Activism and Political Efforts
In 1946, Schlafly became a researcher for the American Enterprise Institute and worked in the successful United States House of Representatives campaign of Claude I. Bakewell.
In 1952, Schlafly ran for Congress as a Republican in the majority Democratic 24th congressional district of Illinois but lost to Democrat Charles Melvin Price. Schlafly's campaign was low-budget and promoted heavily through the local print media, and local entrepreneurs John M. and Spencer Olin as well as Texas oil billionaire H. L. Hunt donated to her campaign. She also attended her first Republican National Convention that year and continued to attend each following convention. As part of the Illinois delegation of the 1952 Republican convention, Schlafly endorsed Robert Taft to be the party nominee for the presidential election. At the 1960 Republican National Convention, Schlafly helped lead a revolt of "moral conservatives" against Richard Nixon's stance (as the New York Times puts it) "against segregation and discrimination."
She came to national attention when millions of copies of her self-published book, A Choice, Not an Echo, were distributed in support of Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. In it, Schlafly denounced the Rockefeller Republicans in the Northeast, accusing them of corruption and globalism. Critics called the book a conspiracy theory about "secret kingmakers" controlling the Republican Party.
In 1967, Schlafly lost a bid for the presidency of the National Federation of Republican Women against the more moderate candidate Gladys O'Donnell of California. Outgoing NFRW president and future United States Treasurer Dorothy Elston of Delaware worked against Schlafly in the campaign.
Schlafly joined the John Birch Society, but quit because she thought that the main Communist threats to the nation were external rather than internal. In 1970, she ran unsuccessfully for a House of Representatives seat in Illinois against Democratic incumbent George E. Shipley.
Read more about this topic: Phyllis Schlafly
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