S4 EP02: The Goldwater Era

[MUSIC] Previously on rediscovering. >> Do you feel that your time in prison changed your belief systems at all? >> Like regarding politics? >> Yeah. >> No. >> Nobody is higher than me. I am the elected sheriff by the people. >> The most Western justice, basically, you're going to be the farmer. >> So what we can see in 1900, you see about 7% of Arizona's population was southern born white in 1900. >> Be it in Phoenix or in Southern California through the 20s, I don't think it's an accident that some of the most important leaders, some of the most important institutions that are supporting and even housing the clan are southern-based institutions. [MUSIC] >> [SOUND] >> I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. [APPLAUSE] >> And let me remind you also that moderation and the pursuit of justice is no virtue. [MUSIC] >> During World War II, Arizona's barren desert was ideal for training US soldiers. Warehousing Nazi prisoners in Phoenix and interning Japanese Americans on tribal land. Camps in Florence and near Papago Park in Phoenix held a few thousand German prisoners. More than 13,000 Japanese Americans lived on tribal land near Sacatone outside Phoenix during the war. At its peak, the Heel River War Location Center was Arizona's fourth largest population center. [MUSIC] Among those who lived there was 11 year old Noriyuki Marita, an American born boy who was in a California hospital where he battled spinal tuberculosis. He was later transferred to Arizona to be reunited with his parents in the desert. His better known as Pat Marita, the actor who appeared in Happy Days and the Karate Kid. >> See, I speak Japanese, Chinese, Korean, a little Hungarian. [LAUGH] >> Well, tell me something, what do you consider yourself? >> Good looking. [LAUGH] >> The Massey is for the weak. We do not train to be merciful here. A man face you, he is enemy. Enemy deserve no mercy. Marita recounted life in internment camps in an interview with the Television Academy Foundation. >> I was escorted from the hospital by an FBI guy to join my parents at an internment camp in the middle of Arizona. And I, you know, what do kids know about wars? I was happy to be walking. They said this kid would never walk. And I felt like I was some kind of big deal because an FBI guy carrying a piece, I mean, being escorted. A, you know, the first one we were in was called Heela, G-I-L-A, as in the Heela River internment center. Well, Uncle Sam and we Americans, we like to use euphemistic words or invent words if we think certain other words are too harsh. So they call them relocation centers. They were America's versions of concentration camps. The US government built another even larger site on tribal land near the California border. It was called the Post-In War Relocation Center. It did so over the protest of the Colorado River Indian Reservation. That camp held about 17,000 prisoners at its peak. Among them was Doris Matsui, who was born in the camp and went on to become a member of Congress, representing California. A job she holds to this day. When the war ended, America built a new society connected by national highways and air travel, telephones and televisions. The growing nations spilled into suburbs and underpopulated areas across the map. As America changed and grew, Arizona exploded with an influx of new residents from across the country, drawn to a sunny climate now tamed with the advent of air conditioning. Washington was changing too. Decades of political dominance by Democrats since the Great Depression gave way to post-war Republican leadership. It was best exemplified by the 1952 election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, temperamentally and ideologically, a moderate by the standards of his day. I know something of the solemn responsibility of leading a crusade. I have led one. In Arizona, anti-communist vigilance was common, and the state shifted not just rightward, but far to the right. In recognizing a communist, physical appearance counts for nothing. Welcome to season 4 of Rediscovering, an investigative podcast by the Arizona Republic and AZCentral.com. After the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and after digging into Arizona's prominent role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election, we've repeatedly heard questions we couldn't quite answer. What is going on in Arizona? Why does this state seem to have people willing to push the political envelope further than almost anyone else? This season, we'll attempt to explore answers to those questions. I'm Ron Hanson, a National Political Reporter for the Arizona Republic and AZCentral.com. And I'm Mary Jo Pitzel, I cover state politics and policy for the Republic. We've been covering politics in this battleground state for years. Over four episodes, we'll trace the history of Arizona's brushes with extremism. It's not a story of outlandish acts and criminal behavior, at least not entirely. It's the story of disillusionment, of distrust of government, and sometimes outright rebellion that has mixed into Arizona's culture and politics. What's happening in Arizona parallels similar spasms across the country, but has gained more attention as the state has grown in population and political importance. We're rediscovering the people, who the late historian Richard Haustatter described as having "uncommonly angry minds." The question is, have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? World War III, definitely on the table. If getting off the couch and doing something is extreme, then yeah, I'm an extremist. The question in my mind is, how can you prevent war with policies that are making communist countries content with communism? Or foreign aid policies that are making them even more content? This is part two, the Goldwater era. Between 1930 and 1940, Arizona grew 15% and had about a half million residents. That's about as many people as live in Mesa. today. By 1950 the state swelled by 50 percent. By 1960 it had nearly tripled its pre-war population. "The state of tomorrow, the second fastest growing of all these United States. She wears her adjectives well. Land of time enough and room enough. Land of big distances. The long they land. Land of little ray." Arizona was changing politically as well. From 1922 until 1950 Arizona voters elected a Democratic governor 13 of 14 times. It was a similar story for the state's U.S. Senators. From 1911 through 1950 voters picked a Democrat 14 out of 15 times. Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt carried Arizona all four times he ran. No Republican won a single statewide office from 1930 through 1948. Among Arizona registered voters, Democrats outnumbered Republicans in 1950 more than four to one. Arizona's population shifted from mostly rural in 1900 to mostly urbanize just 50 years later. The new jobs weren't in agriculture and they weren't in the kind of manufacturing work traditionally associated with Democratic aligned unions. Instead Arizona attracted non-unionized technology jobs of the time in electronics and engineering. Companies like Motorola and Honeywell became major employers. Taken as a whole, the social upheaval in Arizona helped transform it from reliably democratic to newly Republican. By 1950 the political mood in Arizona was changing too. Public dismay at the Korean War. The Soviet Union's detonation of a nuclear bomb. President Truman's dramatic announcement that Russia has created an atomic explosion sends reporters racing for flushing metal where Russia's Vashinsky arrives to address the United Nations. And the emergence of a communist dictator in China helped drive a sense of worry against the ruling Democrats. With a Red Army conquering China, fear-written Shanghai crowds seen national soldiers vent their fury upon suspected communist sympathizers, the Red Army is at the gates. Brooke Simpson is a professor of history at Arizona State University and an expert in presidential history. Much after members in the wake of World War II, United States thought it was a global power that could not be threatened. The next four years between the Soviet Union's development of atomic weapons and the people through the public of China emerging in 1949, the question was, what happened? Why are we in this mess? Why are we fighting in Korea? Why are we confronting another war, a cold war this time? So you begin to look around and say, who did this? And one of the answers was there were people in the United States government with communist sympathies and they have leaked our secrets to our enemies. Communist Party in the United States is the outlaw of the Congress of the United States. It is not a political party. It's conspiracy to take over our government by force. Which would enslave the American people as the Soviet government, 14 members of the Politburo, hold the Russian people an abject slave. And so you have who lost China? How do the Soviets get to learn about nuclear weapons? Why are we in a dangerous world, at least as dangerous in the minds of many people as the world of fascism and Hitler and imperial Japan? Okay, so that's where we start. So we start to look around for scapegoats and what Republicans did with great skill was to pinpoint people in democratic administrations and elsewhere who they accused of being communist, soft on communism or active provocateurs and agents and spies. In February 1950, little known US Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, gave his speech in West Virginia. He claimed there were 205 communists working in the State Department. It is generally regarded as igniting what became known as the Red Scar. McCarthy held Washington in the grip of fear with thuggish allegations that the US government, particularly the State Department and the CIA, had been infiltrated by communist agents and gay people. If there were not communists in our government, why did we delay for 18 months, delay our restriction on the President's bomb, even though our intelligence agencies were reporting day after day that the Russians were feverishly pushing their development of each bomb? On the other side of the Capitol, the House on American Activities Committee conducted similar hunts for communists in the government in Hollywood and elsewhere. It is refusal to testify results in a contempt of Congress charge. Next on the list of witnesses is Ronald Regan, who says, "I will be frank with you that as a citizen I would hesitate or I would not like to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology because we've spent 170 years in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough to stand up and fight for itself against the enroads of any ideology no matter how much we may disagree with." A few months later, Arizona voters elected Republican John Pyle as governor in 1950. Two years later, his campaign manager, a member of the Phoenix City Council, ran for the US Senate with his own anti-communist message. His name was Barry Goldwater. The National Political Climate helped Goldwater overcome a serious shortage of traditional Republican voters. Republicans recruited the exceedingly popular Eisenhower, a legendary World War II general, to head their presidential ticket. Goldwater faced Senator Ernest McFarland, the Senate Majority Leader at the time, an author of the landmark US GI Bill. He was also a man dragged down by the widespread unpopularity of then-president Harry Truman, a Democrat. During the campaign, Goldwater pounded Truman as weak on the Soviets, their enablers, and campaigned on limiting government. "I like right, everybody likes I, for president, hang out the banner, things are wrong, we think I do what she does, we don't want jobs, or hurry let's do that big job right, just get in step with the garbage, have to get in step with life, do like I, I like I, everybody like I." Goldwater firmly grabbed Eisenhower's co-tales. An ad in the Arizona Republic showed a beaming Goldwater clasping Eisenhower's hand. The ad stated, "Arizona needs a Republican Senator in a Republican administration. White Eisenhower will be president." University now assumes the leadership of the United States of America. We like Ike, was his campaign slogan, and what a campaign it proved to be. It was a fierce political battle that the great Saudi was now called upon to fight. Yes, indeed a vastly different battlefield, but the result was once again the same victory. Goldwater and Eisenhower both won. But while Eisenhower is remembered as a moderate, Goldwater helped push his party to the right. Upon joining the newly Republican-controlled Senate, Goldwater established himself as an ally of the new Senate Majority Leader, Robert Taft, the Ohio Conservative who had been favored as the GOP presidential pick in 1952. Goldwater also found McCarthy's anti-communist rhetoric appealing. "To prevent war in our time is to make sure that communism knows that it cannot win a war if it starts one." Lee Edwards, a 1964 Goldwater campaign communications aid, authored the 1995 biography, "Goldwater, the man who made a revolution." Goldwater liked McCarthy's anti-communism. He was always a very strong anti-communist. Soviet very much aware of the fact that China had gone communist just a little bit earlier. And so McCarthy came along and said, "Yes, there were communists in government." And that made some sense to Goldwater. "I would like Mr. Goldwater to tell me his thoughts and ideas on how we can stop the spread of communism throughout the world." "Well, the first thing we can and should do is to rebuild and revitalize our whole system of alliances. And top priority must go to repairing the damage done by this administration to the great North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which to me is the greatest peacekeeping force ever devised by free men. Our allies will know that once again America wants to work with them as equal partners in the cause of freedom and peace." Between 1950 and 1953, McCarthy led hearings and gave speeches claiming varying numbers of communists were infiltrating the U.S. government. His campaign ruined careers and tied the nation in knots. Before the public suspected the evidence, never really kept up with his allegations. McCarthy's time in the spotlight ended not long after televised hearings in June 1954. "It's how I'm going to swear the testimony about the year we received the hold of the God, nothing but the truth so help you God." That was when McCarthy accused the U.S. Army of having lack security at a top secret facility. "Mr. Welch, with great respect, I work for the committee here. They know how we go about handling situations of communist infiltration and say it to act on FBI information about communist infiltration. And may I add my small voice, sir, and say whenever you know about a subversive or a communist or a spy, please hurry when you remember those words." The Army's lawyer, Joseph Welch and McCarthy's lawyer, Roy Cohn, agreed to hold back on personal attacks against Cohn and an associate lawyer with Welch's law firm. As Welch and Cohn jousted over evidence of communist in the government, McCarthy broke their agreement. He told viewers that Welch's legal team included a man who had once joined a liberal lawyers group considered by some to be sympathetic to communists. I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher who has been for a number of years, a member of an organization which was named old years and years ago. As the legal bulwark of the communist party, I have hesitated bringing that up. It led to this memorable exchange. The Army McCarthy hearings, as they were known, left McCarthy's standing in tatters. Gallup polling in 1950 showed the public generally saw McCarthy's communism allegations as good for the nation. By the time of the Army hearings, the polling had flipped, with the public disapproving of McCarthy. But in Arizona, the hunt for communists went on. In March 1954, the Arizona legislature weighed a bill to institute an anti-communist loyalty oath that would have applied to public employees. Under criticism, especially from religious organizations, the bill was withdrawn. Years later, the state enacted a loyalty oath that the U.S. Supreme Court eventually struck down. In August 1954, two months after welts called out McCarthy, the Arizona Republic carried a screaming headline, noting the FBI's arrest of five top suspected communists. He was only one example of the republic's conservative zeal under publisher Eugene Polium. The newspaper reported that one of the arrested men was former Phoenix resident Louis Martin Johnson, a minor and sheet metal worker who ran for Arizona's mine inspector in 1946 as a member of the Communist Party. And he chaired the Communist Party in Maricopa County in 1948. In 1955, Johnson was convicted of conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the government and sentenced to four years in prison. His conviction was reversed and in 1959, the government dropped its case against Johnson without explanation. Johnson's arrest fueled another round of worry about communist influence in Arizona. After his arrest, the director for veterans affairs in Arizona echoed McCarthy's rhetoric, saying Arizona had 176 "card carrying" communists. The FBI didn't verify the claim. And Arizona voters had never shown much interest in communists politically. 1946, the year Johnson ran for mine inspector with negligible support, was the last time the party had a candidate on the ballot in Arizona in that era. No communist ever won an Arizona election. The goldwater and his backers maintained communism was a top tier concern, even as McCarthyism sputtered to a dead end. In his memoir, goldwater acknowledged backing some of McCarthy's investigations, but concluded McCarthy went overboard in his investigations because of his inability to handle power and alcohol. Six months after the Army McCarthy hearings, the U.S. Senate formally censured the Wisconsin Senator. Goldwater, with one of 22 senators, to vote against the censure, and he tried to prevent it from happening at all. Goldwater proposed McCarthy could apologize to two senators he had maligned. McCarthy refused. Goldwater later wrote why he opposed McCarthy's censure. There was, in fact, some limited liberal involvement with communism. Both McCarthy and the conservatives had the right to challenge that involvement. A number of millions of voters were killed. media attacks and other charges were just as crude and cruel as some of McCarthy's own statements. When McCarthy died in 1957, Goldwater memorialized him in the Congressional record. "Do not mourn Joe McCarthy. Be thankful that he lived at the right time, and according to the talents vested in him by his maker. Be grateful too, that when it came his time to die, he passed on with full assurance that, because he lived, America is a brighter, safer, more vigilant land today." Goldwater's 1952 win owed to the right Republican presidential candidate and a public backlash against Democrats, his 1958 re-election campaign came at a bad time for the GOP. Midway through Eisenhower's second term, the president had suffered a heart attack and a stroke. The country endured two recessions as well. Democrats picked up 15 seats in the Senate in 1958. In Arizona, Goldwater faced a rematch with a determined earnest MacFarland. MacFarland had won two terms as the state's governor since losing to Goldwater six years earlier. "Before you vote for US Senator on November 4th, you should know how the candidates stand on the important issues. Let's compare the candidate's position on schools." The reactionary Republican candidate was a leader in the Senate fight that defeated the oil for education bill by only two votes. This particular legislation would have brought a total of at least $50 million to the Arizona school system. Ernest W. MacFarland, the Democratic People's candidate, believes that America's great undersea oil reserve should be used for financing education. Even at a low-eb for Republicans, Goldwater racked up a blowout win. "Reelect, Barry Goldwater, your United States Senator." "Young, courageous, dedicated, on every issue we know where he stands. He's the man to meet the test, a great champion from the West. Barry Goldwater, Arizona's best." Not all issues were so clear-cut. Segregation and systemic prejudice were a daily part of life in Arizona during that time, as they were elsewhere. In March 1950, Maricopa County juvenile authorities made worldwide news when probation officers reported that about 100 children in a migrant labor camp in Avondale faced critical conditions, including starvation. The Arizona Republic reported, "A family with six children from 17 months to 11 years has been completely without food for 10 consecutive days." One father donated a pint of blood to provide food for his family. A family with seven children was found eating weeds. Officials quickly found similar conditions in camps in Mesa, El Marraj, Bizby, and Penel County. It sparked an immediate effort to provide food and clothing for the children. The judge who brought the case to light died two months later and the issue faded from the news. Despite its casual indifference to the plight of immigrants, Arizona sometimes moved ahead of the nation on civil rights, at least in some cases. In some ways, Arizona stood apart from southern states for its relative tolerance. In 1947, baseball spring training began continuous play in Arizona because the state didn't have the kind of Jim Crow restrictions common in Florida as major league baseball began including African American players. In 1951, the Arizona chapter of the NAACP praised the state for allowing desegregation in high schools. When those schools had the option to drop racial separation, not all did. Being a junior high school, for example, rejected nine African American students that year. The school board explained that it didn't have the moral right to desegregate without a public vote on the matter. A year later, Arizona passed a law allowing all schools to be desegregated. That came two years before the U.S. Supreme Court ordered it across the country. Tucson's elementary and junior high schools dropped their prior race rules. America, Pocounty, Judge ordered desegregation at Phoenix, Union High in 1953. In a lawsuit, its supporters said they intended to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling, however, went unchallenged. But in other ways, Arizona demonstrated the same segregation as tendencies as seen across the South. In 1954, several Arizona resorts drew an unwanted spotlight for excluding Jewish guests. The National Association of Attorney General switched their annual convention in 1954 from Phoenix to White Sulphur Springs, Virginia after the camelback in refused to end its selective guest policy. In an editorial criticizing the AG's organization for the switch, the Arizona Republic noted that Jews were welcome in some of the swankiest ends in the valley, although none that we know of will accept Negroes. Blacks weren't welcome in other places in Arizona, too, perhaps most notably at the ballot box. Shortly after gaining statehood, Arizona Democrats enacted a literacy test that had the immediate effect of disenfranchising minorities who tended to vote for Republicans. A judge upheld the literacy test that was used to deny voting rights to two men described in news accounts of the time as wealthy Mexican Republicans. The men had ancestors who lived in Arizona before the Civil War. One of the men, Luis Chavez, was not allowed to vote after 30 years of doing so. It was part of the state's history of voting inequities. Arizona only granted Native Americans the right to vote in 1948. Asian Americans earned the franchise in 1952. In 1962, Goldwater testified to the Senate's Judiciary Committee against a federal law requiring proof of at least a sixth grade education. He said it could still be used to deny blacks from voting. But he supported literacy tests. He said, "I am firmly opposed to letting persons vote who cannot understand English and transmit ideas in it." You were talking to the Senate about the political reason for the failure to enforce the provisions of the civil rights laws. Well, I would judge that the administration is trying to walk another tight rope like they are on Vietnam. We have some Americans who say, "Let's not push these integration laws. We have other Americans who say, "Let's push them." He's trying to stay in the middle, like he's staying in the middle with the doves and the hawks and what I call the chicken line, trying to so he can say to a person like me who wants to win the war, "Well, we're bombing. We're doing this. What are you kicking about?" And he can say to a dove like Fulbright, "Well, we're not really bombing too much. We're not hitting anything." Same thing with the reasoning would be applied in my opinion in the field of civil rights, where we've passed everything that's been asked for. Later that year, a white lawyer randomly challenged black and Hispanic voters in line at a South Phoenix voting precinct. He wanted them to read parts of the U.S. Constitution to prove their fitness to vote. who is part of a Republican effort called the "Ballet Security" program. That lawyer was William Renquist who went on to become Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. I saw him there and I saw him approach at least one voter that my memory is correct too. He said, pardon me, you're qualified voted to this black gentleman. The man said yes. And he said, do you have any credentials to indicate that you are? And the man said no. And he said, well, then perhaps there's a question of whether or not you're qualified in the man instead of standing in line. If he had advanced by that time he got to the voting table, he would have found his name on the list. Mr. Quincy Hopper has stated that he was at the Bethune school on election day in 1964 and that you were there at the school. I mean, voters read from the Constitution to test for literacy. No one, he reason why Quincy Hopper would make that statement. No, I don't. Reverend Benjamin Brooks, who's the pastor of the South Minister Presbyterian Church, has stated that he's familiar with you. Reverend Brooks stated that on that day you challenged black, elderly working class voters for literacy by having them read the Constitution out loud. Do you know Reverend Brooks? I don't believe so Senator. No, as I say, Dr. Smith states that you approach the group of voters holding a card in your hand and said you can't read, can you? You don't belong here. Dr. Smith says the voters were intimidated by your actions. Do you know Dr. Smith? I don't believe I don't believe I do. No. In 1964, RENQUIST wrote a letter to the editor in the Arizona Republic decrying a public accommodations ordinance by the Phoenix City Council. RENQUIST argued that black customers denied service by white business owners but he poorly served by requiring service. He said, "The unwanted customer and the dislike proprietor are left glowering at one another across the lunch counter. It is, I believe, impossible to justify the sacrifice of even a portion of our historic individual freedom for a purpose such as this." While civil rights limits were publicly considered in Arizona, a strident brand of political extremism flourished. By the 1960s, so-called super patriots and far-right groups, including the American Nazi party and the paramilitary minutemen had a foothold in Arizona. In 1961, the American Nazi party tried to get a booth at the Arizona State Fair. That request was rejected as contrary to the public interest. The party's Arizona leader complained bitterly about the decision, noting the American Nazis were a legal party in Arizona with as many as 150 members. The anti-communist John Birch Society was perhaps the most prevalent group of the era. Founded by New York candy magnate Robert Welch in 1958, the group saw threats to American freedom everywhere. The United Nations, the expanding federal government, civil rights legislation, and organized labor. Welch accused President Dwight Eisenhower of being a communist. The group was named for John Birch, a US Army intelligence officer executed in 1945 by Chinese communists. To many on the American right, Birch was a martyr. Here's Brook Simpson of ASU. I think one of the things that's key to the timing of the birth of the John Birch Society is what happened in 1957. That you have Sputnik, which makes Americans feel vulnerable, not because there's a race to outer space of the moon, but because that suggests that the Soviet Union has the capability to put things in the air that might land in the United States, intercontinental ballistic missiles. Today, a new moon is in the sky, a 23-inch metal sphere placed in orbit by a Russian rocket. You are hearing the actual signals transmitted by the Earth's circling satellite, one of the great scientific feats of the age. The other thing that happens in 1957, and we often forget it today, is civil rights legislation has passed. The John Birch Society's reaction to changes in American society and perceived threats to American values and institutions. These people offer a rather stirred indictment of not only Democrats, but Republicans as well to the point that Welch accused Dwight Oz now of being a commie agent who is trying to bring about an international world order that would act as a cover for communism to take over the world. Known as "Burchers," the organization worked in the field in Goldwater's campaigns, and were connected with the campaigns of another budding Arizona politician, Evan Meacum. Here's Goldwater biographer Lee Edwards. There were lots of John Birch Society members in Phoenix and in Arizona, probably more in places like Texas, but Arizona was pretty high up. Welch had tried to enlist Barry Goldwater in his society, and then he had sent him a copy of the politician, which was a biography history which Welch had written about America, in which he said, "Among other things that might David Eisenhower was a communist, either a communist or just somebody who is a total Duke," but he really was leaning towards calling him a communist. While this shocked so many people, including conservatives. [Music] With support from the Birchers, Evan Meacum won Arizona's 1962 Republican U.S. Senate nomination. He defeated Stephen Shadig, the father of future Arizona Congressman John Shadig. Shadig was a close political advisor to Goldwater. The Goldwater didn't insert himself into the primary race, and Shadig went down and defeat. U.S. Representative Morris Udall, an Arizona Democrat, called Meacum's primary election, a great day for the John Birch Society. In 2008, the late conservative commentator William F. Buckley disclosed a secret 1962 conservative summit involving Goldwater in Palm Beach, Florida. According to Buckley's book, titled "Flying High, Remembering Barry Goldwater," the Arizona Senator wanted advice on what to do about the John Birch Society. Russell Kirk, author of the book, "The Conservative Mind," urged Goldwater and others to renounce the society in no uncertain terms. To Goldwater, that was easier said than done. Here's what Goldwater said in Buckley's account. Every other person in Phoenix is a member of the John Birch Society. I'm not talking about Pommy haunted apple pickers or cactus shrugs. I'm talking about the highest cast of men of affairs. As an example, Goldwater cited Frank Cullen Brophy. Brophy was a wealthy banker and philanthropist. He was the son of the founder of Brophy College Preparatory in Phoenix. His daughter Sally Brophy was an actress who appeared as Annie O'Connell on Buckskin, a TV well-known film. that aired in the late 1950s. Brophy was also a friend and political benefactor of gold waters, who sold gold water 40 hilltop acres in Paradise Valley in 1950. He was also a high-ranking member of the John Burke society. [music] Brophy was a big backer of Meacum in the 1962 Senate race and even introduced him at an appearance at the Hotel Westward Ho in downtown Phoenix. "This was why," Goldwater said, "he couldn't just disown the Burgers." You can't just do that kind of thing in Arizona. For instance, who on earth can dismiss Frank Brophy from anything? In a sign of the group's political poll, in 1971, Arizona's Republican governor, Jack Williams, proclaimed May 28 as John Birch Day. [music] During that 1962 Republican primary, Meacum sought to put some distance between himself and the Burgers. He said he supported anyone who was trying to alert the public to dangers of our time. One member of the group, whom Meacum knew very well, was his wife, Flo, who was active in the John Birch Society's Glendale chapter. Charles Miller, who would later serve his Maricopa County Republican Party chair, was among several Burgers who actively worked on Meacum's behalf. A head of the general election, a woman asked Meacum where he stood on the John Birch Society. He answered that he wasn't a member and had not attended any meetings. But those Birch members I know personally, Meacum said, are fine people. [music] Meacum lost the 1962 Senate campaign. Two years later, it was Barry Goldwater who tried to take the next political step. [music] Goldwater's national political persona reflected Arizona's alienation from and suspicion of Washington DC and Eastern elites. It was a recurring tension of the 1964 presidential campaign. To many voters, particularly in the East, Goldwater seemed backward. After the nuclear brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis, even Goldwater's moderate Republican rivals painted him as a wild-eyed, right-wing radical who would put the nation at risk. Back in July in San Francisco, the Republicans held a convention. Governor Rockefeller, he was there. Before the convention, he said, "Berry Goldwater's positions can and I quote, "spel disaster for the party and for the country." Or him, Governor's Quentin. The day before the convention, he called Goldwater resume, quote, "crazy quilt collection of absurd and dangerous positions." Or this man, Governor Romney. In June, he said Goldwater's nomination would lead to the, quote, "suicidal destruction of the Republican Party." So even if you're a Republican with serious doubts about Barry Goldwater, you're in good company. (gentle music) Even so, Goldwater struck a nerve with Republican voters. As Goldwater was on the verge of clinching the GOP presidential nomination in 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. made a rare visit to Arizona. Days before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, King made clear he didn't welcome a Goldwater administration. Now I know you're intelligent people, and I don't need to tell you who you should vote for. I don't have any fear about that. You know who to vote for. I'm just asking you to vote. Now, just if you need. (audience applauding) Now, if you need a little information on my convictions at this point, I must honestly admit to you that I am not gonna vote for Mr. Goldwater. (audience applauding) (gentle music) - It's bad to come to a man's state and not be for him, King Seton Phoenix. It would be a real setback to the Civil Rights problem if Goldwater were to become president. (gentle music) (gentle music) Later in the day, King urged passage of the legislation that Goldwater voted against in a speech at Arizona State University. The event drew 8,000 people, but went uncovered by the Arizona Republic. (gentle music) Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law that King wanted so badly. It helped mark a clear contrast between the 1964 candidates. Johnson, the Texas Democrat, and Goldwater, the Arizona Republican. Goldwater lost the 1964 election in a landslide. He carried just Arizona and five former Confederate states in the deep south. The results mixed and embraced Johnson's great society and a rejection of Goldwater's blunt conservativism. Former two-term president Dwight Eisenhower didn't endorse Goldwater. Neither did Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York and George Romney of Michigan. (gentle music) Goldwater's electoral grubbing was a low water mark for the Republican Party, but it also set in motion a national ideological realignment for voters and the GOP that is often cited as the impetus for Ronald Reagan's landslide win in 1980. And if the nation didn't want Goldwater, Arizona still did. Well, Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private, or public. Trust me, government, asked that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man. Well, my view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. Which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. Is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people? The trust is where it belongs in the people. (gentle music) In 1968, after leaving the Senate and losing the White House, Goldwater ran for the seat being vacated by the 91-year-old retiring Democratic Senator Carl Hayden. Goldwater won by 14 percentage points. (gentle music) Next time on rediscovering, the roots of radicalism. Agent Williams knew McVeigh had help. It took 48 hours to connect him to an address in Arizona. The horror of Oklahoma City has unfortunately thrust Arizona onto the front pages of our nation's newspapers. An ATF undercover agent who infiltrated the group known as the Viper Militia, said the 12 were arming themselves with guns and making bombs to resist the efforts of federal law enforcement. The governor had already met it clear where he stood when he publicly warned blacks not to push for the holiday. Evan Meekam is convicted of high crimes, misdemeanors, or balfes in his office. Right-wing extremists, people that make numerous references to the US Constitution are domestic terrorists. And he's enforcing the new world order locally. Arizona, like other states, is experiencing a proliferation of militias. 13 groups have recently been identified in Arizona. (gentle music) This podcast was edited and produced by Kaylee Monahan and Amanda Liberto with additional support from Katrina Michael Ack, reporting by myself, Ron Hanson and Mary Jo Pizzle. Script supervision came from our news director, Kathy Tulemelo. Greg Burton is our executive editor. Social media for this podcast came from the Arizona Republic audience team, web production by the Arizona Republic production desk. Musical scoring comes from University of Arizona. The soundbites in this episode are from Seaspan, the JFK library, congressional archives, the Hoover Institution and Library, and British Pathay. Clips also came from Retro Report, Periscope Film, the Kino Library, TV toy memories, the Travel Film Archive, Journeyman Pictures, the Television Academy Foundation, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Happy Days, the TV show, and the Karate Kid movie. Thanks so much for listening to Rediscovering the Roots of Radicalism, a podcast from the Arizona Republic and AZCentral.com.