Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape

Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape Shermer, Elizabeth Tandy Published by University of Arizona Press Shermer, E. T.. Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013. Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/21960 Access provided by Harvard University (14 Apr 2017 22:32 GMT) 2 Drafting a Movement Barry Goldwater and the Rebirth of the Arizona Republican Party elizabeth tandy shermer recent work on the modern conservative movement has, for the most part, focused largely on the racial and cultural politics of the 1960s and 1970s to explain the dramatic transformation of American politics. Frustrated homeowners, militant housewives, dogmatic anti- Communists, racist blue-collar workers, evangelical Christians, abor- tion opponents, and other crusaders in the dramatic culture wars populate these narratives. The American South also casts a long shadow over the Weld. Scholars, for example, have delved into the apparent “southernization” of America, the infamous “Southern Strategy,” the inXammatory politics of school and neighborhood desegregation, the trajectory of state Democratic parties, and the apparent need for southern politicians on Democratic presidential tickets. There is (and has been) far less attention to the power and place of business-minded conservatives and western Republicans. Yet the scant work done has shown, decisively, that both warrant more inquiry. These politicians, policymakers, and voters were among the most powerful, militant members of the broad postwar conservative movement, the ones who embraced Arizona retailer Barry Goldwater and helped propel him into the upper echelons of American politics.1 43 44 elizabeth tandy shermer Indeed, the business Right’s success is clear: deregulation, privati- zation, low taxation, and union insecurity have become the deWning characteristics of mainstream economic dogma. This philosophy represented an aVront to New Deal liberalism, which promoted a powerful, interventionist federal state that policed and regulated industry, redistributed wealth through an expansive social safety net, and em - powered the citizenry, largely through the trade union movement, to help direct economic development. Some of the most famous critics of this midcentury liberalism were western Republicans, the famed “cowboy conservatives.” Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the constant presence of this strain of western Sunbelt conser- va tism on the GOP’s presidential slates. Two market-oriented mav- ericks, Barry Goldwater and John McCain, called Phoenix home, and scholars often invoke California transplant Ronald Reagan as a paragon of this antiliberal economic doctrine.2 These two western conservatives were not outliers but representatives of a broad, Sunbelt-wide movement that blended industrialization with political transformation. In the early postwar period, when southern and western states generally supplied the industrial core with foodstuVs and production materials, insurgents generally worked within chambers of commerce to launch electoral campaigns to win seats in city governments and state legislatures in the underdeveloped South and Southwest. True, as Andrew Needham points out in his chapter, many would make their peace with federal power in the name of rapid economic development. But even their complicated embrace of public infrastructure contained a fundamental distrust of, if not open hostility to, liberal economic orthodoxy. Goldwater, after all, had called the Central Arizona Project a loan. Hence, businessmen like the senator found common cause with CEOs eager to move out of the liberal-leaning Steelbelt and coastal California. Yet the diVerences in the South’s and Southwest’s postwar rejuve- nation point to the importance of fully interrogating western booster Republicans’ role in the Sunbelt’s creation and the conservative movement’s maturation. Fighting the liberal regulatory state and orga - nized labor, as historian Tami Friedman has shown, very much shaped the politics of the South’s boosters. Still, the decidedly more urban West gave promoters far more political power than their southern counterparts, who found themselves Wghting the old agricultural elite Drafting a Movement 45 for control of governing bodies and state Democratic parties. Thus, western Republicans, not investment-focused southern Democrats, Wrst enjoyed the fruits of the genuine boom economy, which unorga - nized labor, deregulation, low business taxes, and laissez-faire attitudes toward income inequality fueled. Moreover, the resultant population surges gave western Sunbelt states increasing inXuence over national aVairs in the House and Electoral College, even though they had far fewer representatives in the early cold war period and before. As such, the West’s conservatives had an earlier entrée into the business and political organizations behind the nascent conservative movement.3 The Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and the Arizona Republican Party exempliWed this transformation of the West’s political economy. In the early 1930s, both the state GOP and the Phoenix Cham- ber were small and ineVective. But a new generation of boosters, with Goldwater prominent among them, set out to refashion these insti- tutions. From the start, their vision of a bright, industrial future and a decidedly antiliberal Republican Party were interconnected. These Chamber men then looked beyond their immediate surroundings and sought to fundamentally reconstruct Arizona, a broad initiative that pushed a young Goldwater to draft Republicans to run for oYce and also inspired his Wrst bid to represent Arizona in the Senate. A Revitalized Phoenix Chamber Goldwater and other Phoenix businessmen pursued a wholesale transformation of Arizona politics, the state GOP, and the Phoenix Cham- ber because of the threat and opportunity the New Deal represented. Leading liberals at the federal level had envisioned the South and West as centers of industry. DiversiWed economies, New Dealers predicted, would free denizens from the tumultuous commodities markets, thereby leading them to embrace liberalism’s social-democratic prin- ciples. Reformers in local, state, and national oYces did manage to lay the foundation for Phoenix and the rest of the underdeveloped South and Southwest to grow along a labor-liberal pathway. Massive infrastructure spending, huge agricultural subsidies, and the state- sponsored protections of unionism had in fact made Arizona a solidly Democratic state in the 1930s and 1940s. A vigorous organizing eVort 46 elizabeth tandy shermer also helped transform Arizona and its labor movement, which had tremendous success in organizing both the private and public sectors.4 Liberalism’s inroads were rooted in local interest in diversifying the area’s economy. Many Phoenicians sought to end the city’s dependence on agriculture, cattle, and mining. The liberals and radicals among them considered industrialization a means to open the door to a set of unionized, high-wage jobs not only in factories and mines but also in the high-proWle 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 democ- ratize municipal governance, exempliWed by eVorts 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 be - tween the wealthy Anglo population north of the railroad tracks and those of African, Mexican, Asian, and Native descent living on Phoe - nix’s south side.5 The New Deal for Phoenix and Arizona provoked an aggressive reaction from urban businessmen and professionals. For the town’s young retailers, lawyers, newspaper owners, and bankers, the collapse of the agricultural and mining economies had devastated their cus- tomers and thus weakened their portfolios and enterprises. Thus, they too wanted a more diversiWed economic base so as to insulate themselves and the town from the tumultuous commodities economy. Devastation yielded an opportunity for industry-minded young promoters to convince an aging membership to embrace manufac- turing. But paralysis had also empowered liberals to promote union empowerment, regulation, taxation, and a general expansion of the federal government, which seemed as threatening to the desert’s business elite as the volatile cotton, copper, and cattle markets.6 One of the most agitated boosters was young retailer Barry Gold- water. He, like his largely male, Anglo Chamber brethren, did not eschew industrialization or moderate Wscal reform per se but did reject the more radical elements of liberal experimentation. He was also well placed to voice his disenchantment with the New Deal. His fam- ily’s department store, Goldwater’s, had made him a household name across the state even before the dramatic 1940 trip down the Col- orado River. But Goldwater’s earlier renown had provided him with a pulpit prior to his 1940 descent into the Grand Canyon and later Drafting a Movement 47 service to the Colorado River Commission. Editors of the Phoenix Gazette, one of the town’s dailies, tapped him to write opinion pieces in the 1930s. Goldwater used the invitation to publicly attack liberalism. “I would like to know,” he demanded in his 1938 “A Fireside Chat with Mr. Roosevelt,” “just where you

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