Phoenix 101: Conservatives

Sen. Barry Goldwater, center, and Rep. John J. Rhodes, right, after the fateful showdown with President Nixon in 1974 when they told him he must resign.

Conservatism wasn't always synonymous with the Kookocracy. The political label has carried different meanings at different times through the state's history.

The Kooks down at the Capitol today would be anathema to the lions of the dawn of modern Arizona conservatism: John J. Rhodes, Paul Fannin and, especially, Barry Goldwater.

What later passed for Arizona conservatives could say, "Barry changed," when the senator criticized the religious right or the ban on gays in the military with his characteristic circumspection. No, he didn't. I had conversations with Rhodes late in his life — the House leader who, along with Goldwater and Republican Sen. Hugh Scott, told Richard Nixon he must resign the presidency. Rhodes was aghast at what the state Republicans had become.

Arizona conservative lions telling a disgraced president of their party it was time to go. Can you imagine John McCain or Jeff Flake showing such independence or integrity?

II.

Arizona became a state at the height of the Progressive Era -- a political movement that sought to curb the influence of the wealthy and the corporations, empower average (white) citizens and use government as a tool for social and economic progress. It encompassed politicians of both parties (even ones who otherwise despised each other: Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson). Women won the right to vote in 1912 in Arizona, eight years before adoption of the 19th Amendment. The evidence of the state's birthright still exists in a strong Legislature, a Corporation Commission and the initiative process.

Beyond the influence of its powerful corporate players — the railroads and mines — Arizona was not "conservative" in a way that Rush Limbaugh would recognize. It was a frontier state that desperately needed every federal dollar, especially for water projects. Getting this money was the enterprise of all Arizona politicians through the 1960s.

Beyond that, Arizona was both populist and individualistic in the way of Western states of its era. It never produced a firebrand like Idaho's Sen. William Borah. Yet its federal politicians were in the main very concerned about the welfare of average Arizonans. The state voted for FDR every time. It was largely a Democratic state, heavily unionized even into the 1950s, culturally conservative (it was not, like the Kansas of Thomas Franks' book, a former hotbed of radicalism).

This began to change with the emergence of Goldwater, the handsome department store executive who became a Phoenix city councilman in 1949 and managed the successful gubernatorial campaign of Howard Pyle in 1950.

Along with merchant prince and GOP boss Harry Rosenzweig, Goldwater was the father of the state's modern Republican Party.

III.

 

He went on to a stunning (if narrow) victory in 1952 over Sen. Ernest McFarland, the Senate majority leader and widely considered the father of the GI bill. Goldwater's first victory was probably a fluke — McFarland was saddled with the hugely unpopular Harry Truman and popular fatigue after 20 years of Democratic rule. When Barry won again in 1958, it was a sign of a changing state, especially in the Phoenix metro area.

Phoenix alone had added more than 360,000 residents in the 1950s, an increase of 340 percent. Many were Republicans from the Midwest and plains states, and few had any allegiance to the old political order (who, many voters asked in 1962, is Carl Hayden?).

Many had come to escape the racial upheaval back east, a trend that only accelerated in the 1960s (Phoenix kept its segregationist past and racial tensions largely concealed). The new Republicans in Arizona benefited from a rising middle class, ironically created by the New Deal, that was more receptive to its smaller government, bootstrapping message. The irony was double considering that Arizona, and Phoenix, wouldn't have existed in habitable form for these post-war families without government intervention on a massive scale.

Goldwater helped create the post-war conservative movement with his book, The Conscience of a Conservative (actually ghostwritten by Brent Bozell). Coming at the high tide of liberalism in 1960, the book and the ideas Goldwater espoused provided an appealing opposition, and popularized theories the young Bill Buckley had been brewing at National Review.

They are not to be dismissed with the benefit of hindsight from today's Bush/Cheney disaster. In many cases, government had overreached and a critique of the welfare state was healthy. The Cold War, seen in its time, did represent an existential threat to the United States. And it is impossible to separate the rise of conservatism from the Cold War.

IV.

Still, Goldwater seeded whirlwinds. He opposed federal civil rights and voting rights acts (which he came to regret). He was very much a parochial product of the empty Arizona frontier, and had little understanding of the complexities of American society as a whole.

It would be interesting counter-factual history to wonder what would have happened had Goldwater become president in 1964 (and I wish I had kept the Goldwater buttons I proudly wore to Kenilworth School that fall). I know we wouldn't have "lobbed one into the men's room at the Kremlin," or even dismantled the New Deal. Goldwater was a serious man in many ways, but also limited by his Western roots. Likely he would have spent a frustrating four years fighting a Democratic Congress and then have been defeated.

It's also interesting to ponder how he, Fannin and Rhodes would have reacted to the complicated issues the nation faces today, were they in their prime. Would they be like Jon Kyl (who knows better) and Trent Franks? I think not. In any event, these earlier Arizona conservatives never forgot their home state — not even the iconic Barry — and they brought home the federal money, especially for the CAP.

Another powerful force behind conservatism's rise was Eugene C. Pulliam, publisher of the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette. Pulliam was a publisher in the tradition of front-page editorials, including a remarkable one in the mid-1960s discussing how bureaucracy was destroying representative government. He was hated and feared, but unquestionably influential.

Again, however, Pulliam was deeply loyal to Arizona and Phoenix, supportive of civic projects, the CAP and every federal dollar that flowed into the state. In his prime, he was not frozen in time or resistent to facts. (When I was a columnist at the Republic after it had been bought by Gannett, old-timers would sometimes ask me, "What would old man Pulliam make of you?" My reply: "He'd be egging me on." They didn't disagree.)

V.

Even in the 1960s there was a disturbing side to Arizona conservatism. Arizona was a hotbed of the John Birch Society, the extremist group that even labeled Dwight Eisenhower a communist.

Republican bigs — and I heard more than a few talk at informal salons my mother would hold — were happy to "use the Birchers" because they were so fanatical as to be highly valuable in winning elections. Otherwise, these men believed, the far right were a bunch of nuts. But nuts who could be controlled.

The "Southern strategy" of racial fear and division was also around; voter suppression happened in south Phoenix, for example. And an eccentric Glendale car dealer, who so believed Pulliam was a pinko that he published his own paper, The Evening American, wanted to enter politics. A foretaste of the party's future was seen in the venomous, destructive contest between Sam Steiger, an old-line Arizona conservative, and John Conlan, a proto-Kook, in the Senate primary.

You know the rest of the story. With the election of Evan Mecham as governor in 1986, the nuts had commenced their takeover of the Arizona Republican Party. While Mecham proved an embarrassment, his spirit lives on in the Kookocracy. What happened?

First, in 1986 the Democrats were divided, one contender running as an independent and allowing Mecham to squeak in. In many ways, The Dems never got their game back -- they were asleep as Republicans were taking control of school boards, city councils and the Legislature. This trend didn't change much under the palmy days of Saint Janet and it remains to be seen what the recent gains in Congress mean.

Second, Arizona politics became nationalized in a way never before seen. Barry Goldwater was very much a product of Arizona, the territory and the state. Today's Arizona conservative leaders are beholden to the national movement, from its dominant donors and ideologists that have seeded candidacies and the Local Krackpot "Think" Tank, right down to the endless hours of right-wing talk radio and Fox "News."

All are well-funded and all are spouting propaganda points with a discipline that would make an old Soviet apparatchik envious. It is a seamless alliance of social and economic conservatives reactionaries. To cross the movement means political death, or so the more reflective of them privately believe. Along with the death of the old conservative titans, the punishment meted out to mavericks such as Grant Woods and state term limits, these factors have made stupid and ideologically reliable the only necessary skillsets for Arizona conservatives.

Third is what author Bill Bishop calls "the big sort." Arizona, and especially metro Phoenix, became a very self-selecting red zone. Like-minded people cluster together now more than ever before, and Phoenix shows it. To be sure, the Kooks rule from elections where in some cases as little as 25 percent of the electorate turns out.

But the very layout of the place repels people who want such "liberal" values as community, real neighborhoods, diversity, social justice, transit, etc. It attracts the north Scottsdalite who wants to be left alone, the working white guy with grievances and guns, the suburbanite LDS and Christian evangelicals, all who want to drive like hell unimpeded, have a "tough sheriff" and see government as the problem. To paint with a broad brush. The Latinos don't vote. The Mormons do — religiously, so to speak.

The LDS was always a political force, although not necessarily party-line Republican. The most memorable Mormon political family in Arizona history was the Democratic Udalls. But fundamentalist Christians became a new and powerful element changing the definition of conservatism in Arizona. Once again we saw the nationalization of state politics as the GOP was increasingly taken over by the Christian Coalition and its successors. Old Arizona conservatism was individualistic and not that interested in personal vices and foibles. From the 1990s on, the state's conservatism took on a heavy religious flavor with cultural wedge issues.

Finally, conservatism then and now serves corporate interests, which have now grown to an enormous, and dangerous degree. These have no regard for debates over abortion, much less gay bashing (gays, after all, are often affluent consumers). But with the steadfast defense of "property rights" and opposition to taxes, the conservatives do the bidding of powerful business -- even as most on the right reliably vote against their own economic interests.

Arizona conservatism, once closely rooted to the frontier state, has become just another market for the national right wing. Another "headquarters" we have lost. It is a movement now marked by failed ideas — and few of those — a nihilistic and hateful streak, and completely at sea for addressing the issues of what has become a populous, urbanized state with complex challenges.

Today's conservatives wouldn't have Barry Goldwater. In my eight-year-old heart, I knew he was right. But I grew up.

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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.

Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.

 

Comments

[soleri]

Goldwater was self-identified as a Jew along with being a member of Planned Parenthood and the Urban League. His "conservatism" was less Birchite than Hollywood. He was rugged, handsome, garrulous, and likeable. He was authentically conservative but he also learned to play the role assigned him by smart hustlers like Steve Shadegg. And he was having the time of his well-lived life.

When the religious right metastasized into its current horror, Goldwater had no problem realizing how the party was migrating away from his upper-middle class values. At this late stage, Goldwater was the curator of his own legend and not disposed to checking his tongue for the sake of partisan unity.

He was also a modern man, not some relic of a bygone era. What separated him from the millions of new Republicans was their tweaked sense of grievance about modernity. In that sense, he was unlike Ronald Reagan who was an adept and directable actor. Of course, Reagan could sire a family virtually indistinguishable from a Norman Lear sitcom while channeling the outrage of millions forced to accommodate black people.

Republicans thought they could harness the lumpen proles without being corrupted by their stupidity. Didn't work. Now reasonably sophisticated people like Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich are forced to express solidarity with the kind of culture warriors they obviously disdain. The party can neither divorce itself from its dittoheads nor evolve in a saner direction. Faustian bargains are a bitch.

Goldwater would probably be shocked by the disease that has overtaken Phoenix. The author Charles Bowden interviewed him once and asked if he was happy to see Phoenix and Tucson eventually merging their growth edges. He paused long enough to tell a truth every Arizona native feels: he'd be glad he wouldn't live long enough to see it.

[Donna]

You are definitely spot on with all your observations, in particular the way that movement conservatism at the national level has subsumed the GOP at the local level. For all the lip service elected Kooks pay to state pride, a Kook in the AZ legislature is virtually indistinguishable from his/her counterpart in Oklahoma or Minnesota.

To your comment about conservatism serving corporate interests, I must point out that (unfortunately) many Democrats go right along with it. While Gov. Napolitano held some of the more draconian and ridiculous efforts of the lege at bay she never met a corporate tax break she didn't like. She, like many centrist Dems, thoroughly swallowed the corporate koolaid that tax cuts to big business encourage a favorable business climate. I laugh ruefully as I see the CEOs of Intel and Boeing admonishing Arizona to "invest more in education", lest we become so uncompetitive that companies like theirs are forced to relocate. These same companies have been bleeding our state dry with tax breaks and subsidies.

[Matt Self]

This should be in Arizona history books someplace. That was the whole pie.

[dissertation writing help]

Blogs are so interactive where we get lots of informative on any topics nice job keep it up !!

[CDT]

The movement conservatives' capture of the Arizona GOP has been further aided by Clean Elections, a noble experiement that has had some unfortunate consequences. In the old days, the business community -- whose financial support was necessary to be elected -- acted as something of a break and filter on Legislative elections. Public funding has made it easier for the farthest-right candidates to compete and win on the Republican side. That it has made it easier for relatively more liberal Democrats to win as well is irrelevant, given their minority status. Killing Clean Elections has long been a goal for Arizona conservatives, but they might regret it if they succeed.

[Funny about Money]

Ah yes...do I misrecall when I remember Barry Goldwater, near the end of his life, using the term a**holes about the new breed of soi-disant conservatives? The man was no fool...certainly not in comparison with today's right-wingers.

[Alex]

Nice post keeps on posting this type of interesting and informative articles.

[Cheryl]

Fantastic post and wonderful blog, I really like this type of interesting articles keep it up.

Best Regards!