Texas Young Republicans 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 first Republican Senator in Texas history). The book, calling for a return to conservative principles and a harder stance on communism, inspired many young conservatives, including Viguerie. Though still in Texas, Viguerie would later recall his distaste over the situation, saying "I never was a Nixon fan." That year,
F. Clifton White began travelling the nation exhorting conservatives to gain control of their local Republican Party organizations so they could elect conservative delegates to the Republican National Convention during the next electoral season. 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 about 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". With only $4,000 in savings he began his direct-mail company "Richard A. Viguerie Company, Inc." 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 signing fund-raising letters for Democratic candidates for which he demanded nothing in return except the names 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. (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.)
George Wallace campaign George Wallace's
1968 presidential candidacy had been the reason the American Independent Party was formed, but he had foregone the party
in 1972 to seek the Democratic nomination (
in a campaign that ended when he was paralyzed by an assassination attempt). That year the American Independent Party nominated former representative
John G. Schmitz of California (a member of the
John Birch Society and a former Republican). In 1976 Wallace had again chosen to seek the Democratic party nomination rather than that of the American Independent Party. Viguerie began fundraising for him, taking in $6 million in donations by the beginning of the year. In February, Viguerie also tried to draft another conservative voice into the Democratic nominations by working to draft Former Texas Gov.
John Connally into the race, vowing to donate $20,000 of his own. When contacted by reporters on the move Connally said he had "never heard of it" but refused to rule out accepting such an effort. Having anticipated this outcome two days before he told a reporter that he was satisfied with the results of his campaigns because "everybody is now saying what I started out saying back in 1964" and that he had cleared the way for a fellow Southerner like Carter to be accepted as a genuine contender, "There are no longer any real regional differences." Despite conservatives in his own state asking him why he was supporting liberals like Carter and Mondale, Wallace went on to offer speeches in support of Carter's presidential bid.
American Independent Party campaign Ever since Goldwater's defeat some among Conservative circles had advocated leaving the Republican Party (which they held to be too liberal) to make a conservative third party. After Watergate, Viguerie also held that there was no hope for the Republican party, telling a reporter "I know the marketing field and you just can't market 'Republican' any more. It means depression, recession, runaway inflation, big business, multinational corporations, Watergate, and Nixon. It's easier to sell an
Edsel or
Typhoid Mary. 'Independent' and 'American'--those are words which will sell. Don't kid yourself. That's the way we're moving. All the Republican party needs is a decent burial. In ten years, there won't be a dozen people in the country calling themselves Republicans. …Nixon, whose name is poison to voters now, wiped out every issue the Republicans could use--balanced budget, morality in government, law and order, national security. Richard Nixon flushed them all down the commode." It was felt that the platform would attract conservatives away from the major parties. They argued that the party was seen as a fringe group but should become the philosophical home for believers in free enterprise and traditional moral values. Viguerie told a reporter at the time that he was "shocked and disillusioned" that they would nominate a man who still calls himself a segregationist, and that the party had consigned itself into being a "perpetual fringe group." Shearer, when considering Viguerie's faction said that the "New Right" conservatives fail because they think they are "too good to just get down and commune with the average people across the country." He held that by thwarting the New Right the party had escaped dire peril, like "a girl that's being targeted for a rape that didn't come off."
Association with the Unification Church In the early 1980s Viguerie worked for groups controlled by the
Unification Church under the leadership of Sun Myung Moon. This began in 1981 after
Ronald Reagan had won the presidency and the effectiveness of Viguerie's direct mail approach faded, as it had been geared to rally conservatives who felt they had been unfairly sidelined. Viguerie was among several conservative activists that entered into associations with the Unification Church at this time as conservative donors feeling their party was in the ascendancy stopped giving. Reverend Moon's attache Bo Hi Pak purchased the Tyson's Corner office building owned by Viguerie's firm for $10 million and took over its maintenance and administration. The church also hired Viguerie to operate direct-mail functions for some of their church-backed groups such as American Freedom Coalition and subscription solicitations for the church owned
The Washington Times. Viguerie (a Catholic) told
The Washington Post "Their religion is not my religion, but I have found them to be good, decent people who are strongly anti-communist. I don't see any reason not to work with them."
Campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia Viguerie sought the Republican nomination for
Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in 1985, but did not receive the nomination at the GOP state convention.
Later works Asked by
Campaigns and Elections in May 2000 what his immediate goals were, Viguerie answered: To use the Internet to involve Americans in the political process, to help conservatives gain an advantage over the left. To fight against government's use of power, to fight for individual rights and responsibilities, and to fight to extend the blessings of liberty throughout the world. Viguerie has long been associated with conservative activist
Howard Phillips through creation of the
Moral Majority in 1979. According to CharityWatch.org: "[Roger] Chapin hired his long-time friend and direct mail expert, Richard Viguerie, to conduct fundraising campaigns for HHV, paying Viguerie's company $14 million between 2000 and 2005." HHV is a charity run by
Roger Chapin, which according to Charity Watch has made many questionable and apparently unethical payments unrelated to its purported mission. In May 2006 Viguerie said regarding the ability of conservatives to maintain a majority in the U.S. House and Senate, "There is a growing feeling among conservatives that the only way to cure the problem is for Republicans to lose the Congressional elections this fall." Viguerie commented on the
Mark Foley scandal, "This isn't an isolated situation. It is only the most recent example of Republican House leaders doing whatever it takes to hold onto power. If it means spending billions of taxpayers' dollars on questionable projects, they'll do it. If it means covering up the most despicable actions of a colleague, they'll do it." Viguerie fought for the
Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007 through his petition website called Grassroots Freedom. When Viguerie spoke at a conference of
Libertarian Party state chairs in March 2007, he said of
the 2006 United States general elections, "Whenever conservatives are unhappy, bad things happen for the Republican Party." In 2007 Viguerie co-founded the
American Freedom Agenda, described as "a coalition established to restore checks and balances and civil liberties protections under assault by the executive branch." In January 2008, Viguerie launched ultimateronpaul.com, a website designed to promote the 2008 presidential candidacy of U.S. Congressman
Ron Paul, whom Viguerie described as "truly a principled conservative in the grand tradition of
Robert A. Taft,
Barry Goldwater, and
Ronald Reagan" and who "has differentiated himself from all the other candidates, whose allegiance is to
Big Government Republicanism." In a July 2009 article for
Sojourners Magazine entitled "When Governments Kill," Viguerie spoke strongly against capital punishment, calling for a
moratorium on it to discuss its surrounding issues, hoping that will pave a path to abolition. ==Books==