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RICHARD
A. VIGUERIE transformed American politics in the 1960s and
’70s by pioneering the use of direct mail fundraising in the
political and ideological spheres. He used computerized direct mail
fundraising to help build the conservative movement, which then elected
Ronald Reagan as the first conservative president of the modern era.
As the “Funding Father of the conservative
movement,” Viguerie motivated millions of Americans to
participate in politics for the first time, greatly expanding the base
of active citizenship. He is our era’s equivalent of Tom
Paine, using a direct mail letter rather than a pamphlet to deliver his
call to arms. George magazine credited this as one of the defining
political moments of the 20th century.
Viguerie’s advertising firm has mailed more than 2 billion
letters over the past 42 years. Ronald Reagan’s 1968 campaign
manager Cliff White and journalist William Gill wrote in their book Why
Reagan Won: “In every election from 1966 onward, the Viguerie
Company and its score of imitators…brought information to
millions of Americans; information that quite often the people could
not obtain from newspapers or television or mass-circulation
magazines.”
The AFL-CIO News has said that Viguerie “made it all
possible” for conservatives, and the Washington Post has
called him “the conservatives’ Voice of
America.” In 1979 Time magazine named him one of 50 future
leaders of America, and in 1981 People magazine named him one of the 25
most intriguing people of the year. In December 1999 he was cited in
the Washington Times as one of 13 “Conservatives of the
Century.”
Viguerie’s latest book is Conservatives Betrayed: How George
W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative
Cause (Bonus Books, 2006). Conservatives Betrayed is an incisive look
at how the GOP rode the support of America’s conservatives to
majority status, only to subsequently advance a liberal, big-government
agenda. Conservatives Betrayed is both a manifesto of what conservatism
stands for in the 21st century and a battle plan for reclaiming and
revitalizing the movement.
Mr. Viguerie and his wife, Elaine, are natives of Houston, Texas, and
have been married for 44 years. They have three children and six
grandchildren and live in the Virginia countryside on 230 acres of
conservative-friendly environment.
Mr. Viguerie may be contacted at 9625 Surveyor Court, Suite 400,
Manassas, VA 20110, or at RAV@ConservativesBetrayed.com.
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