Aside from an article in the “Arizona Republic,” the news that former Rep. John B. Conlan, R-Arizona, died June 18 at age 90 received relatively little coverage.
For reporters who covered Conlan and vividly recalled him, this was a bit surprising. Coming up in Grand Canyon State politics and during his time in Congress (1972-76), Conlan was a conservative who merited watching.
And there was no middle ground about him.
With his good looks and charismatic speaking style, the son of legendary Major League umpire “Jocko” Conlan seemed destined for political stardom. A graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard Law School (“I came out of Harvard and took a right”), he served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper and earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of Cologne in Germany.
He had his admirers, and he had his detractors.
“John is inherently evil,” arch-rival and former Rep. Sam Steiger, R-Arizona., told Newsmax in 1986, recalling their fractious U.S. Senate primary a decade before, “Godzilla would have made a better congressman!”
Conlan was one of the first politician to sense there was political muscle to be flexed by men and women of faith and he became the initial “mover and shaker” behind what would be called the “religious right.”
Among those he motivated toward politics were Revs. Pat Robertson (the 1988 presidential hopeful was first urged to seek office on his “700 Club” TV show by Rep. Conlan) and Jerry Falwell, who later founded the Moral Majority.
As press secretary to Rev. Billy Graham in the early 1960’s, the young Conlan conceived of candidates “working the churches”—that is, using a church and its membership as political precincts and through personal contact, getting them to turn out and vote.
“Billy said he agreed with the formula, but I should try it by seeking office myself,” Conlan once recalled to Newsmax.
He did. In 1964, having settled with his parents in suburban Phoenix, first-time office-seeker Conlan won a seat in the Arizona senate. Eight years later, with Arizona gaining a new U.S. House seat from the census, then-state Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Conlan helped draw the new district lines. He eventually won a three-candidate Republican primary for the new seat and went to Congress.
He was elected president of the House Republican “Class of ’72” and immediately established himself as a leader of House conservatives. Conlan was an early member of the conservative House Republican Study Committee, offered legislation to outlaw abortion nationwide, and called for all-out victory in Vietnam.
In 1976, he was one of 10 U.S. House Members to support Ronald Reagan in his challenge to President Gerald Ford. Reagan swept almost the entire delegation from Arizona and went on to barely lose the nomination to Ford at the GOP national convention.
Conlan might have easily passed on the U.S. Senate race in 1976 when incumbent Republican Paul Fannin retired and waited a few more years until Arizona’s other Sen. Barry Goldwater stepped down. But the two-term House member was impatient and sources close to him said he wanted to become a senator sooner rather than later to position himself to run for president in the 1980’s.
He squared off against wisecracking, cigar-smoking fellow Rep. Sam Steiger. The two detested each other and both were conservatives who differed on few issues except their respective styles and which one should be senator.
“He uses a meat-ax and I use a scalpel,” the urbane Conlan quipped, leading Steiger to remonstrate: “It’s more accurate to say [Conlan] uses a roto-rooter [a machine that turns over sewage].”
Steiger always believed Conlan was a smear artist and liar. He insisted that his Senate rival privately called him “a New York Jew” (Steiger was born in New York and was Jewish) and sensed anti-Semitic overtones in Conlan’s admonitions to “elect a Christian” to the Senate.
The spirited Steiger-Conlan contest was played out against the backdrop of one of Arizona’s darkest moments: the June 1976 murder of investigative reporter Don Bolles as he was preparing a series on Emrise, a company that made animal racing tracks and was concealing its ties to the Mafia.
Conlan slammed Steiger after he was questioned about the Bolles murder (Steiger volunteered information and was never a suspect) and Steiger hit Conlan for supporting the easing of regulations on Emrise while in the legislature.
With Steiger’s last-minute endorsements by the Arizona Republic and by Goldwater (who voiced his distaste for Conlan’s style of campaigning), he edged out Conlan by about 10,000 votes out of more than 195,000 cast. But with the Republican Party fractured by the incendiary primary, Steiger lost to Democrat Dennis DeConcini in November.
Conlan spent the next ten years practicing law and reviving his regimen of nationwide travel to energize Christians in politics. His “last hurrah” in U.S. politics was in 1986, when the former congressman tried to recapture his old U.S. House seat. But Conlan’s years traveling and away from local politics hurt him, as did lingering resentment for the primary fight with Steiger. He was soundly beaten for nomination by fellow conservative (and future Sen.) Jon Kyl.
The twilight years of John Conlan were spent in Asheville, North Carolina. He marketed his political skills abroad in the developing democracies in the former Soviet Union and was especially active in Georgia.
“I wrote the campaign plan for Mikheil Saakashvili,” he told Newsmax about the man who served as Georgia’s third president after leading the bloodless “Rose Revolution” in ’03, “He’s bright—a Columbia Law graduate—and his English is excellent. Keep your eye on him.”
Remote in death, John Conlan was a politician of contradictions, who will be recalled for good by some and not-so-good by others. Robert Penn Warren’s words may best characterize him: “History is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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