1972 Scarce Richard Nixon "Young Voters for the President" Signed & Numbered Poster

How he came to possess the posters requires building a bit of a 'family political tree' courtesy of Gary Burhop.   

Ken Reitz was the young campaign manager for Tennessee Congressman Bill Brock in Brock's 1970 race versus Albert Gore, Sr. for United States Senate.  Brock won.  Reitz became a political campaign consultant.  The 1972 election was the first election in which 18 to 20 year olds could vote.  The widespread assumption was that they would all vote for Democrats.  Brock and a few other strategic thinking Republican members of Congress felt the Repubs couldn't afford not to campaign for the 'youth vote.'  Among the 'youth vote leaders' were Brock, Bill Archer  (Texas, now retired), Bill Seiger (Wisconsin, now deceased) and surprisingly Lowell Weicker. 

Brock, still close to Reitz, enlisted him to create a plan that they presented to Nixon, Haldeman and Mitchell.   With Mitchell's buy-in the 'plan' eventually became Young Voters for the President.  Reitz ran the YVP.  His deputy was a guy from Tennessee named Tom Bell who had worked for Reitz in the '70 Brock campaign.   

Post '72 election, Tom Bell was going to be Bill Brock's AA (the title of Chief of Staff had not been invented (the Senate recognized two positions, Administrative Assistant and Clerk) and prepare for the 1976 reelection campaign.  Tom Bell recruited me to Brock's Senate office by mid-1973.  Tom returned to Tennessee to organize and run the campaign and I assumed his position.  The rest as they say is history...Watergate, Brock as '73-'74 chair of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee saved Bob Dole but not much else as Republicans overall incurred significant losses in 1974 and ultimately the-where-did- he-come-from Jimmy Carter candidacy and '76 election win.  Brock lost to Jim Sasser.  

I had to close the Brock Senate office which entailed stuff to the National Archives, stuff to storage in Chattanooga, and more.  Among the many things not destined for Chattanooga (Brock's home town) were stuff Tom Bell had brought from the YVP days and left - read posters, cufflinks, buttons and more and Gerald Ford Vice President pens, which we had for Brock as Senatorial Campaign chair to give away, but obviously few were distributed in that manner.  When we  moved to Memphis in 1977, all that stuff moved with us and went to the attic where it remained for nearly 50 years until I enlisted Lori Ferber Collectibles to sell it.