There are no members of the John Birch Society that I know of who are currently serving in Congress. The closest I think we get is Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has appeared at their events and gotten sky-high scores from their “Freedom Index”. Although no senator has been known to be a member of the John Birch Society, there are seven representatives I have found who at one time or another were members.
James Simpson Jr. – Robert Welch recruited this one-time conservative representative from Chicago suburbs to the John Birch Society’s National Council in early 1960, but he died only weeks later (Peterson, 177). Simpson, who only served in the first two years of FDR’s first term, voted against most of the New Deal, but voted for gold confiscation in 1934. His emphasis seemed to be on less spending in all. Simpson also voted for the investigation into the racially discriminatory practices of the House restaurant.
DW-Nominate: 0.435
Howard Buffett – The father of Warren Buffett was quite a conservative indeed, being staunchly anti-New and Fair Deal as well as being a consistent non-interventionist, opposing Greek-Turkish Aid in 1947 and the Marshall Plan in 1948. Although the John Birch Society opposed the major civil rights laws of the 1960s and regarded the civil rights movement as a communist plot, Buffett is on record having voted to ban the poll tax thrice: in 1943, 1945, and 1947. He also voted for the anti-discrimination Powell Amendment to the school lunch bill in 1946 and to kill a segregated VA hospital in 1951.
ADA (modified): 8%
DW-Nominate: 0.686
Edgar Hiestand – A California representative who was in the John Birch Society while he was serving in Congress. Serving from 1953 to 1963, Hiestand was staunchly conservative and Americans for Constitutional Action only records him as having voted against their positions twice, both in 1960. On civil rights, he has something of a mixed record. While he voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1960, extending the Civil Rights Commission, and anti-discrimination riders, he paired against final passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and voted against banning the poll tax in 1962. He was defeated for reelection in his normally Republican district in 1962 on account of his association with JBS.
ACA (modified): 97%
ADA (modified): 12%
DW-Nominate: 0.49
John Rousselot – Easily the most successful of the John Birchers in Congress. An advertising executive by profession, Rousselot was the PR point man for the JBS. He served in the 87th Congress (1961-63) but was defeated for reelection on account of his association with JBS. However, Rousselot was again elected in 1970 after the death of Glen Lipscomb and would serve until 1983. During this time, he was a rising star in the conservative movement and with Bob Bauman and Phil Crane was a leading pusher of conservative initiatives in Congress. As freshman Representative Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) stated in 1979, “Rousselot and Bauman are the real leaders of the opposition party. They dominate the floor more than the real leadership does and sometimes they do it despite the Republican leadership” (Russell & Baker). Rousselot’s record on civil rights was mostly negative. Although he voted to fund the Civil Rights Commission in 1961, prohibiting racial discrimination in the extension of credit (only three representatives voted against this one) and voted for minority set-asides in government contracting in 1980, he voted against banning the poll tax in 1962, the Equal Rights Amendment in 1971, against strengthening fair housing laws in 1980, and in 1975 and 1981 opposed extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Rousselot’s downfall was crossing powerful Congressman Phil Burton of San Francisco by recruiting a strong challenger for the San Francisco and Marin County based Congressional district held by his brother, John, for the 1980 election. Burton got Rousselot redistricted into a majority Latino district, and he was defeated. Afterwards an advisor to President Reagan, his effort to return to Congress in 1992 was unsuccessful on account of his connections to savings & loan firms.
ACA (modified): 97%
ADA (modified): 6%
DW-Nominate: 0.601
John G. Schmitz, R-Calf. – Like with Rousselot, I have written about this guy before. Schmitz was, in short, extremely offensive, sometimes hilariously so. He was relentlessly conservative in his voting and was even kicked out of the JBS. I cannot find an instance of Schmitz voting for a civil rights measure.
ACA (modified): 99%
ADA (modified): 10%
DW-Nominate: 0.896
Larry McDonald, D-Ga. – Without question the most conservative Democrat to sit in Congress, McDonald was chairman of the John Birch Society in his last year of life, dying with the rest of the shot down KAL 007.
ACA (modified): 98%
ADA (modified): 5%
DW-Nominate: 0.884
Albert Lee Smith, R-Ala. – Smith was a member of the JBS before running for Congress in 1980. He had defeated for renomination John Hall Buchanan, who grown increasingly moderate in past few years. Smith, a staunch conservative, was not a good fit for the Birmingham-based district as it was constituted, as he only lasted a single term, being defeated for reelection by moderate Democrat Ben Erdreich, who held the seat for ten years until a majority-black district was carved out of much of the district’s territory, making the 6th far more Republican. Smith voted for extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 1981.
ACA (modified): 90%
ADA (modified): 3%
DW-Nominate: 0.461
References
ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.
Retrieved from
https://adaction.org/ada-voting-records/
Peterson, M.P. (1966). The Ideology of the John Birch Society. All Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 7982.
Retrieved from
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9125&context=etd
Russell, M. & Baker, D.P. (1979, May 14). Bob Bauman, Modern House Watchdog. The Washington Post.
Retrieved from
To Agree to H.Res. 236…Govtrack.
Retrieved from
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 