Word: finches
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Born in Tempe, Ariz., a little agricultural town south of Phoenix, Finch was introduced early to political life by his father, a cotton farmer and one of a handful of Republicans in the state legislature. Three bad harvests in a row forced a move across the state line, and in 1930 Robert Finch Sr. took a job as a sales manager in San Francisco. Two years later, the family transferred to Southern California, where his son has lived ever since. Young Bob was deeply influenced by his father, and when he died of cancer in 1941, Finch struck out almost...
After a stint at the Quantico Marine base?he trained as a platoon leader for an invasion of Japan?Finch returned to Occidental. He became student-body president, and married Carol, who had worn his fraternity pin for two years. Even then, recalls classmate Don Muchmore, the California pollster, "he was a practically invincible campaigner because he was?and still is?curious about people and he always wanted to know why they do what they do. The why, in Bob's thinking, has always been as important as the how, and perhaps more...
During his senior year, Finch plunged into the successful congressional campaign of Norris Poulson, later mayor of Los Angeles. Only 21, he went to Washington as Poulson's executive secretary, and soon struck up an acquaintance with another freshman California Congressman down the hall. At the end of the day, Nixon and Finch would talk politics?"war games," in Finch's words?and found that they generally agreed. For Finch, 13 years Nixon's junior, it was, as he recollects, "all very flattering." On Nixon's urging, Finch returned to California two years later to get a law degree from...
With three U.S.C. classmates, Finch formed the law firm of Finch, Bell, Duitsman & Jekel in Inglewood. They were no overnight success. Bell had to moonlight at a dietetic-ice-cream factory; Duitsman worked in the post office; Jekel was a scenic artist at MGM; Finch, who had been called back to the Marine Corps by the Korean War, commuted between Los Angeles and Camp Pendleton, 75 miles distant. However, his congressional campaigns had not been entirely wasted. The publicity brought his fledgling firm more and more work, and by all accounts he was an excellent lawyer. The law, however...
...Finch shepherded George Murphy through his victorious senatorial campaign. Two years later, in 1966, he won his own election as Lieutenant Governor of California, after what then-Aide William Callender calls a "slide-rule precision campaign that for timing, vigor, and calculation was classic." Finch polled the biggest majority any California Republican had ever achieved in a statewide race, and 92,000 more votes than Ronald Reagan received for Governor. As the returns piled up for his first political victory since college, Finch cried: "How sweet it is! How sweet...