The Seventh Party System's infoboxes
Kentucky
South Carolina
Oregon
Media California [Mandarin LB]
Bismarck, Mississippi
Media California [Korean LB]
In the midst of the political turmoil that was America in the early 1970s, with the fall of the
National Union and the rise of Conservatism as a major political force, Colorado was deeply uneasy. It was known to be a firmly socially-liberal state and the embryonic rise of Las Vegas as the major gambling centre of America was already on its way. But it deeply disapproved of the ‘Buckley’ and ‘Dewey’ Republicans alike for being out of touch to Coloradans’ views. The ‘Buckleyites’ were too conservative on social issues, and the ‘Deweyites’ were too accepting of the New Deal and Great Society, including the high taxes that were becoming more and more unpopular with Coloradans every day.
Hence the Republicans struggled to break through. Even when the alliance with the Democrats to form the Conservative Party succeeded at breaking through elsewhere, it only led to a revulsion in Colorado. 1971 was not a good year to be a Coloradan Republican. Compounding this issue was that the rise and rise of the Conservative Party went with increased Democratic influence outside the South now that it was free from the National Union.
This meant that more money could go to the
National Independent Party of Colorado. But back up a bit. What is the NIP? Contrary to beliefs, the National Union-dominated party system was not a simple and clean one of it versus the Republicans. There were discontent even back in the days of FDR, with the most famous being the Texas Regulars which took the Lone Star State by storm and made Lyndon B. Johnson a household name in his unrelenting [and often dubiously legal] fight to hold the state for the NUP.
By the early 1960s, this vague discontent on the right ended with several conservative NUP people forming their own party, the Independent National Union, or as it became known after the threat of a lawsuit, the National Independent Party. They defined themselves via their die-hard American conservatism, heavy dislike of the NUP’s ‘socialism’ and most distinctively from later right-wing thought a deep disdain of the talk of states’ rights. However, this later one was to rapidly fall away as LBJ pushed on and on with his ‘radical’ proposals and discredited the idea of using the federal state as a force for conservatism via association.
The Colorado branch of the NIP emerged soon after LBJ suspended Deseret’s government. While its leader John Mecham would insist that the NIP was not a party of solely conservative Mormons, and would emphasise its cross-denominational appeal, it was undeniable that conservative Mormons, and especially Mormon fundamentalists of which there were a considerable presence in the state, would support the NIP to a great extent. The more moderate sort would switch from NUP to Republican however, with there being no People’s Party choice.
The NIP emerging would take the more ‘patriotic’ element out of the once-dominant Colorado NUP under Governor Carl Udall, but thanks to a crafty mixture of extreme gerrymandering and playing up FPTP and the ‘Buckley’ Republicans’ social conservatism it held power in 1969 and profited well in 1971 as the message struck stronger in the state’s revulsion against the Conservative Party.
But in 1973, a variety of scandals and the NUP’s rapid collapse on the US-level threatened Udall’s hold on power. The various caucuses of the party – the Labor, Populist and Constitution caucuses in particular – were increasingly at loggerheads with each other frustrating Udall’s efforts. His own cabinet forced him to reshuffle it to remove scandalous figures thrice, and he was caught on record cussing out a prominent conservative figure in the party [who went and defected to the NIP in response].
The day came and the people voted clearly for the Colorado Republican Party. And they got another term of Udall, as the gerrymandered boundaries delivered him yet another majority. The outcry led the Republicans in the state to turn against FPTP, with them calling for a proportional system, joining the opportunistic calls from the NIP.
As the year of the next election came, the outcome seemed uncertain. The Republicans were tainted by the sins of Nixon and the NUP could count on somewhat of a clear electoral background and parties of which to take funding from – namely Labor. There were rumblings of possible Hispanic or Native interests parties emerging, but Udall could confirm that they weren’t expanding into Colorado in time for the election.
Then a plane landed in Las Vegas and its passenger, respected Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, who was one of the few Republicans who could break through NUP dominance of the state, would declare on the pavement that ‘the Republican Party has left me, it has left you, and it has left this state’. The establishment of the
Libertarian Party was in all but name a Colorado Republican rebrand and official sundering from the increasingly-unpopular Eastern Establishment and the growing socially conservative element.
This posed a problem to Udall. Goldwater was perhaps the one Republican he couldn’t take down, and now he was free of the unpopular Republican brand. Many voters who even in 1973 reluctantly voted National Union was now cheering on Goldwater. Goldwater even caused some controversy when he declared that the state shouldn’t monitor people’s homes, private lives or families, a statement that many considered to be appealing to the polygamist fundamentalists. Nevertheless, that demographic would still vote NIP come November.
The so-delicately drawn-up gerrymander that delivered the NUP a new term in 1973 was now smashed in 1975 as the Libertarians stormed their way to a two-thirds majority. Goldwater, now
Governor Goldwater, promised a ‘new era of liberty’ as his fellow Libertarians eagerly got to work dismantling the NUP system and ‘cutting’ the bloat of too much government, using the constitutional majority to abolish the Senate, reduce the House to 125 Representatives and of course, making it proportional.
With Udall’s resignation, the factionalised and fragmented NUP would splinter at last, with the NIP absorbing the Constitution caucus [they would rebrand to Constitution and officially align with the federal party in 1981, even if curiously above Mecham’s objection], Labor and Populists squabbling up until both collapsed in 1987 and the Democrats lingered until 1991 before giving up the fight and merging with Constitution.
Meanwhile the Libertarians enjoyed unprecedented dominance. Colorado’s golden age was here.
[Photos for Udall and Mecham courtesy of FaceApp. Flag is partially made from a Reddit post by u/chxsewxlker that I tweaked a bit.]