In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

after the 1964 election, Barry Goldwater remained the fairhaired boy of many a conservative media mogul, and a hero to business-focused conservatives and voters wary of, if not outright hostile to, organized labor, federal oversight, and business taxation. His renown among these free-enterprise devotees served him and other Arizona Republicans well both before and after his presidential bid. His ever-increasing fame and inXuence bolstered the already wellregarded state GOP’s reputation with the amorphous American Right. Such prestige increased Arizonans’ power within the national GOP and granted desert Republicans access to the business and political circles that would direct the movement from above and transform federal policies. As senators, Supreme Court justices, and leaders of major business associations, these erstwhile boosters did much to further roll back the liberal regulatory state and provide the broad conservative movement with its most tangible, long-term victories. The Business of National Movement Building The industrial recruitment intertwined with the Arizona GOP’s postwar rebirth and Phoenix’s development into a mecca for light 8 Phoenix’s Cowboy Conservatives in Washington elizabeth tandy shermer 193 electronics and aerospace technologies played an outsized role in catapulting boosters into regional and national business organizations, political networks, and government oYces. By 1962 Phoenix had become one of the centers for electronics in the West, just behind Los Angeles and San Francisco, and essentially tied with defense-dependent San Diego. The outside investment responsible for this economic transformation connected boosters to those leading executives on the move. These CEOs, especially those who had orchestrated and bankrolled Goldwater’s presidential run, tended to share the Phoenix businessmen’s antipathy toward working within the conWnes of the liberal regulatory state and were the “invisible hands,” as historian Kim Phillips-Fein called them, of the modern conservative movement. The relationship between Phoenix Chamber of Commerce members, who increasingly came out of leadership positions in the area’s branch plants, and prominent CEOs, who managed these outposts from afar, was reciprocal. Phoenix’s Chamber men wanted to attract high-tech, proWtable Wrms, which, by the very nature of their desirability, were able to elicit impressive deals from many communities eager to attract large, revenue-generating businesses. Executives also needed, both from an ideological and a material standpoint, to shift operations to areas where they would be able to increase their proWt margins and also do business as they saw Wt.1 This relationship proved vital to the booster and corporate business conservatives’ local and national political agendas. General Electric ’s (GE) vice president for employee and public relations, Lemuel Ricketts Boulware, was the chamber men’s most important ally in the East and within the ranks of American CEOs. Boulware, who hired Ronald Reagan as a spokesman for GE’s brand of antigovernment, anti-union free enterprise, was a strong supporter of Phoenix-style modernization. Boulware orchestrated visits from GE executives to Arizona, where these corporate oYcials reminded voters that the state could attract good manufacturing jobs only if its probusiness agenda were maintained.2 The Phoenix Chamber was also vital to Boulware’s burgeoning career as a conservative spokesman and strategist. In May 1958 Boulware delivered one of the most important addresses of both his political and business career before the Phoenix Chamber. He urged members to continue to build and protect the “business climate” that 194 elizabeth tandy shermer led GE to select Phoenix for its computer branch plant. Boulware feared that business leaders had failed “to have business and our economic system understood,” which meant, “We businessmen have become the whipping boys for opponents.” “We businessmen cannot look elsewhere for citizens to blame,” Boulware admitted. “We have long had the opportunity and responsibility to do our considerable part . . . in restoring the balance needed in this situation.” “Not only money—and lots of it—but lots of volunteer leg-work and mental sweat [sic] is needed to restore the balance,” he concluded. Boulware’s speech, “Politics . . . The Businessman’s Biggest Job in 1958,” received much attention both in and outside Phoenix. The Arizona Republic excerpted large portions of the address under the heading, “Politics Called ‘Business of All.’” Boulware’s call to arms reached politically minded business owners across the country. GE printed over 200,000 copies of the address. The editors of American Business reprinted the piece in its entirety. The bimonthly publication Vital Speeches of the Day also included Boulware’s words alongside talks given on the education gap between the United States and the...

Share