Max Rafferty, Conservative Firebrand, Made His Name In La Cañada

History constantly repeats itself. Recently we’ve seen in the news a resurgence of the Republican Party linked to the teaching of America’s children in public schools. The same was true in the 1960s. Mary Lou Langdyke of La Cañada’s Lanterman House recently wrote an article about the brief meteoric career of Max Rafferty. He was a big name in conservative political history and had his beginnings in La Cañada.

Most of us of a “certain age” remember Max Rafferty along with Ronald Reagan as being the face of conservatism in California in the ’60s and ’70s. Max Rafferty was an educator, writer and politician who rode the wave of backlash against left-wing politics of that era.

Rafferty got his start in the true backwaters of the California educational system after WWII. Starting as a teacher, he quickly rose through the administrative ranks in various schools in the Mojave Desert. In 1960, La Cañada formed its own school district and began a search for its first superintendent. Rafferty was the first choice based on his six years as superintendent of the school district in Needles, California. He was hired in the summer of 1961 and on June 29, 1961 he met with the new school board and a few community members to accept the position.

What was anticipated to be a standard, ho-hum acceptance speech turned out to be a defining moment for Max Rafferty and for conservative educational philosophy. His acceptance speech was titled “The Passing of the Patriot.” In it he criticized education, which he felt was corrupted by Communist influence, and he actually linked current educational standards to the potential downfall of our nation. According to Rafferty, we had lost our way as a nation and only a return to teaching past national glories in schools could revive us. (Somewhat on the order of “Make America Great Again.”) He advocated for an educational philosophy that was rooted in American patriotism and a return to an educational curriculum based in the American classics, memorization and rote learning. He laid the blame for social ills directly at the feet of public education, citing “youngsters growing up to become booted, side-burned, duck-tailed, unwashed, leather-jacketed slobs, whose favorite sport is ravaging little girls and stomping polio victims to death … These spineless, luxury-loving spiritless creeps came right out of our classrooms.” Harsh words, but they resonated in conservative La Cañada.

His half-hour speech hit the small crowd like a lightning bolt, and the thunder from that lightning was heard across the nation. The speech went, as we would say today, viral. It was distributed as a pamphlet and reprinted everywhere, including Reader’s Digest. Rafferty’s fame quickly ramped up in conservative circles. In the fall of that year, 1961, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction announced his retirement and by December a “Draft Max Rafferty” movement was in high gear.

Rafferty had barely warmed his office chair in La Cañada. Politically he was moving fast, based almost entirely on his “Passing of the Patriot” speech six months earlier. Rafferty stayed in his La Cañada post long enough for a bond measure to pass for a new high school. In April 1962, he resigned from his La Cañada job and in November was elected to the state superintendent post. He had been in La Cañada for less than a year. He had little influence on the La Cañada School District itself, but in his time there he had gone from a nobody to a household name.

Rafferty served two contentious terms as state superintendent under the equally conservative governor Ronald Reagan. He ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. senate seat and, after defeat for a third term as state superintendent, he moved to Alabama, where he campaigned for George Wallace’s Presidential run. He remained an important spokesman for the far right, but died in a car accident in 1982.

Max Rafferty was part of the genesis of a historic far right movement that took Ronald Reagan to the White House – what some historians today call the “Reagan Revolution.”

It all started with a half hour speech in La Cañada.