Barry Morris Goldwater (January 1, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. He was also a Major General in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He was known as "Mr. Conservative".
Goldwater is the politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.
Goldwater rejected the legacy of the New Deal and fought inside the conservative coalition to defeat the New Deal coalition. He lost the 1964 presidential election by a large margin to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. The Johnson campaign and other critics painted him as a reactionary, while supporters praised his crusades against the federal government, labor unions, and the welfare state. His defeat allowed Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats in Congress to pass the Great Society programs, but the defeat of so many older Republicans in 1964 also cleared the way for a younger generation of American conservatives to mobilize. Goldwater was much less active as a national leader of conservatives after 1964; his supporters mostly rallied behind Ronald Reagan, who became governor of California in 1967 and President of the United States in 1981.
By the 1980s, the increasing influence of the Christian Right on the Republican Party so conflicted with Goldwater's libertarian views that he became a vocal opponent of the religious right on issues such as abortion, gay rights, and the role of religion in public life. Goldwater concentrated on his Senate duties, especially passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.
Personal life
Goldwater was born in 1909 in Phoenix, in what was then the Arizona Territory, the son of Baron Goldwater and his wife, Hattie Josephine ("JoJo") Williams. His father's family had founded Goldwater's, a department store in Phoenix. The family name had been changed from Goldwasser to Goldwater at least as early as the 1860 census in Los Angeles, California. Goldwater's paternal grandparents, Michel and Sarah (Nathan) Goldwasser, were Jewish and had been married in the Great Synagogue of London. Goldwater's mother came from an old Yankee family; the co-founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, was an ancestor. Goldwater's father was alienated from the local Jewish community, so he and JoJo were married in an Episcopal church in Phoenix. For his entire life, Goldwater was an Episcopalian, though he sometimes referred to himself as "Jewish." While he did not often attend church, he stated that "If a man acts in a religious way, an ethical way, then he's really a religious man — and it doesn't have a lot to do with how often he gets inside a church".
The family department store made the Goldwaters comfortably wealthy. Goldwater graduated from Staunton Military Academy and attended the University of Arizona for one year, where he joined the Sigma Chi fraternity. Although Barry had never been close to his father, he took over the family business after Baron's death in 1930. He became a Republican (in a heavily Democratic state), promoted innovative business practices, and opposed the New Deal, especially because it fostered labor unions. Goldwater came to know former president Herbert Hoover, whose politics he admired greatly. In 1934, he married Margaret "Peggy" Johnson, wealthy daughter of a prominent Midwestern industrialist. They had four children: Joanne (born January 1, 1936), Barry (born July 15, 1938), Michael (born March 15, 1940), and Peggy (born July 27, 1944). Barry became a widower in 1985, and in 1992 he married Susan Wechsler, a nurse 32 years his junior.
With the American entry into World War II, Goldwater received a reserve commission in the United States Army Air Forces. He became a pilot assigned to the Ferry Command, a newly formed unit that delivered aircraft and supplies to war zones worldwide. He spent most of the war flying between the USA and India, via the Azores and North Africa or South America, Nigeria, and Central Africa. He also flew "the hump" over the Himalayas to deliver supplies to the Republic of China. Remaining in the Air Force Reserve after the war, he eventually retired as a Command Pilot with the rank of Major General. By that time, he had flown 165 different types of aircraft. Following World War II, Goldwater was a leading proponent of creating the United States Air Force Academy, and later served on the Academy's Board of Visitors. The Visitor Center at the USAF Academy is now named in his honor.
In 1940, Goldwater became one of the first people to run the Colorado River recreationally through Grand Canyon when he participated as an oarsman on Norman Nevills' second commercial river trip. Goldwater joined the trip in Green River, Utah and rowed his own boat down to Lake Mead.
In 1970, the Arizona Historical Foundation published the day-by-day journal that Goldwater kept on the trip, along with the photographs he took, in a 209 page volume titled "Delightful Journey" by Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater's son, Barry Goldwater, Jr., served as a United States House of Representatives member from California from 1969 to 1983.
Political career
Goldwater entered Phoenix politics in 1949 when he was elected to the City Council as part of a nonpartisan group of candidates who focused on "cleaning up" widespread prostitution and gambling. As a Republican he won a seat in the US Senate in 1952, when he upset veteran Democrat and Senate majority leader Ernest McFarland. He defeated McFarland again in 1958, but would step down from the Senate in 1964 for his presidential campaign. Goldwater had a strong showing in his first reelection in 1958, a year in which the Democrats picked up thirteen seats in the Senate.
Policies
Goldwater soon became most associated with labor-union reform and anti-communism; he was an active supporter of the conservative coalition in Congress. However, he rejected the wilder fringes of the anti-communist movement; in 1956 he sponsored the passage through the Senate of the final version of the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act, despite vociferous opposition from opponents who claimed that the Act was a communist plot to establish concentration camps in Alaska. His work on labor issues led to Congress passing major anti-corruption reforms in 1957, and an all-out campaign by the AFL-CIO to defeat his 1958 reelection bid. He voted against the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, but he was much more prudent than McCarthy and never actually charged any individual with being a communist/Soviet agent. Goldwater emphasized his strong opposition to the worldwide spread of communism in his 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative . The book became an important reference text in conservative political circles.
Goldwater ran a conservative campaign, part of which emphasized "states' rights." Goldwater's 1964 campaign was a magnet for conservatives. Goldwater broadly opposed strong action by the federal government. Although he had supported all previous federal civil rights legislation, Goldwater made the decision to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His stance was based on his view that the act was an intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of states and, second, that the Act interfered with the rights of private persons to do business, or not, with whomever they chose.
All this appealed to white Southern Democrats, and Goldwater was the first Republican to win the electoral votes of the Deep South states (Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina) since Reconstruction. However, Goldwater's vote on the Civil Rights Act proved devastating to his campaign everywhere outside the South (besides Dixie, Goldwater won only in Arizona, his home state), contributing to his landslide defeat in 1964. A Lyndon B. Johnson ad called "Confessions of a Republican," which ran in the North, associated Goldwater with the Ku Klux Klan. At the same time, Johnson’s campaign in the Deep South publicized Goldwater’s full history on civil rights. In the end, Johnson swept the election.
While Goldwater had been depicted by his opponents in the Republican primaries as a representative of a conservative philosophy that was extreme and alien, his Congressional voting records show that his positions were in harmony with those of his fellow Republicans in the Congress. What distinguished him from his predecessors was, according to Hans J. Morgenthau, his firmness of principle and determination, which did not allow him to be content with rhetoric.
Goldwater fought in 1971 to stop U.S. funding of the United Nations after the People's Republic of China was admitted to the body. He said:
I suggested on the floor of the Senate today that we stop all funds for the United Nations. Now, what that'll do to the United Nations, I don't know. I have a hunch it would cause them to fold up, which would make me very happy at this particular point. I think if this happens, they can well move their headquarters to Peking or Moscow and get 'em out of this country."Elections
In 1964, he fought and won a bitterly-contested, multi-candidate race for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. His main rival was New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, whom he defeated in the California primary. His nomination was opposed by liberal Republicans who thought Goldwater's hardline foreign poli
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC OBITUARIES: Complete listing of The Arizona ...
Greater Phoenix obituaries from the The Arizona Republic and other Arizona obituary sources. ... Newspaper
Arizona Obituaries and Newspaper Links at Obituary Depot
We also have many volunteers that transcribe obituary information from the newspaper archives at ... Arizona Republic Obituaries; Maricopa County Obituaries; Mohave County Obituaries
Arizona Newspaper Obituaries
Directory to help locate current and old Arizona obituaries, funeral notices and death notices in newspapers. Search the Obituary ... Phoenix Republic Obituaries. Pinal Nugget ...
Arizona Obituaries and Obituary Resources & Databases | Obituary Links ...
Please search through our full list of Arizona Newspapers and access their online obituary sections ... Arizona Republic Obituaries Arizona Obituary Search Engine Arizona Clips Obituaries ...
Arizona Obituaries
Many online resources, including obituary databases and indexed and searchable newspapers are now available, making Arizona ... azcentral.com obituaries from The Arizona Republic. ...
Arizona Newspapers and Obituaries
Each obituary provides the decedent's name and death date. It ... Arizona Newspaper Project. Phoenix: Arizona Republic Bullhead City: Mohave Valley News
Arizona Directory of Newspaper Obituaries & Death Notices | Obituary ...
... the city where the individual died, so we have listed the obituary sections of all the Arizona newspapers ... Phoenix Arizona Republic Obituaries Prescott Daily Courier Obituaries San ...
OBITUARIES: View obituaries via Legacy.com and The Arizona Republic
Didn't find the obituary you were looking for? Return to Today's obituaries for The Arizona Republic. ... Newspaper
Arizona Newspapers Online | Arizona Newspaper List
Find Arizona newspapers online using this organized list of ... Phoenix - The Arizona Republic. Phoenix ... Search Recent Obituaries. Old American Newspapers. Search The Obituary ...
Arizona Obituary, Newspapers Obituaries in Arizona
The Arizona Republic. Prescott, AZ Prescott Valley Tribune, AZ The Daily Courier ... US Newspaper Obituary is an obituary link to more 3000 newspapers nationwide which most of them ...