still exists, over the intent of the memo -- whether it was

Rehnquist's personal opinion designed to sway Justice Jackson or a position Jackson asked his

clerk to draft in preparation for a vote. Although Rehnquist at first disavowed the one-and-a-half

page, single-spaced piece, he eventually stipulated it was a “bald, simplistic conclusion, which

62 Ibid., esp. 53, 69-72.


47

was not an accurate statement of my views at the time.”63

One of Rehnquist’s biggest supporters was Sandra Day O’Connor, who herself had been

active in party politics in Phoenix. In June 1971, she was in the state Senate. As she read

denunciations of her friend in the press, she became concerned about his chances and took upon

herself to lobby on his behalf. She beseeched her friends and colleagues to lobby former

classmates, lawyers, legislators, and church officials across the country to support his

nomination. A close associate of Eugene Pulliam, she lobbied the newspaperman to publish

editorials favoring Rehnquist in Indiana, which was home to one of Rehnquist’s biggest critics in

the Senate. After his approval, he wrote to O’Connor personally to thank her.64

O’Connor, herself, had a very different background than Rehnquist. Born in El Paso on

March 26, 1930, O'Connor grew up on a remote ranch on the Arizona-New Mexico border. Her

father, Henry Day, endeavored to build his farm into one of the largest in the West. The Depres-

sion ravaged his outfit. He opposed the New Deal and the government programs liberals oversaw

but accepted federal subsidies when farm prices crashed. His daughter lived with her grandpar-

ents in El Paso during the school year but returned to the Lazy B ranch every summer. She was a

gifted student and fulfilled her father’s wish that she attend Stanford in his native California. She

entered as an undergraduate in 1946, completed her economics degree in 1949, and finished her

law degree just two years later. Rehnquist, whom O’Connor had dated briefly, finished first and

O’Connor third. Still, the only job offers she received were for legal secretary positions. She fol-

lowed her husband, John Jay O’Connor to Frankfurt, where he worked for the Judge Advocate

General Corps, and then to Phoenix when he landed a job at a leading law firm. “John and I felt

63 Committee on the Judiciary, Nomination of Justice William Hubbs Rehnquist, esp. 1152-1160, 324-325;

Boles, Mr. Justice Rehnquist, 75-100, esp. 98-99. 64 Joan Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influ-

ential Justice (New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2005), 45-48, quoted on 47.


48

that by living in Phoenix,” she later explained, “we would have an opportunity to be more ac-

tively involved with our community than might be the case if we were to return to California.”

Though her grades had been better, she once again could not find a position and resigned to

working out of a shopping center with her partner Tom Tobin. “Other people who had offices in

the same shopping mall repaired TVs, cleaned clothes, or loaned money,” she remembered, “It

was not a high-rent district. I got walk-in business. People came in to see me about grocery bills

they couldn’t collect, landlord-tenant problems, family members[,] and other everyday things.”65

In Phoenix, she threw herself into the city's civic and political circles. She served, for ex-

ample, on many boards and committees, including Board of Trustees of the Heard Museum and

the Board of Visitors for the Arizona State University Law School. In 1965, still unable to break

into Phoenix’s law firms, she began work in the attorney general's office. “I persisted,” she re-

membered, “and got a temporary job and quickly rose all the way to the bottom of the totem pole

in that office. As was normal for a beginner, I got the least desirable assignments.” Her hard

work paid off: she was appointed to a vacant seat in the state senate in 1969, won re-election

twice, and served as the majority leader in the legislature. She was the first woman to serve in

such a capacity in the United States. She exhibited a more pragmatic interpretation of the post-

1964 conservative politics. For example, she fought government spending but also supported a

state Medicaid program, the repeal of a law barring women from working more than eight hours

a day, which had kept many out of high-paying professional jobs, and a measure to make public

meetings accessible to citizens. Her popularity helped her win a spot on the Maricopa County

Superior Court in 1974. Five years later, governor Bruce Babbitt appointed her to the Court of

65 Ann Carey McFeatters, Sandra Day O’Connor: Justice in the Balance (Albuquerque: University of New

Mexico Press), 22-46, esp. 46; Van Sickel, Not a Particularly Different Voice, 22-32; Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor, 7-29, esp. 28-29; Sandra Day O’Connor interview by Harriet Haskell, January 31, 1980, transcript, Phoenix History Project (Arizona Historical Society, Tempe).


49

Appeals.66

Her record in office helped her earn a place among the Phoenix Chamber elite. The

O’Connors’ spent much time with some of the most formidable Arizona Republicans, including

Goldwater, Pulliam, Rosenzweig, and Rehnquist. Her relationship with Goldwater was especially

important. She was a fixture in his 1958 and 1964 campaigns. Eventually, he became her politi-

cal mentor. These connections with the Arizona GOP’s leadership helped her land the job in the

Attorney General’s office. She was also Goldwater’s pick to run for governor in 1978. Still, she

declined to be “drafted” that year because of familial commitment.67

Three years later, she allowed Ronald Reagan and his staffers to name her to the Supreme

Court. The president had promised to nominate a woman during the campaign, in part to assuage

women voters’ fears about his aggressive military stance. Reagan met with her for just forty-fine

minutes in July 1981. Reportedly, the president was confident that his staff had vetted her appro-

priately and thus kept their conversation to their mutual acquaintances, fondness for horses, and

love of the West.68

O’Connor’s nomination polarized the GOP. Strom Thurmond, in his opening remarks, en-

capsulated the hopes of many Republicans in regards to O’Connor’s appointment and a new

chapter in American federalism. When he described her work in the Arizona government, he ex-

plained, “That experience gives us hope that she will bring to the Court, if confirmed, a greater

appreciation of the division of powers between the Federal Government and the governments of

the representative States.” But O'Connor refused to answer questions about her personal political

66 McFeatters, Sandra Day O’Connor, 47-52, esp. 47; Van Sickel, Not a Particularly Different Voice, 29-32;

Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor, 22-69. 67 McFeatters, Sandra Day O’Connor, 52-53; Biskupic, Sandra Day O’Connor, 22-69; Sandra D. O’Connor to

Barry Goldwater, April 6, 1978, folder: “O’Connor, Sandra Day 1972-1994,” box 14, Alpha Files, Goldwater Pa-pers.

68 McFeatters, Sandra Day O’Connor, 1-18.


50

beliefs and opinions on past court decisions, especially the Roe v. Wade decision. Her reticence

enraged the religious Right. Jerry Falwell denounced her openly and several anti-abortion advo-

cates spoke against her in the Senate. Goldwater was quick to come to her defense. “Every good

Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass,” he declared, “I don't like getting kicked around

by people who call themselves conservatives on a non-conservative matter. It is a question of

who is best for the Court. If there is going to be a fight in the Senate, you are going to find ‘Old

Goldy’ fighting like hell.”69

Though less discussed during newspaper coverage of and in historical accounts of the hear-

ings, the Senators also questioned O’Connor about her understanding of federal power and lib-

eral judicial activism. In regards to these inquiries, she was matter of fact on her views regarding

the balance between states' rights and the central government's power as well as legislating from

the bench. For example, in her opening statement, she stated plainly that she had a great "appre-

ciation of the disparate and distinct roles of the three branches of government at both the State

and the Federal levels" and believed “the proper role of the judiciary is one of interpreting and

applying the law, not making it.” The Senators present probed her views on improper judicial

activism and the proper balance in the federal system. For example, Senators Patrick Leahy and

Joseph Biden questioned her about the Brown v. Board of Education decision. O’Connor defined

the decision “as an accepted holding of the Court” and an agreement between jurists “that the

previous understanding of the 14th amendment was a flawed understanding.” She refused to is-

sue a judgment on nature of the decision. “I do not know that the Court believed it was engaged

in judicial activism,” she stated, “I did not participate in the debate, and the hearings, and the ar-

69 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, The Nomination of Judge Sandra Day O'Connor of Ari-

zona to Serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 97 Cong., 2 sess., September 9, 10, 11, 1981, 2; McFeatters, Sandra Day O’Connor, 11-18; Van Sickel, Not a Particularly Different Voice, 33-41.


51

guments; and I cannot tell you all that went into the making of that decision.”70

Together, both O’Connor and Rehnquist proved dependable voters for the Republican

Party’s economic and political agenda and the core of a bloc that, in the words of one legal

scholar, transformed the meaning of the First Amendment from protecting “Eugene V. Debs and

Martin Luther King, Jr., rebels and rabble rousers” to shielding “Lorillard Tobacco and Ted

Turner: money and marketing.” Rehnquist brought to the bench a fundamental interest in stop-

ping and then undoing over thirty years of liberal, activist jurisprudence and an intent to protect

free enterprise. During his early years on the bench, the others called him the “lone dissenter.” “I

came to the court sensing,” Rehnquist explained in a rare interview, “without really having fol-

lowed it terribly closely, that there were some excesses in terms of constitutional adjudication

during the era of the so-called Warren Court.” “So I felt,” he continued, “the boat was kind of

keeling over in one direction. Interpreting my oath as I saw it, I felt that my job was, where those

sort of situations arose, to kind of lean the other way.” 71

Rehnquist became the driving force behind a landmark decision that sent a warning sig-

nal to liberals that the Court was beginning to undergo a metamorphosis. In 1975, the Court ruled

that state and local governments had to follow the federal minimum wage law, a precedent set

almost forty years earlier when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Wagner

Act, which had given Congress regulatory power over the states. Once again, Rehnquist authored

and signed the only dissent, which argued that the ruling violated the protections the tenth

amendment provided the states. A year later, the Court’s reversed itself in a 5-4 decision. During

deliberations of National League of Cities v. Usery (1976), he persuaded four other jurists to

70 Committee on the Judiciary, The Nomination of Judge Sandra Day O'Connor of Arizona to Serve as an Asso-

ciate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, esp. 57, 66, 102. 71 Tushnet, A Court Divided, 302; Quoted in John A. Jenkins, “The Partisan: A Talk with Justice Rehnquist,”

New York Times, March 3, 1985, 32.


52

change their opinions. His argument boiled down to his assertion that Congress had violated the

states’ rights clause in the Bill of Rights. In the majority opinion, Rehnquist rejected the legisla-

ture’s ability to force state and local governments to follow federal minimum wage and maxi-

mum hours laws. He contended that although Congress had the right to “exercis[e] its express

powers to tax and regulate commerce,” these laws threatened the “separate and independence

existence” of the states. Not since the 1937 Supreme Court decision to uphold the Wagner Act

had the Court invoked the 10th Amendment, which later scholars interpreted as the first signal

that the Court would begin to dismantle the governmental framework that had not only under-

pinned the New Deal but had enabled the enactment of other mid-century liberal reforms.72

When O’Connor joined the Court five years later, she provided an important vote for

Rehnquist’s drive to repeal the federal government’s power, particularly in regards towards regu-

lation, redistribution, and unionization. Though much of the scholarship on O’Connor’s jurispru-

dence has focused on her stance on women’s issues, experts on other aspects of her legal thought

have noted that perhaps her real role on the Rehnquist Court has been her consistent vote with

the conservative bloc on issues regarding states’ rights. Some legal minds have gone so far as to

call her “Not a Particularly Different Voice” and have stipulated that while she lacks the rhetori-

cal and dramatic statements of Rehnquist and Scalia, she has quietly stood with them on more

than 80% of cases involving states’ rights and the regulation of industry. For example, when the

Court once again reversed its opinion on federal authority over wages and hours in state govern-

ments in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (1985), only Powell, Rehnquist,

and O’Connor dissented. Although they each authored their own dissents, all three expressed

72 Van Sickel, Not a Particularly Different Voice, 82-92, quoted in 82-83; William W. Van Alstyne, “The Second Death of Federalism,” Michigan Law Review 83 (June 1985), 1709-1733; Jesse H. Choper, “The Scope of National Power Vis-a-Vis the States: The Dispensability of Judicial Review,” Yale Law Journal 86 (1977), 1552-1621; Archibald Cox, “Federalism and Individual Rights Under the Burger Court,” Northwestern University Law Review 73 (March/April 1978).


53

concern that the majority had ignored the protections the Bill of Rights had afforded to the states.

Her vote was vital towards shifting the tenor of the court even before Reagan and George H.W.

Bush were able to appoint more conservative jurists to the bench.73

The limitations the Rehnquist Court initially placed on federal power had an unintended

consequence: state governments began to regulate business. Hence, when these cases appeared

before the Court, these jurists did not side with the states and protect their power to police com-

merce. Instead, the new majority found in favor of corporations that opposed these regulations.

To many scholars, this shift signaled that initial assessments of the Rehnquist’s Courts allegiance

to federalism had in fact masked its overarching concern for protecting commerce. Indeed, these

jurists’ rulings did much to further repeal mid-century state limitations on business and reorient

the state towards anti-liberal measures to protect and promote industry.74

By the time Sandra Day O’Connor joined William Rehnquist on the bench, the era of

businessmen-politicians’ reign over Phoenix and the other Sunbelt metropolises was over. Phoe-

nix and its sister cities had ceased to have a distinct regional politics built on aggressive growth

and investment. Instead, these population centers, and once upstart anti-liberal Republican Par-

ties, were riddled with the same divisive metropolitan and suburban politics that characterized

other U.S. cities at the time. Now, local governments, state legislatures, and political parties

73 Tushnet, A Court Divided, 249-258; Van Sickel, Not a Particularly Different Voice, 82-92; Van Alstyne,

“The Second Death of Federalism;” Rothfield, “Federalism in a Conservative Supreme Court,” 21-31; Colker and Scott, “Dissing States?” 1301-1386; Greenhouse, “The Supreme Court: Federalism”; Chemerinsky, “Justice O’Connor and Federalism,” 877-954. 74 Rothfield, “Federalism in a Conservative Supreme Court,” 21-31; Colker and Scott, “Dissing States?” 1301-1386; Greenhouse, “The Supreme Court: Federalism;” Chemerinsky, “Justice O’Connor and Federalism,” 877-954; Tush-net, A Court Divided, 302-318; Fallon, “The ‘Conservative’ Paths of the Rehnquist Court’s Federalism Decisions,” 429-494; Davis, “Rehnquist and State Courts,” 773-782; Herman Schwartz, “The States’ Rights Assault on Federal Authority,” 155-168; Fox, “Antitrust and Business Power;” Joondeph, “The Deregulatory Value of Justice O’Connor’s Federalism,” 507-551.


54

struggled with conflicts between suburban, rural, and urban residents and contentious fights over

access, social equality, family, faith, and personal liberties that divided the electorate further.75

Still, the Phoenix Chamber men and state party refounders considered their political work

a resounding success. Upon Walter Bimson’s retirement in 1970, Goldwater wrote express his

thanks to “you with your forward looking, modern banking technique [that] opened up funds for

the young businessmen” Years after Eugene Pulliam’s death, Goldwater told a biographer that

the newspaperman was “one of the greatest men who ever lived” and credited him with “creating

a two party system in Arizona” and “making a success of the efforts to change our city govern-

ment.” Goldwater’s peers were equally proud of their Senator’s efforts to bring Phoenix’s brand

of Republican politics to Washington. “I have treasured your friendship through the many

years,” Bimson wrote to Goldwater, “and have felt a feeling of confidence in the future of our

State and our Nation because you were in a position to influence public opinion in a direction

that I have always supported.” “You have made a great contribution towards saving this coun-

try,” another Chamber man wrote in the late 1970s, “I regard you as one of the group comprising

Senators Taft, McCarthy, Jenner, McCarran; Generals McArthur, Chenualt[,] and Patton; Robert

Welch, Westbrook Pegler, Whitaker Chambers and numerous other who have been uncompro-

mising in their loyalty to God and country.”76

75 Carl Abbott, The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1987), 244-262; Jonathan Bell, “Social Democracy and the Rise of the Democratic Party in California, 1950-1964,” Historical Journal (June 2006), 497-524; William C. Berman, America’s Right Turn: From Nixon to Clinton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Joseph Crespino and Matthew Lassiter (eds.), The End of Southern History (forthcoming); Michael Kazin (ed.), In Search of Progressive America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Sylvie Murray, The Progressive Housewife: Community Activism in Sub-urban Queens, 1945-1965 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer (eds.), Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).

76 Snell interview by Minister, side 1, tape 10; Barry Goldwater to Walter Bimson, December 21, 1970, folder: “Bimson, Walter 1967-1971,” Box 2, Alpha Files, Goldwater Papers; Barry Goldwater to John Leach, November 15, 1984, pp. 1-2, folder “Pulliam, Eugene and Nina 1967-1984,” box 15, Alpha Files, ibid.; Walter Bimson to Barry Goldwater, January 11, 1971, folder: “Bimson, Walter 1967-1971,” Box 2, Alpha Files, ibid.; Frank Brophy to Barry Goldwater, April 14, 1977, folder: “Brophy, Frank Cullen 1974-1980,” box 2, Alpha Files, ibid.

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