Richard Viguerie

Life and career[edit]

Viguerie was born in Golden Acres, Texas, the son of Elizabeth (née Stoufflet) and Arthur Camile Viguerie.^[2][3] He has Cajun ancestry.^[4] His father worked as a middle-management executive for a petrochemical company, and his mother was a practical nurse. Neither of his parents were interested in politics.^[5]


Viguerie recalled what caused him to become political "was when MacArthur was fired. I was tremendously frustrated and outraged, and mad as heck at Truman... What cemented my conservative philosophy was Joe McCarthy... I was a young kid and had read Bill Buckley and one or two other books. I believed in what McCarthy did. Even when he was inaccurate, he articulated the concern about a very big problem. There are Communists in this world and that is not a figment of a few right-wingers' imaginations."^[5]


In 1957 Viguerie graduated from the University of Houston. He dropped out of law school. He served in the army reserves for six months, after which he worked as a clerk in a small oil company for $90 a week.^[5]


Viguerie worked for the Christian evangelist Billy James Hargis in his early career. In an autobiographical note, Viguerie wrote that in 1961 he became executive secretary of the conservative youth group Young Americans for Freedom: "Since 1965, owner of direct marketing/advertising companies such as American Target Advertising. Political/campaign strategist, activist and conservative spokesman and writer."^[6]


Viguerie has been dubbed the "funding father" of modern conservative strategy in the United States by some sources.^[7][8] Viguerie does not charge standard fees and expenses from his clients, rather he offers a no-loss guarantee and demands a commission (sometimes as much as 50%) and insists on keeping clients mailing lists for future, creating an extensive conservative donor database.^[9]


Viguerie founded Conservative Digest magazine in 1975 and served as its publisher for ten years. Opposing President Gerald Ford's election, Viguerie in 1976 unsuccessfully sought the vice-presidential nomination of the American Independent Party, which had been formed eight years earlier by George Wallace.


Viguerie's development and honing of national direct mail campaigns in the mid-to-late 1970s was considered revolutionary in its approach and was quickly adopted by insurgent conservative political campaigns. Conservative activist and political candidate Jeff Bell applied the strategy in 1978 to unseat longtime liberal Republican Senator Clifford Case in the 1978 New Jersey primary.^[10] Bell was defeated in the general election, but his unexpected primary victory was considered a turning point for conservative activist efforts against establishment Republicans.