From today’s WSJ Political Diary E-mail:
California conservatives lost a political hero last Monday with the death of Joe Shell at age 89. The former University of Southern California football hero went on to a successful career in the oil industry and in 1952 was elected to the state assembly, where he rose to become GOP leader.
But the old gridiron star’s finest hour came in 1962, when he decided that the Republican Party should not accept Richard Nixon’s decision to move back west to run for California governor after his presidential loss to John F. Kennedy. "I never trusted Nixon either to be a conservative or to be honest," he once told me.
Despite tremendous pressure not to challenge Nixon in the GOP primary, Shell campaigned up and down the state warning the party faithful that Nixon was unreliable. In the end, Nixon won 65% of the primary vote but later acknowledged that his disagreements with conservatives during the primary contest with Shell cost him the November election. It was after that 1962 loss that Nixon told reporters: "You won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore."
While Nixon did bounce back later to become president, Shell never regretted his apostasy. "I felt then that Nixon was bad for the party and Watergate and the subsequent stain he left proved me right," he recalled.
Shell never again ran for public office, but played a crucial role in convincing George Deukmejian to run for governor in the 1980s, an office he won twice. Mr. Deukmejian then appointed his friend to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, a post that Shell, good conservative that he was, soon resigned because he said the job was a sinecure that should be abolished.
— John Fund
April 11th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Joe Shell was the GOP state Assembly leader at the time (1962).
The media viewed Shell’s ability to win 35% of the GOP primary
vote vs. Richard Nixon as a major upset. It was the first sign
of the conservative waves that would arrive in 1964 and 1966.