Draft Goldwater Committee

The Draft Goldwater Committee was the organization primarily responsible for engineering the nomination of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater for President of the United States on the 1964 Republican Party ticket.

The effort to draft Goldwater and to secure his nomination began with a secret meeting at a Chicago motel on October 8, 1961. F. Clifton White, a longtime party activist and official from Upstate New York, discussed the possibility of a Goldwater campaign with twenty-two activists, most of them members of Young Republican organizations throughout the U.S. A December meeting (this one attended by Governor Tim Babcock of Montana) determined to divide the country into nine regions for organizing, and to raise sufficient funds to open a national office.

The movement grew to a full-time operation with a Manhattan office opened in the spring of 1962; its address in the Chanin Building gave Clif White the title of his account of the Goldwater campaign, Suite 3505. As the committee's efforts continued throughout 1962, the national press learned of and reported on a meeting that December. White met with Goldwater in January 1963 to discuss their activities; "Goldwater, annoyed by the publicity, chilled White but did not repudiate him outright," wrote journalist Theodore H. White in his Making of the President 1964.

By February 1963, the organization had grown to hundreds of operatives and activists, and its executive committee decided to go public, with the formation of the National Draft Goldwater Committee, headed by Peter O'Donnell, Jr., then chairman of the Texas Republican Party. He soon brought aboard Wirt Yerger, first modern chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party. The first public event was a July 4 rally at the District of Columbia Armory. Dozens of busloads (including 43 from New York State alone) helped deliver a crowd of 7,000 for the event (Goldwater himself did not attend).

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