PAI - Howard Phillips Bio

Howard Phillips was chosen by an overwhelming majority of delegates at the National Convention of the Constitution Party in St. Louis, Missouri on September 4, 1999 to serve as its Presidential candidate.

Married, with six children ranging in age from 10 to 31, and six grandchildren, Phillips left the Republican Party in 1974 after some two decades of service to the GOP as precinct worker, election warden, campaign manager, Congressional aide, Boston Republican Chairman, and assistant to the Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

During the Nixon Administration, Phillips headed two Federal agencies, ending his Executive Branch career as Director of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity in the Executive Office of the President, a position from which he resigned when President Nixon reneged on his commitment to veto further funding for "Great Society" programs.

Since 1974, Phillips has been Chairman of The Conservative Caucus, a non-partisan, nationwide grass-roots public policy advocacy group which has been in the thick of battles, in opposition to the Panama Canal and Carter-Brezhnev SALT II treaties in the 1970s, in support of SDI and major tax reductions during the 1980s, and in the vanguard of efforts to terminate Federal subsidies to ideological activist groups under the banner of "defunding the Left."

Other Conservative Caucus campaigns have involved opposition to NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, support for a national version of California's Proposition 187 (to end mandated subsidies for illegal aliens), as well as continuing efforts to oppose socialized medicine, abortion, and special rights for homosexuals.

A 1962 graduate of Harvard College (where he was twice elected president of the Student Council), Phillips is president of Policy Analysis, Inc., a public policy research organization which publishes the bimonthly Issues and Strategy Bulletin.

During the 1970s and '80s, Phillips coordinated efforts to build private sector support for anti-Communist freedom fighters in Central America and southern Africa. He played an instrumental role in the leadership of the New Right, as well as in the founding of the religious right in 1977. Phillips has led fact-finding missions to Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, South America, Central America, Western Europe, and the Far East.

He has published three books: The New Right at Harvard (1983), Moscow's Challenge to U.S. Vital Interests in Sub-Saharan Africa (1987), and The Next Four Years (1992).

Phillips, his wife, Peggy, and their immediate family reside in Fairfax County, Virginia.