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{{Infobox person
|name=Howard Jay Phillips
(Leading figure of the conservative movement in American politics)
|birth_date=February 3, 1941
|birth_place=[[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]], [[United States|USA]]
|death_date=April 20, 2013 (aged 72)
|death_place=Vienna, [[Virginia]]
'''Resting place'':<br>
Saint John the Apostle Catholic Cemetery in Leesburg in Loudon County, Virginia
|party=[[Republican Party|Republican]] (before 1974)
[[Democratic Party|Democrat]] (1974-1991)
[[Constitution Party]] (1991-2013)
|spouse=Margaret Elizabeth Blanchard Phillips (married 1964–2013, his death)<br>
'''Children''':<br>
Douglas, Amanda, Bradley, Elizabeth Amanda Lants, Jennifer. and Alexandra Phillips<br>
'''Parents''':<br>
Eighteen grandchildren<br>
Frederick and Gertrude Goldberg Phillips<br>
'''Alma mater''':<br>
[[Harvard University]]
|religion=[[Jewish]] convert to Evangelical [[Christianity]] (1970s)
|website=howardphillips.com
}}
'''Howard Jay Phillips''' (February 3, 1941 April 20, 2013) was a three-time [[United States|American]] [[U.S. President|presidential]] candidate who served as the chairman of [[The Conservative Caucus]], a [[conservative]] public policy advocacy group founded in Warrenton, [[Virginia]], which he founded in 1974. Phillips was also a founder of the [[U.S. Taxpayers Party]], which in 2000 became known as the [[Constitution Party]].
==Background==
Phillips was born into a [[Jewish]] family in the Brighton neighborhood of [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]]; his father, Frederick Phillips was an [[insurance]] agent; his mother, the former Gertrude Goldberg, a homemaker,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.issues2000.org/Profile_Howard_Phillips.htm Profile of Howard Phillips]|title=Profile of Howard Phillips|publisher=Issues2000.org|accessdate=June 6, 2020}}</ref> but he converted to evangelical [[Christianity]] as an adult in the 1970s. A 1962 graduate of [[Harvard College]] in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]], Massachusetts, he was twice elected chairman of the student union. He was also the president of Policy Analysis, Inc., a public policy research organization which publishes the bimonthly ''Issues and Strategy Bulletin.'' He resigned in 2011 as chairman of The Conservative Caucus.
Phillips resided in Fairfax County, [[Virginia]], in the [[Washington, D.C.]], [[suburb]]s with his wife, the former Margaret "Peggy" Elizabeth Blanchard, and their three sons, Douglas, Bradford and Samuel, and three daughters Elizabeth Amanda Lants, Alexandra, and Jennifer; and 18 grandchildren.<ref name=nyt/>
==Career==
During the Nixon Administration, Phillips headed the Office of Economic Opportunity, but he resigned in the spring of 1973, when Nixon, starting his second abbreviated term as president, declined to [[veto]] [[Great Society]] social programs launched by his [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] predecessor, [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], who had been the successful vice-presidential candidate in 1960 against Nixon's running mate, [[Moderate Republican]] [[Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.]], of Massachusetts. Phillips was hopeful that Nixon could move the country to the right. He investigated spending on many federal programs and found that the money was being diverted to [[liberal]] advocacy groups. Nixon, however, felt forced to yield to the large Democratic majorities in Congress, whose members backed the Great Society.<ref name=nyt>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/us/politics/howard-j-phillips-dies-72-stalwart-conservative.html?_r=0|title=Howard J. Phillips Dies, 72; Stalwart Conservative|publisher=''[[The New York Times]]''|date=April 23, 2013|author=Bruce Weber|accessdate=June 6, 2020}}</ref> In fact, after Phillips resigned from the OEO, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit subsequently voided the Phillips appointment on the grounds that the law establishing the office did not specifically permit the president o make an interim appointment. <ref>{{cite web|url=http://openjurist.org/482/f2d/669/williams-v-j-phillips |title=482 F2d 669 Williams v. J Phillips |publisher=OpenJurist|accessdate=April 22, 2013}}</ref>
Phillips was present in 1960 at the age of nineteen at the launching of [[William F. Buckley, Jr.]]'s [[Young Americans for Freedom]], the group which drafted the "Sharon Statement" of unyielding conservative principles in Sharon, [[Connecticut]]. In 1968, he managed the successful senatorial campaign of Moderate Republican [[Richard Schweiker]] in [[Pennsylvania]], later a member of the Reagan [[Cabinet]]. After working in nearly all facets for the Republican Party, Phillips switched to the Democrat label in 1974 and that same year established the nonpartisan grass-roots public policy organization, the Conservative Caucus, which he chaired from its inception until 2011.. The caucus opposed the transfer of the [[Panama Canal]] to the Republic of Panama, a measure pushed to passage by U.S. President [[Jimmy Carter]]. It also fought the [[SALT II]] treaty with [[Leonid Brezhnev]], leader of the Soviet Union, which it claimed would weaken American defenses in the [[Cold War]]. The caucus supported [[Ronald Reagan]]'s [[Strategic Defense Initiative]] and the tax reductions of the 1980s. In 1978, Phillips ran as an unsuccessful Democratic [[primary]] candidate for the [[United States Senate]] seat held by the Moderate Republican [[Edward Brooke]], the first [[African-American]] in the body since [[Reconstruction]], who supported the Great Society. Brooke was renominated but then unseated by the Democrat [[liberal]] Paul Tsongas, who later attracted national attention as an unsuccessful challenger to [[Bill Clinton]] in the 1992 Democratic presidential primaries.<ref name=nyt/>
In 1982, Phillips and the [[Houston, Texas|Houston]] political activist [[Clymer Wright]] urged Reagan to dismiss [[James A. Baker, III]], a Houston [[attorney]] and close ally of then Vice President [[George Herbert Walker Bush]]. Reagan rejected the Wright-Phillips request, and in 1985, named Baker as [[United States Secretary of the Treasury]], at Baker's request in a job-swap with then Secretary [[Donald T. Regan]], a former [[Merrill Lynch]] officer who became chief of staff. Reagan also rebuked Phillips and Wright for waging a "campaign of sabotage" against Baker.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/05/us/briefing-186924.html|author=Phil Gailey and Warren Weaver, Jr.,|title=Briefing|publisher=''The New York Times''|date=June 5, 1982|accessdate=January 27, 2011}}</ref>
The fight against Baker was not Phillips' first clash with Reagan. The year before in 1981, he and his friend, the Reverend [[Jerry Falwell]] of Lynchburg, Virginia, opposed the fateful nomination of Moderate Republican [[Sandra Day O'Connor]] of [[Arizona] to the [[United States Supreme Court]] in order to fulfill Reagan's campaign promise that he would appoint the first woman to the high court. According to Phillips, "People say you can't tell how a Supreme Court nominee will turn out once on the bench. I respectfully disagree. In most cases, it's very clear. I opposed the nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor because it was very clear that she had a pro-[[abortion]] record in the Arizona State Senate and as a state court judge. She was also allied with [[Planned Parenthood]]."<ref name=dflynn>{{cite web|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120103215640/http://www.flynnfiles.com/blog/phillips/phillips1.htm|title=Interview with Howard Phillips|author=Daniel J. Flynn|publisher=Flynnfiles.com|date=January 3, 2012|accessdate=April 22, 2013}}</ref>
In 1990, Phillips opposed the first President Bush's nomination of [[David Souter]] of [[New Hampshire]] to the high court.<ref name="lion"/> Phillips said that he opposed Souter because "I read his senior thesis at Harvard in which he said he was a egal positivist and one of his heroes was [[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.]], and that he rejected all higher law theories, such as those spelled out in our [[United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence]]. In addition, he was a trustee of two hospitals: Dartmouth Hitchcock and Concord Memorial. He successfully changed the policy of those two hospitals from zero abortion to convenience abortion."<ref name=dflynn/>
Phillips strongly opposed the since modified [[North American Free Trade Agreement]] (NAFTA) and the [[World Trade Organization]. He supported a national version of [[California]]'s Proposition 187 in 1994, which sought to end mandated subsidies for [[illegal aliens]]. He fought public funding of abortion and opposed the [homosexual]] agnda. Phillips was the host of ''Conservative Roundtable,'' a weekly public affairs [[television]] program. More so than not, his positions did not come to political fruition.
Phillips played an instrumental role in the founding of the Religious Right in the 1970s. Phillips and fellow conservatives [[Richard Viguerie]], known as the innovator of direct mail in the 1964 political campaign, [[Paul Weyrich]] of [[The Heritage Foundation]], and Terry Dolan (1950-1986), founder of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, urged the Reverend [[Jerry Falwell]], pastor of the large Liberty Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, to form in 1979 the since disbanded [[Moral Majority]]. He later founded the [[Council for National Policy]] with another conservative minister, [[Tim LaHaye]], a group akin to the liberal [[Council on Foreign Relations]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090502114628/https://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6949&abbr=cs_|title=Who Is The Council For National Policy And What Are They Up To? And Why Don't They Want You To Know?|publisher=Americans United |accessdate=December 31, 2018}}</ref>
===U.S. Taxpayers Party/Constitution Party===
Phillips was one of the founders of the U.S. Taxpayers Party , which changed its name in 1996 to the Constitution Party. Phillips first campaigned for president in 1992, when he refused to support the re-election of George H. W. Bush in the race against [[Bill Clinton]] of Arkansas. He finished in seventh place in the popular vote with 43,369 votes (0.04 percent).<ref>[http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1992&minper=0&f=0&off=0&elect=0 "1992 Presidential General Election Results"], uselectionatlas.org.</ref>
In 1996, Phillips was nominated by the U.S. Taxpayers Party, in [[San Diego], California, where the Republicans also met to nominate the unsuccessful [[Bob Dole]]-[[Jack Kemp]] ticket. Phillips finished sixth with 184,656 votes (0.19 percent).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1996&minper=0&f=0&off=0&elect=0|title= 1996 Presidential General Election Results|publsisher=Uselectionatlas.org|accessdate=June 6, 2020}}</ref>
In 2000, Phillips ran as the Constitution Party nominee against [[Moderate Republican]] [[George W. Bush]] and [[Al Gore], the vice-president under Bill Clinton. In that contest, Phillips received 98,020 votes (0.1 percent).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm |title=2000 official presidential general election results|publisher=Federal Election Commission|accessdate=June 6, 2020}}</ref>
==Death==
Phillips died at his home in Vienna, Virginia, on April 20, 2013 at the age of 72 after a battle with frontotemporal dementia and [[Alzheimer's disease]].<ref name="activist"/><ref name="stalwart"/> A private service was held on April 29, 2013,<ref name="lion"/> The officiating pastor [[Chuck Baldwin]], had been the 2008 Constitution Party presidential nominee who opposed [[John McCain]] and [[Barack Obama]], and later [[Donald Trump]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/baldwin/130426|author=[[Chuck Baldwin]]|title=A Great Man Has Fallen|publisher=renewamerica.com|accessdate=April 26, 2013}}</ref>
He is interred at Saint John the Apostle Catholic Cemetery in Leesburg in Loudon County, Virginia.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/209352133/howard-jay-phillips |title=Howard Jay Phillips|publisher=Findagrave.com|accessdate=June 6, 2020}}</ref>
==Selected writings==
* ''The New Right at Harvard'' (1983)
* ''Moscow's Challenge to U.S. Vital Interests in Sub-Saharan Africa'' (1987)
* ''The Next Four Years'' (1992)
* ''Judicial Tyranny: The New Kings of America?'' (Amerisearch, 2005) {{ISBN|0-9753455-6-7}} – ''contributing author'*'
[http://howardphillips.com Howard Phillips' Blog]
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Phillips Howard}}
[[Category:Massachusetts]]
[[Category:Virginia]]
[[Category:Activists]]
[[Category:American Authors]]
[[Category:Conservatives]]
[[Category:Constitution Party]]
[[Category:Former Democrats]]
[[Category:Anti-Communism]]
[[Category:Pro-Life]]
[[Category:Christians]]