Ezra Taft Benson, May 3, 1966

-- May 3, 1966
... a founding member of the John Birch Society, has called for the conservatives to unite behind Ezra Taft Benson as their candidate for president in 1968... the matter had been discussed with Benson and Sen. J. Strom Thurmond, D - S.C., whom the new committee wants to run for Vice President. ... (1)


-- 3 May 1966
With Benson's permission, three weeks after the April 1966 general conference a national committee announced that it was preparing a campaign to elect him U.S. president in 1968. As part of its ten-year plan, this "1976 Committee" nominated Strom Thurmond, conservative U.S. senator from South Carolina, as Benson's vice-presidential running mate.

A former state coordinator wrote that Birch president Robert Welch "was the guiding light behind" this 1976 Committee [to elect Benson president].

National leaders of the Birch Society comprised 59 percent of this committee, including its chair and two vice-chairs. Most other committee members were probably lower-ranking Birchers.

Benson's 1976 Committee was a classic demonstration of Welch's philosophy of creating "fronts"--organizations that merely had the appearance of independence from the Birch Society which formed and directed them.

In effect, the Birch Society was nominating Benson for the White House. (2)


-- May 3, 1966
[Deseret News] Benson told a reporter that he was in "shock" over the committee's proposal. "It's the first I've heard of it," he said. The same newspaper report indicated that "about half of the committee's 30 organizers are members of the Birch Society." (3)


-- 15 May 1966
[T]he nationally distributed Parade Sunday supplement observed: "Ezra Taft Benson has consistently supported the John Birch Society's recruiting drives among Mormons." Without exaggeration, Parade also informed its millions of readers that Benson's political activism "has introduced as a result a divisive element in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." (4)


-- 25 May 1966
Robert H. Hinckley, former assistant secretary of the U.S. commerce department, chair of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, and vice-president of the American Broadcasting Company, criticized the Birch Society in an address to students of the University of Utah. He lambasted the society's "collective slander, which now seems to have become standard operating procedure for some Birchites," and also "the semi-secret chapters that parallel Communist cells, the use of front groups, the tactics of infiltration, [and] the use of the big lie." Hinckley also identified Ezra Taft Benson as part of the "leadership of the Right Wing" in America. The full text of this assessment appeared in the Congressional Record in June 1966. (5)


-- 27 May 1966
Benson to Robert H. Hinckley, 27 May 1966: "I cannot believe that a man with your background and experience would make the errors attributed to you in the attached item from the Deseret News of May 25th" (6)



-- 9 Aug 1966
In August 1966, Hugh B. Brown told two BYU professors that Benson had "a letter from President McKay endorsing his candidacy." Brown said "it would rip the Church apart" if Benson released the letter to the public as part of the presidential campaign.

Of this, Benson's biographer tells the following. As early as October 1965 Benson had asked the church president for permission to campaign as U.S. presidential candidate. McKay told him not to campaign actively but did not require him to decline the efforts of others to draft him as a presidential candidate. Benson decided to withhold knowledge of any of these discussions from his own quorum which learned of his possible presidential candidacy from the newspaper announcement in May 1966. (8)


-- Mar-Sept 1966
Benson endorsed the Birch Society during his talks at stake conferences and preached Birch themes in general conference sermons. In fact, Benson's official biographer calculated that during the decade of the 1960s "fifteen of his twenty general conference addresses [or 75 percent] focused on one or more of these [political] topics." (9)

Endnotes:
1 - "Benson Eyed as Candidate for President," Daily Telegraph, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, May 3, 1966 (provided by Joe Geisner)
2 - "Presidential Draft for Elder Benson?" in Deseret News, 3 May 1966, A-l; "Group Seeks Benson for Race in '68," Salt Lake Tribune, 3 May 1966, 6; "Benson Hints Door Open In '68 Race," Salt Lake Tribune, 4 May 1966, A-14; Dew, Ezra Taft Benson, 383. Also Epstein and Forster, The Radical Right, 53-55,142; Bethke, "BF (Before Falwell), EB (Ezra Benson)," see additional footnotes in Michael Quinn article. These are referenced in in D. Michael Quinn, "Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26:2 (Summer 1992) and Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power Salt Lake City (Signature Books, 1994), Chapter 3
3 - "Presidential Draft for Elder Benson," Deseret News as referenced in Gregory A. Prince and Wm. Robert Write, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press (2005)
4 - Walter Scott, "Personality Parade," Parade, 15 May 1966 -- as referenced in D. Michael Quinn, "Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26:2 (Summer 1992) and Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power Salt Lake City (Signature Books, 1994), Chapter 3
5 - Robert H. Hinckley, "The Politics of Extremism," in Congressional Record—Senate 112 (13 July 1966): 15584, 15583; "Says Birchers Copy Reds," Deseret News, 25 May 1966, A-12; "Hinckley Blasts Extremists," Provo Daily Herald, 25 May 1966, 14. These are referenced in in D. Michael Quinn, "Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26:2 (Summer 1992) and Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power Salt Lake City (Signature Books, 1994), Chapter 3
6 - folder 2, box 124, Hinckley Papers -- as referenced in D. Michael Quinn, "Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26:2 (Summer 1992) and Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power Salt Lake City (Signature Books, 1994), Chapter 3

8 - Brown interview by Richard Wirthlin and Ray Hillam, 9 Aug. 1966,3, transcribed 11 Oct. 1966 "from Rough Draft Notes," folder 6, Hillam Papers, and box 34, Buerger Papers; Dew, Ezra Taft Benson, 383-84, 386, 392-93. These are referenced in in D. Michael Quinn, "Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26:2 (Summer 1992) and Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power Salt Lake City (Signature Books, 1994), Chapter 3
9 - Dew, Ezra Taft Benson, 366-67 -- as referenced in D. Michael Quinn, "Ezra Taft Benson and Mormon Political Conflicts", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26:2 (Summer 1992) and Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power Salt Lake City (Signature Books, 1994), Chapter 3

LDS History Chronology: Ezra Taft Benson

Mormon History Timeline: the life of Ezra Taft Benson
http://lds-church-history.blogspot.com/