"Slightly to the right of Genghis Khan"

Melissa Fox is a Democrat running for the 70th Assembly District. She’s liable to be Don Wagner’s liberal competition.

On her blog today, Fox draws attention to an old (1974) article about Orange County’s right-wing past: Orange County: No Longer "The Right Wing Cradle":

Dated July 7, 1974, and titled "Orange County: The Right Wing Cradle," the article shows how dramatically Orange County, and in particular my own 70th Assembly District (Irvine, Laguna Beach, Laguna Woods, Lake Forest, Foothill Ranch, and most of the cities of Aliso Viejo, Newport Beach, and Tustin) has changed, both politically and demographically, in the past four decades.

The article describes Orange County as “a stronghold of the John Birch Society, a former stomping ground of the Klu Klux Klan, the fastest growing county in the United States, and the home of the first drive-in church.”

Fox draws attention to how much OC has changed from it’s notorious right-wing past. In some ways, I’m sure that’s true. But we’re still the home of Birthers, Minutemen, and other Neanderthals.

Fox’s link to the article brings one to an old and unwieldy photocopy. It's hard to read. I’ve converted that to digital form. If you’d like to read the entire article, go here: Orange County, the right-wing cradle – A Fertile Land of Firsts, It’s Patriotic Above All

Here are some excerpts:

From the Palm Beach Post-Times, Sunday, July 7, 1974

Orange County, the right-wing cradle
A Fertile Land of Firsts, It’s Patriotic Above All

By Kay Bartlett

Just About anything will grow here. Most things will flourish.

Societies to fight income tax, counter committee to battle the “Communist infiltrated” PTA, even something called SHRIK (the Society to Harass the Reds and Intimidate the Kikes).
. . .
It’s citizenry tend to add fuel to the image. Four-star Gen. Curtis LeMay, four-star patriot John Wayne, Sen. Barry Goldwater, an Arizonian who keeps an apartment at Newport Beach overlooking a bay.

Bordered by mountains on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west, Orange County has been, among other things, a stronghold of the John Birch Society, a former stomping ground of the Ku Klux Klan, the fastest growing county in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau figures), and the home of the first drive-in church.
. . .
Currently popular bumper stickers include “CommUNism,” “Hanoi is Fonda Jane,” “Kissinger My Ass,” “Would You Want Your Daughter to Date a Kennedy,” and “Nixon is a Liberal.” The “X” in Nixon is a swastika.

Politically, Orange County has long had a reputation for its ultra conservatism, a reputation that has been the subject of national magazine articles and popular jokes. It once prompted John Schmitz, a former congressman and 1972 presidential candidate of the American Independent party, to remark that he joined the John Birch Society in get into the mainstream of Orange County politics.

Many of my neighbors were Birch members,” says Mrs. Judy Rosener, who teaches a course in Orange County politics at the University of California at Irvine (UCI). “They were almost evangelistic about it. The thing that was disturbing to me was that they were well-educated, very bright and they took this thing very seriously.”
. . .
Many residents claim the image attached to their county never was justified. And then you meet a resident like Anthony Hilder, a self-proclaimed “new rightist” and author of a book – “The War Lords of Washington” – which argues that international bankers conspired to involve American in World War II.

“I’m slightly to the right of Genghis Khan and far, far right of the Birch Society,” Hilder says. “If I was in charge, I’d bomb London, New York and Washington. That’s the seat of the international banking cartel that wishes to dominate the world.”
. . .
Many see in the Register, a Santa Ana newspaper with a circulation of 172,000, a major reason for the county’s conservative bent. Since 1905, the Register has editorialized unwaveringly against income tax, public schools and government in general. It refuses, for instance, to endorse political candidates because, as Jim Dean, the executive editor, puts it, “Government is the problem.”
. . .
Then there was the late Jimmy Utt, a dapper man who sat in the U.S. House of Representatives from the 83rd Congress until his death in 1970. Known as “Mr. Conservative,” Utt usually was cheered back to Congress with 70 per cent of the vote.

When Utt died, he was replaced by Schmitz, who continued the ultra-conservative voting pattern.
. . .
James Townsend, publisher of a newspaper called the National Educator and a man sometimes called the hub of the right wing in Orange County, assessed the reduced membership this way:
. . .
“The Zionists are a powerful force, money-wise,” says Townsend. “It’s a very wealthy, very well-organized, very fanatical force. Anyone who doesn’t recognize the power of the force is naïve. It is alien and very dangerous to the people of the United States. Their goal is world control. They can buy a candidate for any office. They exert a tremendous influence on who wins the presidency of the United States.”

Townsend’s newspaper, The National Educator, is mailed across the country, but he won’t reveal circulation figures. It regularly attacks the school system, the National Education Association, abortion, the United Nations, sex education, both the Republican and Democratic parties, Darwinian theories of evolution and income tax….

Townsend, a middle-aged six-footer, describes Mr. Nixon as a “wild-eyed liberal who did more to promote the concept of one world in his first five years in office than all the Democratic presidents put together. Well, maybe, except for FDR. Nixon takes the concept further than McGovern’s wildest dream. McGovern would never have gotten away with what Nixon has.”
. . .
One thing Orange County has not been accused of being is a center of culture.

“As I’m fond of remarking,” historian [Jim] Sleeper says, “the last cultural innovation that came to Orange County was indoor plumbing.”….