Abstract
In 1949 a good government group in Phoenix began a long period of political dominance. Despite winning every mayoral and council election for two decades, during this era the group suffered a major policy defeat, as a grassroots group linked anticommunist fervor and concerns about private property rights to halt the city’s efforts at urban renewal and rehabilitating older urban housing. While this group reflected local concerns, it was also part of a nationwide far-right campaign against urban renewal and the National Municipal League. In Phoenix this campaign delayed establishment of a housing code for a decade, contributing to the further decline of the center city and encouraging suburban growth.
In 1949 a group of middle- and upper-middle-class civic leaders reorganized and took control of Phoenix city government to promote their goals of economic growth, administrative efficiency, population growth, and urban expansion. Over the next twenty years, they won every mayoral and city council election. Yet this period of seemingly continuous success and continuity contained a crisis that is evidenced in the conflicting statements of succeeding mayors. In January of 1958, mayor Jack Williams explained to Rep. L. H. Fountain, chairman of the U.S. House Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee, that federal aid was “vital to the future of the community,” especially for “urban renewal, public housing, airport construction, and urban highway construction.” 1 Three years later Williams’s successor, Sam Mardian, announced that Phoenix did not want federal urban renewal funds. He explained that “reliance on the federal government to the extent that cities accept federal aid, is of itself, a departure from the historic federal-state-local relationship,” and this “could result in a destruction of initiative and pride in local communities.” 2
Both mayors were moderate Republicans, chosen by the same good government, “Charter Government” citizens’ group. Both men shifted their perspectives: Mardian, like Williams, had initially supported the city’s urban renewal plans. By 1963, Williams too had abandoned his earlier views (calling himself a “reformed liberal”). 3 The change in their views resulted from a fundamental shift in political circumstances, and one with significant effects on the long-term structure of Phoenix. This three-year transformation involved three crucial elements. First, a crisis developed over inadequate housing. This directly involved debates over public housing, slums, and urban renewal proposals for areas in the southern and central parts of the city. Indirectly, this related to larger urban development issues—the decline of downtown, the development of secondary business centers, and the problems of suburban sprawl. The second factor, an explosive element that fueled the crisis, was the sudden emergence of a grassroots, radical, anticommunist movement. The combination of the housing crisis and the emergence of radical conservatism challenged the vision and practices of Charter Government leaders. Their highly successful political strategy of consensus and organization had diminished active political opposition during the 1950s. The rise of this new political force in the early 1960s changed the nature of the city’s development, shifting the leadership away from addressing issues of central city development and to a laissez-faire attitude toward suburban sprawl.
Changing Phoenix
Up to the 1940s, Phoenix was a modest-sized city whose economy revolved primarily around agriculture, while it also provided retail, wholesale, financial, and governmental services for central Arizona, and it benefitted from a growing tourist industry. Boosters imagined the community’s future as a larger version of its past, and their political and social expectations fit this model. The federal government had played an important role in the city’s development, for federally financed dams provided the water that enabled the Valley to grow. During the 1930s, federal programs and spending had offered the first whisper of larger possibilities, but the major stimulus for rethinking the city’s prospects came from federal spending related to World War II: construction of seven air-training facilities, two army bases, three war-production factories, and temporary housing for war factory workers. 4
At war’s end, the Chamber of Commerce reorganized itself to provide for postwar planning and a direct role in recruiting businesses and stimulating economic development. Representing a sizable segment of the community’s businessmen and professionals, the Chamber worked closely with the influential Kiwanis and Rotary business service clubs. At the heart of their vision was an economy charged by the recruitment and growth of aviation, electronics, and radio industries, which were relatively “smokeless” and provided good-paying jobs. Community leaders also promoted social and cultural institutions, believing that the library, art museum, symphony, and theater were necessary to attract and retain the educated, middle-class that worked in the community’s new industries. This involved not only the personal efforts and contributions of these leaders—especially major figures such as banker Walter Bimson—but also their endorsement of financial support from city government.
Achieving this new economic and social vision required an effective and efficient city government. After 1940 population growth complicated the delivery of city services and created potentially independent population clusters outside the city boundaries. 5 Annexation was intended to prevent the potential balkanization of the valley into many different cities, primarily in the rapidly growing areas to the north, but gaining approval of annexation depended on major improvements in city administration. With its weak-manager system, the city had failed to extend services or manage its finances effectively, and its unpredictable, factional politics stymied efforts at improvement. In 1947–1948 a broadly representative Charter Revision Committee produced a new charter (like many southwestern cities did during this period). 6 Drawing extensively from the National Municipal League’s “model charter,” it created a strong, professional city manager; it redefined the council’s role as policy making and prohibited members from interfering with administrative matters; and it made council elections nonpartisan and at large.
Resistance to implementing this new system prompted its supporters to create the Charter Government Committee (CGC) in 1949, an organization that reemerged every two years to nominate a slate of candidates. These nominees were term-limited draftees, not office-seekers; all had been very active volunteers in various community organizations; and the slates were diverse in occupation, religion, gender, and race. 7 They were not, however, fully representative of the community. The emphasis on having nominees with visibility and experience in groups that were citywide, rather than based in neighborhood, plus the unwillingness of labor representatives to participate, meant that CGC candidates were middle- and upper-middle-class professionals and businesspersons. 8
The new city government was strikingly successful, as the new officials reorganized city administration, expanded and reduced the cost of city services, and improved city finances, partly by using a sales tax to lower property taxes. 9 City leaders also pursued economic development, addressed citywide problems, and stimulated citizen participation in government decision making. Major planning efforts in 1956–1957 and 1960–1961 created dozens of committees and involved hundreds of volunteers in defining city needs and campaigning for bonds to fund projects, including basics like water and sewers, as well as cultural facilities like libraries and theaters. The city handily won voter endorsement of each bond campaign. The city also engaged in long-range planning that involved land use, highways, public housing, and urban renewal. One external indication of the city’s success was that Phoenix won the All-America City award in 1950 and 1958; the more important local indicators were the city’s successful annexation efforts between 1950 and 1960, as it grew from 17 to 187 square miles. 10
The effectiveness of city government is one reason that CGC candidates overwhelmed their opponents, winning every race from 1949 to 1959 with 60 to 83 percent of the vote (see Table 1). Yet other factors contributed to their success. The nonpartisan, at-large electoral system rewarded an organized group like the CGC and its selection of a slate of candidates with citywide visibility. CGC organized committees that produced well-financed and well-organized campaigns, featuring public meetings, endorsements, as well as radio, TV, and newspaper ads. Their opponents struggled to create slates, many of those candidates lacked broad contacts and name recognition, and they had less funding and poorer organization. Opposition slates generally ran better in the poorer, southern sections of town, and most of their candidates were Democrats, but more than two-thirds of the Charter candidates were also Democrats.
City Elections, 1949–1959.
The most prominent campaign issues during the 1950s were features of the new charter, as opponents consistently advocated ward representation and either restricting the city manager’s powers or eliminating the position. In addition, they discussed the sales tax, the delivery of services, and, occasionally, pay for policemen and firemen. Charter Government candidates touted the efficient administration of city government and lower taxes, and they suggested that victory by their opponents would return the city to political bossism, administrative chaos, and rampant gambling and prostitution. 11 What is strikingly absent from campaign debates is substantive disagreement with Charter’s plans for city growth. The debates, the election returns, and the involvement of numerous volunteers in community planning efforts suggest that Charter Government succeeded very well in gaining public acceptance. One disturbing sign, however, was a serious decline in voter turnout, perhaps reflecting a perception that Charter’s political power and the nonpartisan, at large electoral system made electoral opposition unlikely to succeed. But the inability to elect candidates did not mean that opponents would lose in public referenda over particular issues.
The Problem of Housing
Housing policy was not a topic in Phoenix election campaigns, but the issue was vital for the city’s development and involved three separate but related matters: public housing, the need for housing standards, and urban renewal. Housing had first become a public concern in Phoenix during the 1930s. A 1934 survey taken in conjunction with the National Housing Act concluded that less than a third of the city’s housing was in “satisfactory” condition. Valley National Bank responded to this need, becoming a national leader in providing FHA loans for home repair and modernization, and its aggressive support for FHA-insured mortgages helped spark a boom in home construction after 1937. Problems with the quality of existing houses remained, however, and a 1939 study of the southside “slum” area examined 4,065 houses (roughly one-fifth of all city housing) and found that only 289 of them were “standard.” 12 Seeing these problems in conjunction with poverty and unemployment encouraged leaders to seek public housing as one way to alleviate these conditions.
The Phoenix Housing Authority, created in 1939, spearheaded the construction by 1941 of 604 housing units in three segregated sites. During World War II the influx of war production workers led to the construction of temporary public housing on two sites, and additional temporary housing was built for Mexican American war veterans in 1947. The subsequent proposals to demolish these structures generated protest and delay, reflecting the serious need for decent, low-cost housing. 13 Efforts to build additional, permanent public housing were stymied immediately after the war, but the 1949 Housing Act enabled the city to move ahead. In 1950 the city council authorized construction of 1,000 units, and in the following two years the city built 484 of those units adjacent to the original three sites. Passage of the 1954 National Housing Act provided additional funding, but construction was blocked because the city failed to meet a provision of that act. 14
The law required cities seeking federal housing funds to produce a “workable plan” to eliminate and prevent urban blight and slums. This meant providing evidence of such things as planning organization, economic analysis, methods for citizen participation, and administrative capacities, but the most important requirement was a suitable housing code. Such a code applied to existing structures and was required for public housing funding. 15 It was also necessary for urban renewal projects, something in which city officials had also become interested.
Sparked by the organization of a citizens committee in 1950 and by the 1950 Census reports on housing that showed areas of significant blight, the Phoenix Health Department undertook a housing survey in 1953 that confirmed this conclusion. 16 The 1954 housing law made urban renewal even more attractive to the city, for it permitted urban renewal projects to include nonresidential components. After the Arizona legislature passed enabling legislation, the city council created an Urban Redevelopment Commission in December of 1954, and two years later gave it more substantial form as an Urban Renewal Department. Working from block-level data, first the Commission and then the Department designated specific areas for rehabilitation and improvement or for larger slum clearance and renewal projects. During this same period, the city’s Health Department prepared a draft housing code, which it submitted to the council in 1955. At public hearings on the proposal, critics objected to restrictions on ceiling height, requirements for bathrooms, demands for access to building interiors by inspectors, and processes for condemning buildings. The council then passed a revised code in July of 1956. 17 Within a year the city was pursuing public housing and urban renewal, both of which used significant federal funds and required an acceptable city housing code. In addition, that code would serve as the basis for the city’s efforts at improving housing outside of the specially designated slum clearance areas.
The city’s efforts were again halted in February 1958, however, when Richard Ives, regional director of the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA), the federal government’s urban renewal division, notified Phoenix officials that they must strengthen the code in order to obtain federal funding. Seeking to preempt the sort of public criticism that had occurred in 1955, the city council appointed a broadly representative committee of thirty-five persons to revise the code. A public hearing in January 1959 produced complaints from motel owners and from Sam S. Levitin, secretary of the Phoenix Property Owners Association. 18 After considering these reactions plus the HHFA suggestions, the council adopted a revised code in April 1959 that increased minimum space requirements, required hot water for kitchens and bathrooms, and prohibited outhouses within city limits. It also created an appeals board and clarified the procedures for repairing or demolishing a condemned building. 19
Five months later, in September, the city’s Urban Renewal Department began using the new code to deal with blighted areas. Officials noted that their first enforcement efforts focused “mostly on a neighborhood basis with the cooperation of neighborhood associations . . . and the participation of neighbors working together for the improvement of their neighborhood.” 20 The city encouraged the organization of neighborhood associations to deal with housing problems as well as other neighborhood needs, beginning with the ten-block Longfellow Neighborhood (bounded by 16th and 20th Streets, and by Washington and Van Buren Streets) and then adding pilot areas to the immediate east and west. The city started two additional pilot areas on the west side of town (between 19th and 27th Avenues, and from Jackson to Van Buren Streets) in June 1960 after residents contacted the department and asked for enforcement of the code. 21 The department found that roughly a tenth of the houses in these neighborhoods required no action at all; less than a tenth were razed (and most were alley shacks in one of the five neighborhoods); a third needed rehabilitation; and the remainder needed lesser improvements. (See Figure 1.)
Phoenix urban renewal and housing rehabilitation, 1960.
Using a neighborhood approach insulated the program to some extent from hostile owners or residents, but the areas that had been assessed were not the ones with significant amounts of ramshackle housing. The department approached that second task by doing “spot” inspections, and by March of 1961 these amounted to roughly 20 percent of all building inspections. This represented only beginning steps in addressing the larger problem, however, for as the 1960 Housing Census revealed, the deterioration of Phoenix housing was serious and growing. Roughly one in seven housing units (a total of 18,119 units) were judged to be “deteriorating” or “dilapidated.” In sections of the city to the east and to the west of the central business district, analysts identified 18 problem areas of one to four blocks in size, which contained 712 structures, nearly all of which were noted as being “substandard.” 22
Besides its first two strategies—working in largely healthy neighborhoods and with isolated areas of bad housing—the city also worked on a third approach, dealing with larger blighted areas. Urban renewal projects seemed to offer the best solution, and by 1958 the city was developing two projects. The smaller East Jefferson area contained 284 housing units and was slightly to the southeast of the central business district, while the larger Southwest area included 41 blocks and 1,292 units. Virtually all of the structures in these two areas were deemed substandard. By April 1960, the renewal area committees had developed extensive plans for both projects that involved a mix of single-family and higher-density housing, commercial and industrial developments, parks, and reconfiguring some of the streets. 23 Federal funding would cover 90 percent of the $11-million cost of the projects, while the city would pay its share through bonds to be authorized in an upcoming campaign for requests which would eventually total $103 million. At this point, with the city on the brink of achieving this goal, the political climate in Phoenix began to shift, something that would undermine the funding and the success of the projects.
Newspaper publisher Eugene Pulliam, a strong critic of the federal government, proclaimed through editorials in his two papers, the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, in April and May that it would be “morally bankrupt” to accept such a federal “handout.” The Phoenix Gazette argued that “civic renewal of the dilapidated areas of Phoenix can and should be done by local enterprise and initiative,” and asserted that federal slum clearance programs just moved slums elsewhere in town. 24 The following November, Edward Jacobson, chair of the Citizens Urban Renewal Finance Study Committee, reported to Mayor Mardian and the city council a revision in the committee’s final funding recommendations. Now, the group unanimously opposed using federal money for the East Jefferson Project, and a majority opposed federal funds for the Southwest Project. Jacobson argued that local projects should be handled locally, that federal aid was only appropriate when local projects could not be locally funded, and that federal income taxes should not be used to fund projects that benefitted a specific place. 25 Only three months later Mardian had also shifted to this view and issued his public rejection of federal funding, and the following month a new project chairman submitted a report titled the “East Jefferson Project Without Federal Aid.” 26
While Pulliam’s newspapers certainly had influence in Phoenix, a second factor that affected the shift in attitudes about federal funding was the growing debates over public housing during this period. In 1957 the city council restarted construction of additional units on the existing public housing sites, and a short time later the federal government approved the council request to build two hundred additional units. These units roused more controversy than previous projects because their proposed placement was outside of the expected “slum” area of south Phoenix and because they were to be racially integrated. In November of 1960, a proposal to build housing at Roosevelt Street and 17th Avenue generated strong opposition from residents of neighborhoods to the north. Most were longer-term residents with middle-class jobs or better, and their petition to the city council raised specific complaints about increased traffic and crowded schools. 27 Another protest at that time concerned land adjacent to the Luke Housing Project at Roosevelt and 20th Streets. City residents argued that existing housing on this site had been built as “temporary” wartime housing and should be cleared and developed for private homes. The Phoenix Gazette editorialized, “The neighborhood revolt is a sign of a greater discontent that has become more and more virulent with the stealthy encroachment of federally instigated public housing and so-called urban renewal practices in Phoenix.” 28 Ultimately this objection failed, and the housing was built, but the newspaper’s claim that this protest was the harbinger of greater dissatisfaction was truer than it suspected. 29
Concerns about city housing policy took a different turn with protests over several minor amendments to the housing code. In the fall of 1960 the city council began considering several procedural changes to the code—specifying the hours when inspectors could examine houses and clarifying the appeals process. At their December 20 meeting on these proposals, members were confronted by a large crowd, nearly all of whom opposed the code. Representing a group calling itself the Citizens for the Preservation of Property Rights, Rev. Aubrey Moore, pastor of the West Van Buren Southern Baptist Church, presented a petition calling for repeal of the entire housing code. Rather than debate the proposed amendments or even the code’s specific housing standards, Moore denounced the power of officials to inspect homes and to order repairs or demolition. He claimed that such powers were unconstitutional challenges to private property, and he noted that the protesters “look with intense fear” at the provisions allowing the condemnation or demolition of property. Finally, invoking the people’s “God-given freedoms,” Moore claimed that “the main obstacle in the way of those who would communize the United States is the great value we Americans place upon our individual rights—our property rights and our right to the sanctity of our homes regardless of our economic status.” 30
Others who spoke at the meeting repeated and extended Moore’s concerns. Mrs. John Irwin denounced the code as unconstitutional; G. C. Hawthorne demanded a popular vote on the issue and denounced the “corruption” of local newspapers and their censorship. When Mardian responded that the Supreme Court had ruled such codes were constitutional and asked Moore rhetorically whether he was willing to abide by Court decisions, many in the crowd shouted “no.” Rev. Leroy Thomas, pastor of Palmcroft Baptist Church, asked that “you believe not that these people are rabble rousers—not that they are Leftists,” but rather they “fear that their liberties and the liberties of American people are being taken from them.” Expanding on that point he noted that the protesters represented “thousands of thousands of people who have fear, and we are living in days when we don’t want to promote this fear.” Some repeated that theme; others worried about the costs of repair. Some also claimed that lumber companies, plumbers, contractors, and Sears favored this because of the profits it would bring them. Charles Newell added to this by saying that “the bible said the rich will crush the poor, and that is what this will do.” 31
Mardian was frustrated and bewildered by the encounter. Writing for help to Stephen Shadegg, a Republican politico and close friend of Senator Barry Goldwater, he defended the code and the proposed amendment as a sensible method to prevent urban blight and protect rights. In describing the meeting, he characterized the protesters as talking “like radical liberals” because some claimed that “urban renewal is a scheme designed for lumber companies and construction firms to profiteer,” and others argued that the Bible says “the rich will crush the poor.” 32 After a second public meeting on January 10 produced a similar conflict, Mardian announced that Phoenix would not seek federal funding for urban renewal. When opponents submitted a petition with 10,477 signatures calling for a public vote on the code, the city leaders responded even more strongly. On February 28, the city council repealed the housing code, and on March 6 it eliminated the Urban Renewal department, distributing its personnel to others city departments. 33
Politics
To many observers outside of Arizona, these actions reflected a clear and simple endorsement of the conservative, anti-federal political views of Senator Barry Goldwater, the most prominent political figure from Phoenix and Arizona. In reality, Goldwater’s views, especially on Phoenix politics, were more complex than many contemporaries suggested. 34 More importantly, the political controversy in Phoenix was even more complicated. Phoenix leaders had not abandoned efforts to improve housing nor rejected all federal funding; the city continued to defend, build, and operate public housing. Urban renewal was much more problematic. Public sentiment on urban renewal had shifted, partly because some people confused it with the housing code and housing inspections, but also because of arguments about the role of the government, and especially the federal government. And in early January the conflict was expanded, as two measures to repeal the enabling authority for urban renewal were introduced into the state legislature. 35 By early 1961 Mardian and the city council had changed their position. They still advocated large-scale area renovation but claimed that this could be done using only local funding, a view based on reports of what some other cities had done. But as noted in internal memos, other city leaders warned that such plans were “extremely expensive,” and certainly too expensive for Phoenix, as the city’s subsequent record would show. 36
The housing code posed another political problem. Mardian and the council felt strongly that code opponents like Rev. Moore were conflating various topics and misrepresenting the code issue, but they felt vulnerable because of the timing of the conflict: a public vote on the existing code would be in the same election when voters decided on the city’s request for $103 million in bonds for many city projects. Mardian later explained that since “the same group which opposed the Housing Code was also opposed to the bond issue,” the city council feared that the bonds might lose because of the housing code. The result, as Mardian phrased it, was that “the City Council decided to make a strategic retreat and repeal the Housing Code.” 37 Mardian intended to wait until after passage of the bond measures, when he would appoint a committee to revise the code, which the council would then pass. If opposition re-surfaced, Mardian and the Council would be ready to run the type of election campaign that Charter had operated so successfully for a dozen years.
But Moore and his followers presented a fundamentally different type of opposition than Charter had previously faced. Mardian reflected some of this in telling Stephen Shadegg about a statement from Reverend Thomas that
his people who were at this meeting were all devoted followers of Barry Goldwater. This left me bewildered because it would indicate that they were conservatives. Reverend Thomas then made some terrible remarks about the awful people at 1313 East 60th Street in Chicago who were the real culprits behind all of this terrible urban renewal program.
What bewildered Mardian was that the “awful people” included twenty-some associations of public officials and administrators headquartered at that address. 38 More specifically, Thomas and his supporters focused on the National Municipal League, claiming that it foisted off city managers on unsuspecting cities through their “model charter.” Mardian found this bizarre, first, because the League’s advice had been vital in the Charter revision efforts, and second, because these self-proclaimed Goldwaterites were demonizing an organization of which Goldwater was a vice president. What it reflected was the rise of a fearful anticommunist movement and its role in the transformation of conservatism.
Postwar conservatism articulated a critique of modern liberalism that went beyond earlier opposition to the New Deal. As various authors have noted, two of the strands were classical liberalism and traditionalism. Authors like economist Frederich Hayek and novelist Ayn Rand articulated a defense of liberty, individualism, and free market economics, while historian Russell Kirk defended tradition, custom, and social hierarchy. A third element, prompted by the rise of the Cold War era, was anticommunism. 39 Anticommunism became increasingly important to conservatives, encouraging them to support a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy, but they also realized that it was an effective political weapon against liberalism. 40 Besides its role in national political debates, anticommunism grew in many ways at the grassroots level. Nationally, conservative forces were organizing in the late 1950s behind Barry Goldwater, hoping to win control of the Republican Party and to further their goals of fostering liberty and free market economic, and of reducing the role of government, especially the federal government. At the same time, however, grassroots anticommunist groups were organized locally, and their objectives and perspectives did not always harmonize with national conservative perspectives.
In the early 1950s, a host of individuals had started organizing anticommunist groups, and religion constituted a key element in their efforts. Rev. Carl McIntire had built a fundamentalist denomination and associated organizations before the war to challenge mainstream religious groups, and in the postwar era he used his newspaper and radio show to denounce liberalism, communism, and associated social evils. McIntire also encouraged other anticommunist leaders. He assisted Rev. Billy James Hargis, whose Christian Crusade produced publications and media that denounced communism and linked it with the evils of world government and civil rights. McIntire helped establish Fred Schwarz, an Australian doctor whose Christian Anti-Communist Crusade blended religion, science, and anticommunism. Organizing efforts increased in 1958, when Edgar Bundy revived the Church League of America, H.L. Hunt founded LIFE LINE, a Christian group linking business and patriotism, and most important, the John Birch Society founded by Robert Welch. Although the Society grew rapidly, its organization into small groups and its penchant for secrecy seemed eerily like the communist tactics it denounced, while the Society’s extreme views and belief in conspiracy alienated not only liberals but also many conservatives. 41
The proliferation of fearful, conspiracy-oriented groups that linked anticommunism to social policies they disliked reflects shared concerns but not an organized national movement. There were threads and connections, however, and this was clearly true for the housing-related crisis that engulfed Phoenix politics in the early 1960s. The protest that shocked Mayor Mardian grew so rapidly because it inherited ready-made language, ideas, and literature. The origins of this disturbance were in Miami, Florida, in 1957, when a consolidation of local governments (including Miami) into a Metro government provoked a furious response. Starting in February 1958 with Don Bell’s Report on “The Story of 1313,” repeated by Jo Hindman in articles on “Terrible ‘1313’ in mainline conservative publications, Human Events and American Mercury,” and then in countless pamphlets, these critics claimed that “Metropolitan Government is part of a movement to establish in America a soviet-style arrangement which can destroy the whole fabric of government and social organization in the United States.” 42
“Keep America Committees” emerged in various communities across the nation publishing anti-Metro pamphlets. The Los Angeles group printed a pamphlet titled “Metropolitan Area Government (World Government)?” in July of 1958, for example, while a July 1959 pamphlet warned “Socialist City—San Antonio, Texas: It Did Happen Here.” 43 Opinion pieces appeared in newspapers, like the Camden Chronicle, South Carolina, which reported that “1313” was “following the Communist line” in seeking “to destroy local self-government, abolishing virtually all ELECTED county officers and replacing them with APPOINTED imported ‘experts’ outsiders who know little of local conditions.” Their “slick scheme offers big profits to business men, power to political leaders, and ‘public welfare’ to please do-gooder citizens, all under the guise of ‘slum clearance,’ ‘urban renewal,’ mergers of cities with surrounding suburbs, and municipal and county ‘planning and zoning.’” 44 By May of 1959 anti-Metro campaigns had appeared in Sarasota, Florida, Nashville, Knoxville, and Little Rock. 45 By this time officials at the National Municipal League were aware of what they termed the “smear campaign,” but decided that for the time being they would make only private responses to charges which they found grossly inaccurate and nearly incomprehensible. 46 Perhaps the most influential publications were two pamphlets, first published in 1959 in New Orleans by a publisher calling itself “The Independent American”: “METRO: A SOCIALIST SCHEME TO DESTROY LOCAL SELF GOVERNMENT” and “URBAN RENEWAL: A SOCIALIST SCHEME TO CONFISCATE PRIVATE PROPERTY.” These ubiquitous pamphlets summarized the basic arguments, and in the fall of 1960 they appeared in Phoenix. 47
In the spring of 1961, while Mardian and the council delighted in their “strategic retreat” to save the bond issue, Rev. Moore denounced it as trickery and wasting the efforts of petition gatherers. On his weekly radio address, he described city government as a “dictatorship” where “a few people sitting up here” just “pass as many ordinances as they want. That’s what they do all day.” Government was run, he claimed by “A few, select few,” who overtaxed people to pay for libraries and auditoriums and threatened their property with housing codes and urban renewal, while the newspapers “constantly . . . try to mislead people.” 48 Rather than being disheartened, Moore and his allies were emboldened by their success and determined to press for further change. 49
They did so by organizing a slate for mayor and council to compete against the Charter Government nominees in the November 1961 election. The “Stay America Committee” slate (SAC) campaigned largely on the anti-Metro themes discussed in the pamphlet literature, with some additions specific to Phoenix. They claimed that National Municipal League and other groups, referred to as “1313,” were directing a conspiracy of experts to eliminate all other local entities and establish a Metro government as part of a “dictatorship under a socialistic U.N. one world system.” As part of their plan to stop this, they proposed to eliminate the city manager position and establish a ward system. They also opposed annexation and warned of efforts to take over all other city governments in the Valley. 50 As one of the council candidates, Rev. Moore continued to denounce urban renewal and housing codes—as well as zoning and land use planning—as steps toward confiscating all private property.
SAC added to the now-standard charges by lambasting the city’s purchase of private water companies as threatening private property and adding to taxpayer expense. 51 Rev. Moore also complained that the city neglected streets while building libraries, civic centers, parks, and golf courses. 52 Mary Larkin, another candidate, claimed that an international Communist conspiracy was being carried out on two levels. First, they were attempting to eliminate all political boundaries “for easier political control.” Second, these communist conspirators planned to seize key power sources, including dams on the Colorado River, and to blow up state capitols. 53
SAC ran a very different type of campaign than the city had previously seen. It differed not only from the typical Charter campaign, but also from any of Charter former opponents. Although it issued press releases, bought television ads, and delivered radio addresses, it refused to debate publicly with Charter candidates, and its major effort was at the grassroots level. As “Letter to Patriotic Leaders” explained, “Your Campaign can only be won on a quiet basis—by telephone calls, doorbell ringing and personal contact. Only with hard work and with as little noise as possible can this battle be won.” 54 While this approach represented a pragmatic strategy, it also suggests that SAC did not consider Charter to be legitimate.
Charter candidates found this stealth campaign and the outlandish charges frustrating. Their campaign included the normal endorsement statements from former city officials and community figures, as well as newspaper ads with lists of supporters. Charter campaigns normally boasted of their accomplishments, but now they were on the defensive, forced to respond to SAC’s charges with lengthy rebuttals. They described SAC’s misrepresentations of taxes and city government, argued that the housing code and urban renewal program no longer existed, and explained that the city had connections with cooperative, professional organizations, none of which had been cited by Congress as suspicious or dangerous. Charter candidates strongly defended the National Municipal League and played their trump card—conservative icon Senator Barry Goldwater. The senator was not only one of the initial Charter council members in 1949-1953 (indeed its most popular member), but he had also developed strong ties with the National Municipal League, ties he maintained in serving as one of its regional vice presidents. SAC blithely replied that Goldwater was obviously ignorant of the group’s purpose and offered to educate him. Thus, while SAC recognized Goldwater’s stature, the group neither deferred to him nor worried much about his election preference.
Many observers were struck by the seemingly autonomous nature of SAC and other grassroots anticommunist groups. Columnist Victor Riesel claimed that “during my treks through some 20 states in the past few months I have run into scores of such groups. They form no network. They are not part of any ‘society.’ They have no national headquarters. They do not know of each other. They are not affiliated with any party. They are not conservative, as we use the word. They are what the French call ‘ultras’—extremists.” 55 But other observers did see connections and disturbing similarities. Mardian wrote to the mayors of seven other cities who seemed to be encountering the same type of opposition. One sign of coordination, reported in the Arizona Sun, was that a Congress of Freedom meeting in Columbus, Ohio, April 7–10, 1960, had encouraged conservatives to organize groups using the initials “SAC.” Another was Rev. Moore’s connection with Rev. Hargis’s crusade. The Phoenix group’s mayoral candidate, Buck Hanner, revealed their broader horizons when he explained that after victory, SAC intended to spread their campaign to other Arizona communities and then to the nation. 56
The most likely organizational link was to the John Birch Society. Although they shied away from acknowledging it, two of the SAC candidates were members of the Society, and the Society had important supporters in Phoenix. Marlin T. Phelps, a former Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, served on the Society’s national council and had been active in the housing code petition effort. Other powerful members included Dennis Kitchel, a prominent Phoenix lawyer and tied by marriage to the family of Lewis Douglas, a wealthy mining family, and another was Frank Brophy, one of the city’s leading bankers. As Allan Lichtman notes, “Like communists, Birchers churned out front groups,” and SAC’s emphasis on secrecy also matched the Society’s methods. 57
In the end, Charter Government won the election handily with nearly three-fourths of the vote. Yet while they retained control of city hall, the broader meaning of the results was unclear. Liberals and Democrats, who had formerly criticized and sometimes opposed Charter slates, publicly supported it in this race. It was somewhat surprising, then, that the support for SAC came roughly from the same southern Phoenix areas that had voted against Charter slates in previous elections. Any comparisons and analyses were seriously complicated, however, by the city’s annexation in 1959–1960 of substantial areas, expanding the size of Phoenix from 52.6 to 187.4 square miles, and increasing its population from roughly 245,000 to 439,000. 58 In addition, the population increase had required redrawing precinct boundaries, which further stymied any inclination to seek a fuller understanding of the election. The victory, however, convinced Charter leaders that the crisis was over, and that they could now move ahead with their earlier plans.
The Next Battle
To address concerns about the housing code, the mayor appointed a special committee in 1962. Its report recommended additional safeguards against misuse of abuse by inspectors, and the city council began discussing the proposal and finally adopted it on February 5, 1963. 59 The opponents of the code again collected petition signatures requiring a public vote, but this time the council was ready. It honed its argument to health and safety issues, disclaimed any interest in urban renewal, collared endorsements of individuals and groups, gave speeches, made radio and TV addresses, printed signs, wrote letters to newspapers, organized a telephone campaign, and distributed fact sheets, bumper stickers, and news releases. 60
By contrast, the opponents, led by Rev. Aubrey Moore, refused to engage code supporters directly, much as SAC had avoided its Charter opponents in the 1961 election. Joseph P. Ralston, president of the Community Council, accused Moore of “operating behind a self-imposed news blackout.” Moore refused to give the newspaper a list of his objections to the code, even though the Republic offered to publish a five-hundred-word statement of criticism. In fact, Ralston noted, Moore even “refused to make public the name and structure of his organization.” 61 While the code differed from the 1961 version, the public criticism was similar. Moore continued to argue that it was unconstitutional, that inspection violated due process, that it trampled personal liberties, and that “if a man wants to live in a house by a hog wallow, he should be able to.” Moore also engaged in more general criticism, claiming that Phoenix government was not truly representative. “The city is run by the newspapers,” he claimed, and by a “group of people interested in the theater and art museums.” 62 Arguments about constitutionality were less important than other fears, which Mardian and others were at pains to refute: that an army of inspectors would operate on its own authority, that the city would be able to confiscate property, or that it limited how many people could live in one’s home. 63
The continuing discussion of these charges reflects the inability to convince people, and this was reflected in the voters’ rejection of the code on May 28, 1963—the first electoral defeat of any kind for Charter government, and by a convincing 10 percent margin. Two years later a petition campaign organized by the Junior Chamber of Commerce placed the issue on the ballot again, and despite determined support from city leaders and the newspaper, it failed again. Not until 1970 did city leaders manage to pass a housing code that was not challenged by voters. 64 This success resulted partly because the standards for existing housing were included as adjustments to the building code. More importantly, the political climate and political players had changed.
The Valley of Fear
The housing conflict in Phoenix was not a simple struggle in which a conservative city government rejected the interference by a liberal federal government. Instead, it resulted from a dynamic interaction between various aspects of the city. It involved the longstanding problems with housing and new political divisions, both of which assumed much greater potency because of expansive growth and community fears. Anticommunist conspiracy notions provided the context, themes, and the fervor needed to derail the plans of a highly effective and politically successful city government.
The city’s housing problems had begun in the 1930s. Weak building codes, especially in the county, had allowed the construction of inadequate structures that deteriorated over time. This problem was compounded by the area’s extreme population growth, which placed a continuing and serious demand on the housing stock. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s city leaders attempted to improve the situation, mainly by facilitating the housing supply on the periphery, but also by addressing the problems of inadequate housing in the older and southern areas of town. Aware that some property owners would find it difficult to pay for improvements and that the program would seem threatening, city leaders designed a program that was implemented slowly and carefully. But their efforts were unsuccessful.
The city’s political system compounded the problem. The political opposition to Charter Government came mainly from political forces that were rooted in neighborhoods, focused on neighborhood issues and personalities, and lacking leaders with citywide visibility. The differences in political culture and over city policies led them to oppose the city manager system and advocate election by wards, but their inability to compete in nonpartisan, at-large elections meant that they were excluded from official positions. Persons from these central and southern parts of the city were thus increasingly suspicious of elected officials, and frustrated because city elections gave them no real opportunity to change things. The importance of this perspective is evident in election results. The anti-Charter slates from the 1950s and the SAC slate in 1961 differed considerably in perspectives and over many issues, but they shared a common opposition to Charter and especially to the city manager system and at-large elections. As a result, both found their main strength in the city’s southern precincts.
The connection between the housing protesters and the far-right opposition is obvious on one level but more obscure on another. The city election of 1961 and the vote on the housing initiative in 1963 provide the fullest evidence of community sentiment, but accommodating the city’s considerable population growth required a significant redrawing of precinct boundaries between those dates, making a statistical analysis impossible. A second problem is that Phoenix had limited political mobilization and very low voter turnout—only about 20 percent for the mayoral election, and about 8 percent for the housing initiative (reflecting the fact that special elections typically attract mostly the strongly committed). Nevertheless, simply looking at election results by precinct map shows the clear connection. In both elections the Charter opponents were strongest south of Van Buren Street, in the central and southern parts of the city, the areas with most dilapidated housing and which were losing population. While the SAC vote in those precincts ranged (with four over 50 percent and another four over 45 percent), the anti-housing code vote was stronger and more consistent (with eight precincts over 90 percent and another ten over 80 percent). 65
The views of individual protesters recorded in public debates or letters help explain these connections, but one can also look further by examining those who signed the anti-code petitions in 1961 and in 1963. Of course, people signed for different reasons and with varying degrees of interest, and some petition carriers apparently presented false or misleading information about the issue. 66 Still, tracing some of these people through city directories does provide some useful evidence of who was involved. Although the housing code signatories lived in various areas of the city, they were predominantly from the older, central part of Phoenix, and they were more likely than the average Phoenicians to own their home, reflecting the assertions of private property rights. They were also older, with nearly a quarter of them being retired or widowed (roughly three times the proportion of city residents), which suggests limited ability to pay for home repairs. Since Phoenix was a rapidly growing city, it is not surprising that fewer than half of the petitioners had resided there for decade, but very few of them—new residents or older—had lived in their current residence for more than five years, and city residence and home occupancy was even briefer for the 1963 petitioners. It was, therefore, concerns over private property rather than neighborhood that motivated these protesters. Finally, both petitioner groups included persons with solid middle-class occupations, but the 1961 group included more professionals and business owners, while the 1963 group included more persons living in trailer parks or apartments, suggesting that the continued agitation over this issue expanded the bounds of political mobilization. 67
The city’s rapid growth created stress, and the political control of the Charter Government groups encouraged resentment, but it was the addition of the anticommunism that transformed this situation. The mixture of the religious anticommunist groups and the John Birch Society, plus the infusion of the campaigns against Metro and urban renewal, had distorted the Valley of the Sun into what some called a “Valley of Fear.” 68 Charges of conspiracy and imminent danger infused public rhetoric. Concern for constitutional rights blended with charges that urban renewal and efforts to eliminate housing blight reflected communist plots. Suspicion led critics to charge that wealthy contractors were promoting the new policy, and to claim that the routine “emergency” clause in the ordinance was an unusual method of implementation. The anticommunist perspective took what had begun as a modest effort at improving housing and made it a battle in an international struggle.
The rapid growth of this crisis shocked city leaders, who focused on pragmatic responses to problems and were confused by the ideological and conspiratorial charges. The initial challenge in 1960–1961 caused the leadership to sever its connections with federal government urban renewal program and to postpone its efforts to enact a housing code. This enabled voters to support Charter candidates in the 1961 election. Viewing criticism of the code as reflecting concrete concerns about due process, property rights, and civil liberties, the leaders created a broadly representative committee that revised the housing code in 1962. These efforts convinced a number of former opponents to support this measure, but the community reaction was, if anything, even more negative than before. Led again by Rev. Moore, opponents repeated their suspicions of the city’s political leadership and their antagonism towards Charter’s control of city government. But the opposition also represented a conservative populism reflected in the question that one opponent asked of Mayor Mardian: “Who, then, Mayor, is going to look out for and help, not hinder, the little man?” 69 Those with limited means, including many who were retired, widows, or underemployed, found an explanation, albeit temporary, for their plight. The city’s program of economic development focused primarily on attracting middle-class jobs, but it did relatively little to improve job prospects and income levels for lower-class city residents. Living in substandard housing, with limited prospects for improvement, some of these poor resisted proposals that seemed to threaten their property or their prospects for acquiring property. While Charter was able to retain control of city hall, its efforts to deal with the increasing housing crisis were thwarted. Facing substantial divisions over their plans to fix the declining center city areas, they found it less problematic to watch suburban sprawl instead of fighting urban blight.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.