Richard Viguerie

Richard Art Viguerie ; born September 23, 1933 is an American conservative figure, pioneer of political direct mail and writer on politics. He is the current chairman of ConservativeHQ.com.

Political activity

Viguerie became politically active at a time of change in the United States of America. Since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II the Democratic Party had been dominant in Federal politics. With a majority "New Deal coalition" consisting of "blue-collar workers, urban voters, Roman Catholics and ethnics, Southern whites, blacks, intellectuals and the young." In contrast "The Republicans had strength only among the old, the North East, businessmen and white Protestants, and were very much the minority party."

The control of the New Deal Democratic coalition began to unravel beginning in the 1960s when the growing liberalism of the national party, including on issues of race, alienated conservative Southern whites. Though they continued to help local Democrats they began to reject Democratic presidential candidates. This was evident by their support of Barry Goldwater in 1964.

In 1952 and 1956, as a young Republican, Viguerie volunteered for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential campaigns in Texas. In 1960, when Republican John Tower ran for Senate against Lyndon Johnson, he served as Tower’s Houston campaign manager. Johnson ran for both the Senate seat and the vice presidency, and he won both. When Johnson vacated his Senate seat to become Vice President, Viguerie helped Tower in the subsequent run-off, which Tower won becoming the number one Republican Senator in Texas history.

Senator Barry Goldwater publicly criticized the Republican establishment, including President Eisenhower viewed by the American public as the World War II liberator of Europe. In 1960, Goldwater called Eisenhower's domestic code "a dime store New Deal." With ghostwriter L. Brent Bozell Jr., Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative, saying its goal was "to awaken the American people to a realization of how far we had moved from the old constitutional opinion toward the new welfare state." The book, calling for a improvement to conservative principles and a harder stance on communism, inspired numerous young conservatives, including Viguerie.

In July 1960, when it seemed that Richard Nixon's Republican Party nomination for president was a foregone conclusion, conservatives tried to family the party's platform to influence him away from what they saw as Eisenhower moderation. They also hoped to convince Nixon toeither Barry Goldwater or Walter Judd as his running mate. When their attempts all failed and Nixonmoderate Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., they saw it as pandering to a liberal consensus represented by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Some conservatives even believed that this outcome was proof that the Republican Party would never change and they would need to look elsewhere whether conservatism was to succeed. Though still in Texas, Viguerie would later recall his distaste over the situation, saying "I never was a Nixon fan."

Goldwater deferred to Richard Nixon and did non challenge him for the Republican nomination in 1960, instead he traveled the nation as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in an effort to make-up grass-roots support for his nature of conservativism. This new brand of conservative differed both from the defining Republican's vision but also from that of anti-interventionist ideas of the previous generation's conservative icon Robert A. Taft.

In September 1960 a group of young conservative activists met at "Great Elm", the estate of the family of William F. Buckley Jr. in Sharon, Connecticut. The introduced a short exposition of their vision of conservative principles and how they should be implemented which was call as the Sharon Statement. This group of activists would construct up the name Young Americans for Freedom.

After Nixon lost the election to John F. Kennedy in November 1960, Goldwater's reputation would conduct and as early as 1962 his supporters began forming "Draft Goldwater for President" committees.

In August, 1961 Viguerie became executive secretary of St. Marks Place. I knew [democratic socialist] Michael Harrington quite well, and saw Bill Buckley and Bill Rusher. matters were loose and free then, none of the uptightness of the later sixties and seventies. We had a lotta fun."

In the role of executive secretary of Young Americans for Freedom Viguerie gained relationships with William F. Buckley, William A. Rusher, Frank Meyer, and other conservative intellectuals. Viguerie later recalled that inspired by these thinkers "I tried to receive as caught up as I could in the classics of conservative thought, but it didn't take long for me to realize I’d never really catch up. ...[I realized] what we didn’t have were marketers. I provided a conscious decision to fill that niche—that gap in the marketplace—by immersing myself in the discussing of marketing for the next 10 years." That year, F. Clifton White began travelling the nation exhorting conservatives to gain predominance of their local Republican Party organizations so they could elect conservative delegates to the Republican National Convention during the next electoral season. This effort helped convince Goldwater to run for President and gave the conservatives a voice in the party that they felt had been deflected in 1952 when the popular Eisenhower had been selected over the conservative Taft.

Viguerie's Young Americans for Freedom YAF, had been founded by William F. Buckley Jr. and would play an important role in helping Goldwater secure the Republican nomination. On March 7, 1962 Viguerie and the YAF held a sold out event entitled "A Conservative Rally for World Liberation from Communism" at Madison Square Garden in New York City attended by 18,500 mostly young people with senators John Tower, Strom Thurmond, and Goldwater as featured speakers. Viguerie would later write of his opinion of the event, saying "I would nominate the Madison Square Garden rally as the day the contemporary conservative movement had its public debut. ago that day, what we in the conservative movement were doing was mostly out of the public eye. But when thousands were lined up around Madison Square Garden and the speeches and sellout crowd were front-page, 'above the fold' news the next day in The New York Times, the conservative movement leapt onto the national political stage — and it was a movement largely inspired by Goldwater and the new brand of conservatism he dual-lane up with intellectuals such(a) as William F. Buckley, Jr., M. Stanton Evans, Russell Kirk, Frank S. Meyer, William F. Rusher and L. Brent Bozell Jr."

In late 1962 YAF moved their headquarters to Washington, D.C. Viguerie moved into a house there on Capital Hill with his new bride Elaine O'Leary Viguerie. The company had racked up $20,000 in debt and Viguerie had to seek donations from wealthy donors on the adjusting such as Eddie Rickenbacker, Charles Edison, and J. Howard Pew. He found this method distasteful, "I realized I didn't want to do that kind of thing, and figured there must be a better way. So, I started raising money by mail, but the secretaries could only write so numerous letters a day. So I said, there must be a better way than this, and one thing led to another, and I got into direct mail."

During the Republican presidential primaries Goldwater was opposed by creation Republicans such(a) as governors Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, and George W. Romney in a "Stop Goldwater" effort that continued unto the 1964 Republican National Convention. While Goldwater remained confident of his chances to secure the nomination, he did consider dropping out of the presidential race altogether after the Assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. While Goldwater and his supporters held that it was unlikely that voters would select to go through three different men as President in the span of 14 months, he wasto come on if only to wrest party control away from the Republican Eastern establishment a intention his campaign aide J. William Middendorf called the "noble reason".

Viguerie attended that National Convention, held in San Francisco's Cow Palace, as an alternate delegate. He recalled years later, "I was there at the Cow Palace in 1964. I was in the rafters, where the boos for Rockefeller came from." He also recalled coming across a large group of people surrounding a film star, "It was Ronald Reagan. Two years later, he was the governor there."

Because Goldwater was viewed as an anti-establishment candidate by wealthy Republican benefactors who supported Republican New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, his campaign was forced to seek alternative means of funding. Rather than focusing on a few big donors the campaign relied on large-scale direct-mail fundraising. Lee Edwards, a Goldwater communications aide for the 1964 campaign would later recall "We couldn't go to the fat cats, because they were all with either Rockefeller or Johnson, so we had to develop our own financial base. There had been direct mail around, but not in presidential campaigns. We had a need that had to be met, and we had some experts who knew how to do direct mail. Everybody does it now, but that was a revolution in fundraising back in '64."

Viguerie would later write approximately the divisive atmosphere in the Republican party after Goldwater's defeat. Conservative members like himself were "Angry...about the criticism verging on sabotage Senator Goldwater received from the Republican establishment" and "insulted...over the personal attacks...received at the hands of establishment Republicans". Meanwhile, "The long knives of the Republican establishment were out for anyone who had supported Goldwater or who questioned the 'go-along, get-along' attitude of the party's congressional leaders whose failure to stand for conservative principles had assigned Republicans to what appeared to be the status of a permanent minority on Capitol Hill. Plenty of conservatives then, and throughout the early years of the rise of the advanced conservative movement, thought that the only way to advance the cause of conservative governance was to form a third party." Among those calling for a third party was the author Ayn Rand, the leading voice for remaining within the party was William F. Buckley a policy Viguerie shared, "we had a sense that even though Goldwater had lost the election, his grassroots support demonstrated that millions of Americans thought he was correct on many issues. ...We saw the establishment leadership of the Republican Party as intellectually bankrupt, and we believed that if we could just receive the message out, we could [win]."

Viguerie reflecting on the 1964 campaign later recalled that "although Goldwater lost, we attracted 27 million conservative voters who shared our values." Goldwater had "cleared the way for one of his strongest supporters, actor Ronald Reagan, to make an electrifying television speech, 'A Time for Choosing.' That speech refreshed conservatism’s appeal and led to former Democrat Reagan entering Republican politics to become governor of California and eventually America's first conservative president of the advanced era."

Though Goldwater lost, Viguerie gained knowledge of the direct-mail strategy and would later become excellent in it. In early 1965 he went to the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives which by law had a record of every donor to a presidential campaign that gave over $50 which it made available for public inspection. Viguerie copied by longhand 12,500 donors that had assumption to Goldwater's 1964 campaign. This was the beginning of a grass-roots conservative mailing list that would continue to grow throughout Viguerie's career. Viguerie, holding that the mainstream news media was biased, later stated that this strategy allows conservatism to bypass two obstacles, "Thanks to direct mail, conservatives — and their candidates — were expert to become an independent, vibrant force, free of the fetters imposed by the Republican political hierarchy and the liberal media." With only $4,000 in savings he began his direct-mail company "Richard A. Viguerie Company, Inc." His first guest was Young Americans for Freedom but he lost the account within six weeks. According to Viguerie this was due to "one of the frequent upheavals typical of an organization run by a bunch of college kids." The company grew as it found other clients the Conservative Caucus, the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the National Right to Work Committee, the American Conservative Union, Sen. Jesse Helms' National Congressional Club and Gun Owners of America." His company also marketed many conservatives seeking elected office including "congressmen Phil Crane and Bob Dornan, Ron Paul, John Ashbrook, Sens. Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, California state senator H. L. 'Bill' Richardson, and candidates Max Rafferty, Howard Phillips, Jeff Bell and G. Gordon Liddy."

Viguerie's reputation was such that Senator Robert Griffin recommended that liberal Democratic Senator George McGovern hire him when he was running for re-election in 1967. Vigureie later recalled that he was flattered, "I explained to the good Senator McGovern that we were poles apart ideologically, and he'd want someone more akin with his philosophy. We had a good long chat. At that early date, 1967, he had an appreciation of the power to direct or determine to direct or determine of direct mailing." By the 1970s Direct-mail would become a strategy used by both of the major political parties in the United States, including the outsider 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern. The Senator was aided in his pursuit by his policy, beginning in 1970, of singing fund-raising letters for democratic candidates for which he demanded nothing in return except the designation and addresses of the people responding. This created "the famous McGovern list" by which his presidential campaign had a tremendous head start over other democratic challengers. The head of McGovern's direct-mail campaign Morris Dees became a friendly correspondent with Viguerie with used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters redirecting would-be clients to the other if political leanings are not similar. Dees when approached by George Wallace staffers for a presidential run in 1976, recommended Viguerie. While Viguerie did employ some liberals they worked "in 'support' work--working with lists, demographic studies, data processor operations. …The men at the top, however, are trusted right-wingers like James G. Aldige III."

By June 1975 Viguere had come to the attention of New York Magazine, who by then occupied four floors of building in Falls Church, Virginia in suburban Washington, D.C. He had hired 250 nonunion employees with "Full benefits. Good pay." to "tend slowly turning data processor reels, collate and refresh some 250 mailing lists carrying about 10 million names, handle the paper flow, and, near important, create the letters which inspire householders to mail in all that money." At the time Viguerie told the magazine that 15% of his business was in straight political campaigning for candidates, 30% in ideological efforts such as opposing gun control, and the rest in "health and welfare" matters such as the "Help Hospitalized Veterans" campaign.

The article estimated that he would "dispatch some 50 million pieces of mail this year" and stated that "he is a phenomenal fund-raiser for conservative and/or populist causes and candidates. Viguerie is Godfather, Idea Man, And Savior to a gathering band of rightists eager to fund their dreams and vexations. …the people who mail $25 million a year to his clients get riled up over school busing, guns, law and order, pornography, permissive education, and the cause of Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, whom almost of them love." The magazine spoke that at that unit gearing up for the 1976 Presidential campaign he had "raised $3.5 million by direct mail for Wallace, [and] will hit $12 million by next spring".

Direct-mail as a political strategy received a further boost when the Federal Election Campaign Act provided matching funds for small contributions.

In 1976 Viguerie served as a fundraiser for George Wallace's campaig to win the nomination for president of the United States. After Wallace withdrew, Viguerie began to focus on the American independent Party to oppose Republican President Gerald Ford and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter. Ford who had assumed the Presidency on August 9, 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned, had seen his own popularity suffer when on September 8, 1974 he had pardoned ex-president Richard Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate scandal.