Items18The creator’s order
  1. 1Martin Van BurenMartin Van BurenBorn 5 Dec 1782Before he was president, Van Buren built the 'Albany Regency' in New York and then the national coalition that elected Andrew Jackson in 1828: disciplined party organisation, partisan newspapers, patronage jobs for loyal workers and nominating conventions. He argued openly that permanent parties…0i
  2. 2Mark HannaMark HannaBorn 24 Sept 1837Hanna, an Ohio industrialist, ran William McKinley's 1896 campaign as a business operation, assessing banks and corporations a share of their assets and raising perhaps $3.5 million, far more than any previous campaign. He spent it on hundreds of speakers and well over 100 million pamphlets in many…0i
  3. 3James FarleyJames FarleyBorn 30 May 1888Farley ran Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 and 1936 campaigns, keeping a card index of thousands of local Democratic officials and writing them personal letters in green ink, and correctly predicted in 1936 that Roosevelt would carry every state but Maine and Vermont. As postmaster general he used…0i
  4. 4Ella BakerElla BakerBorn 13 Dec 1903Baker organised NAACP branches across the South in the 1940s, helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1960 convened the meeting that created the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, insisting the students keep their independence. Her philosophy, 'strong people don't…0i
  5. 5Bob Moses (activist)Bob Moses (activist)Born 23 Jan 1935Moses went to Mississippi for SNCC in 1961 and spent years doing slow, dangerous door-to-door voter registration work in counties where Black residents were systematically kept off the rolls. He conceived the 1964 Freedom Summer, which brought around a thousand mostly white volunteers to the state…0i
  6. 6Fannie Lou HamerFannie Lou HamerBorn 6 Oct 1917A sharecropper evicted for trying to register to vote in 1962, Hamer became a field organiser and vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the all-white official delegation at the 1964 Democratic convention. Her televised testimony about being beaten in jail for…0i
  7. 7Cesar ChavezCesar ChavezBorn 31 Mar 1927Before the farmworkers' union, Chavez trained with Fred Ross in the Community Service Organization, registering tens of thousands of Mexican American voters in California through house meetings in the 1950s. The United Farm Workers' later electoral work, including its turnout for Robert Kennedy's…0i
  8. 8Richard ViguerieRichard ViguerieViguerie copied the names of donors to Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign from public records and built the conservative movement's direct-mail fundraising operation from them, raising money in small amounts from millions of supporters outside the party establishment. The lists financed the New Right…0i
  9. 9Phyllis SchlaflyPhyllis SchlaflyBorn 15 Aug 1924Schlafly founded STOP ERA in 1972, when the Equal Rights Amendment had passed Congress and was being ratified quickly, and built a network of conservative women, many new to politics, who lobbied state legislators with homemade bread and testimony. Ratification stalled three states short. Her Eagle…0i
  10. 10Paul WeyrichPaul WeyrichBorn 7 Oct 1942Weyrich co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973 and, in 1979, with Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, which registered millions of evangelical Christians who had previously voted little. He also founded the American Legislative Exchange Council, which circulates model bills to state legislators.…0i