Upton Sinclair - Political Career

Political Career

In the 1920s the Sinclairs moved to Monrovia, California, near Los Angeles, where Upton founded the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Wanting to pursue politics, he twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress on the Socialist ticket: in 1920 for the House of Representatives and in 1922 for the Senate. During this period, Sinclair was also active in radical politics in Los Angeles. For instance, in 1923, to support the challenged free speech rights of Industrial Workers of the World, Sinclair spoke at a rally in San Pedro, California, in a neighborhood now known as Liberty Hill. He began to read from the Bill of Rights and was promptly arrested, along with hundreds of others, by the LAPD. The arresting officer proclaimed that "we'll have none of that Constitution stuff."

In 1934 Sinclair ran in the California gubernatorial election as a Democrat. Gaining 879,000 votes made this his most successful run for office, but Frank F. Merriam defeated him by a sizable margin, gaining 1,138,000 votes. Sinclair's platform, known as the End Poverty in California movement (EPIC), galvanized the support of the Democratic Party, and Sinclair gained its nomination.

Severe dust storms during the Great Depression made farming on the Great Plains impossible, and hundreds of thousands of Southern and Great Plains residents migrated westward in the 1930s in the hope of finding work and a new life. Sinclair's plan to end poverty quickly became a controversial issue under the pressure of so many migrants. Conservatives considered his proposal an attempted communist takeover of their state and quickly opposed him, using propaganda to portray Sinclair as a staunch communist. Sinclair had been a member of the Socialist Party from 1902 to 1934, when he became a Democrat, though always considering himself a Socialist in spirit. At the same time, American and Soviet communists disassociated themselves from him as a capitalist. Science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein was deeply involved in Sinclair's campaign. Heinlein tried to obscure this in later life, as he wanted to keep his personal politics separate from his public image as an author.

After his loss to Merriam, Sinclair abandoned EPIC and politics to return to writing. In 1935 Sinclair published I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, in which he described the techniques employed by Merriam's supporters, including the popular Aimee Semple McPherson, who vehemently opposed socialism and what she perceived as Sinclair's modernism.

Of his gubernatorial bid, Sinclair remarked in 1951:

"The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."