NAM Executive VP Charles Sligh Calls for Business Political Mobilization to Build Conservative Coalition

National Association of Manufacturers Executive Vice President Charles R. Sligh Jr. delivers speeches in late 1958 calling for businessmen to become more involved in politics to build a “conservative coalition,” including presentations titled “This Is Public Affairs for the Businessman” (December 5, 1958) and “Like It or Not, We’re in Politics” (October 31, 1958). By the late 1950s, following the Republican electoral losses of 1958, Sligh begins systematically exhorting businessmen to increase political engagement as NAM’s rhetoric becomes increasingly identified with conservatism. The speeches mark a strategic pivot for NAM toward explicit political mobilization of the business community, thirteen years before the Powell Memo supposedly awakens corporate political consciousness.

Sligh’s passion for business catches national attention in the early 1950s when capitalists recruit him to join NAM—he serves as chairman of NAM’s taxation committee, vice president of the Michigan-Ohio region in 1952, president of NAM from December 1952 to December 1953, and chairman of the NAM Executive Board before accepting a paid position as Executive Vice President in 1957 (while remaining Chairman of the Board of Sligh Furniture Company until 1988). Under Sligh’s leadership, NAM becomes a main entity behind pro-business propaganda campaigns, with Sligh emerging as what observers describe as “an apologist for Christian capitalism” who links business interests with religious and patriotic appeals.

Sligh’s late 1950s speeches calling for conservative coalition building occur during a critical period of NAM organizational restructuring. Between 1958 and 1975, according to scholarly analysis in the Business History Review, a combination of organizational changes peculiar to NAM and political pressures from both right and left lead NAM to adopt and maintain a militaristic posture. In the late 1950s, a decline in NAM membership results in a takeover by larger corporations which purge the board of its ultraconservative leadership—the reorganized board subsequently establishes a National Defense Committee to promote defense industry membership and by 1962 selects Werner Gullander as the organization’s first full-time permanent president. Sligh’s 1958 exhortations to build a conservative coalition through business political mobilization represent an early articulation of the strategy that becomes standard practice for corporate lobbying organizations throughout the 1960s, demonstrating that systematic calls for business political engagement predate the Powell Memo by more than a decade.