University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 The Real Silent Majority: Denver and the Realignment of American Politics After the Sixties Rachel Meira Guberman University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the American Studies Commons, Political Science Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Guberman, Rachel Meira, "The Real Silent Majority: Denver and the Realignment of American Politics After the Sixties" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1749. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1749 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1749 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Real Silent Majority: Denver and the Realignment of American Politics After the Sixties Abstract “The Real Silent Majority” offers a new assessment of late-twentieth century U.S. political realignment, overturning previous explanations focused on the supposed death of liberalism and rise of the New Right. Instead, it traces the emergence of a pragmatic, self-interested, and only weakly partisan “quality of life” politics in America’s metropolitan areas from the late-1960s onwards. A case study of Denver, Colorado, and its surrounding metropolitan region, my study is a political and spatial history that incorporates perspectives from cultural, intellectual, and policy history as well as the interdisciplinary fields of metropolitan and urban studies. In examining the new definitions of citizenship and democracy that emerged in places like Denver, my dissertation promises a thorough re-conceptualization of a pivotal period in U.S. history that has profound implications for American politics and government today. The transformation in Coloradans’ political attitudes and behavior were symptomatic of a broad, national political realignment. This shift was not away from Democrats and towards Republicans, as is often described, but rather away from the party system and conventional notions of liberal or conservative ideology altogether. On issues ranging from school desegregation and metropolitan growth to taxes and gay rights, Coloradans asserted their rights as tax-paying citizens to direct control over democratic decision-making. Moreover, they began to define quality“ of life,” an amorphous category encompassing everything from the protection of public parkland to the location of public housing and the content of school curricula, as a fundamental right of American citizenship. I emphasize both the constitutional and democratic means by which citizens sought to institutionalize their new political culture at the state and local levels, examining grassroots efforts to pass constitutional amendments and elect sympathetic candidates. These local battles, fought in the rapidly shifting physical, demographic, and cultural landscapes of growing metropolises, had broad implications. I show how the “quality of life” politics reverberated upwards over a forty-year period to influence the politics and policy of both the Republican and, especially, Democratic parties. The project is organized in two parts. Part I uses local case studies of issues such as school desegregation and regional governance to trace the emergence of a grassroots quality of life politics that was, in the late-1960s and early-1970s, largely off the radar of both major parties. It culminates in 1974 with the election of a cadre of reform candidates, showing how the new ethos that had been percolating at the grassroots both shaped and was transformed by formal politics at the state and national levels. At the same time, it shows how black and Hispanic Coloradans engaged with this increasingly dominant political discourse. Part II examines issues including anti-tax politics and family values that are generally viewed as unambiguous parts of America’s conservative turn, showing instead how the new politics inflected these debates in complex and surprising ways. In 1992, Coloradans’ support of both the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) and anti-gay Amendment 2 led observers to view Colorado as part of a national conservative vanguard. Yet that same year, Coloradans decisively rejected George Bush and the GOP’s unabashedly conservative “family values” platform, making Bill Clinton their first Democratic pick for president in thirty years. Exploring the deep history of TABOR and Amendment 2, I reveal the predominance of market- oriented and quality of life ideas—not a burgeoning cultural conservatism—in shaping public responses to both issues. This insight has important implications, calling into question the pervasive understanding of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Republican Revolution as a popular rebuke to the Democrats and a culturally conservative mandate for Republicans. Indeed, far from representing opposing impulses in American politics, I argue, Clinton’s election and the Contract with America two years later together marked the fullest expression of the new market paradigm in American politics. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History First Advisor Thomas J. Sugrue Keywords conservatism, Denver, liberalism, metropolitan, politics, postwar Subject Categories American Studies | Political Science | United States History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1749 THE REAL SILENT MAJORITY: DENVER AND THE REALIGNMENT OF AMERICAN POLITICS AFTER THE SIXTIES Rachel Guberman A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Supervisor of Dissertation __________________________ Thomas J. Sugrue David Boies Professor of History and Sociology Graduate Group Chairperson __________________________ Benjamin Nathans, Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History Dissertation Committee Sarah Barringer Gordon, Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History Amy Offner, Assistant Professor of History Robert O. Self, Royce Family Professor in Teaching Excellence, Professor of History, Brown University The Real Silent Majority: Denver and the Realignment of American Politics after the Sixties COPYRIGHT 2015 Rachel Guberman This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ny-sa/2.0/ For Bonnie and Nathan iii ACKNOWLEDGMENT This dissertation would not have been possible without the wonderful communities that have supported me, both within the academy and beyond. As a college freshman, I came to the University of Michigan full of questions about inequality and justice that seemed unanswerable. The history classes I took at U of M showed me new ways of thinking through these problems and set me on the path that has shaped my thinking and my work ever since. Gina Morantz-Sanchez and Matt Lassiter were guiding lights. Matt, in particular, introduced me to ideas about place-making and public policy that changed how I understood both the suburb I grew up in and the cities I later called home. Even after I left Ann Arbor, Matt continued to be a source of advice, encouragement, and ideas. At Penn, I have been fortunate to work with some remarkable scholars and teachers. Michael Katz’s interest in my project, incisive comments on my writing, and example in the classroom have made me a better historian and a better teacher. Elaine Simon and Mark Stern offered me a home in Urban Studies when I needed one. Sally Gordon and Amy Offner joined my committee at a critical moment. I’ve also been lucky to have Tom Sugrue’s enthusiastic support at every stage of this project. He’s provided a powerful model of what an advisor can be. One of the real joys of doing this work has been participating in a large and growing intellectual community that stretches far beyond my home department. Fellow students Sean Dempsey, Peter Pihos, Rebecca Marchiel, Anthony Ross, Anthony Pratcher, and many others have shared ideas, tales from the archives, and iv conference hotel rooms, as well as countless beers and cups of coffee. The members of the American History Workshop at Cambridge University welcomed me into the fold and provided intellectual mooring when I was far from home. Andrew Needham, Lily Geismer, Clay Howard, Nathan Connolly, and Jonathan Bell welcomed me into the profession. Their enthusiasm has been contagious and their support and friendship have kept me going and shown me how truly generous and humane our field can be. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Robert Self, whose faith in me and my work began with my application to Brown nine years ago and has continued through his participation on my dissertation committee as an outside reader. As every historian knows, our work would not be possible without the help of archivists and librarians. The Denver Public Library’s Western History and Genealogy Division is an incredible place to do research and a remarkable, underutilized historical resource. Many thanks to the staff there, especially Wendel Cox, for pointing me towards sources I would never have discovered on my own. Thanks also to the folks at History Colorado, the University of Colorado Special Collections, and the Ford Presidential Library, as well as the librarians at countless small town