A non-partisan political action committee, Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA) was founded on June 27, 1958 for the purpose of supporting constitutional conservatives in United States congressional elections. ACA's political action program included providing candidates with paid, fulltime field workers; subsidizing specific campaign activities and workers; coordinating special fundraising activities on behalf of selected candidates; and furnishing research, speeches, and endorsements. ACA based its endorsements of incumbents on their ratings in the ACA Index, an analysis of congressional voting records published biennially beginning in 1960.
The founders and initial officers of ACA included Chairman of its Board of Trustees Admiral Ben Moreell, U.S.N. (Ret.), former president and chairman of the board of Jones and Laughlin Steel; Vice Chairman Henning Prentice, chairman of the board of Armstrong Cork; Treasurer Charles Edison, chairman of the board of McGraw-Edison Electric Company and former governor of New Jersey; and Recording Secretary Owen Brewster, former United States senator from Maine. In 1965 General Thomas A. Lane, U.S.A. (Ret.) assumed the new position of ACA president. Charles A. McManus, ACA executive director, succeeded Lane as president in 1969. Between 1958 and 1971 other ACA trustees included former United States President Herbert Hoover, former American Bar Association president Loyd Wright, former American Medical Association president Walter Martin, Sears, Roebuck, and Company chairman General Robert E. Wood, U.S.A. (Ret.), physician Edgar Eisenhower, former Framm Corporation president and board chairman Steven B. Wilson, political scientist and former Human Events publisher Felix Morley, journalist Ralph de Toledano, and actors Walter Brennan and John Wayne.
ACA began its field program in the summer of 1958 with a pilot project supporting conservative candidates in West Virginia's twin United States Senate races. In late 1958 and early 1959 ACA mounted a nationwide fund-raising campaign to finance field activities in the 1960 elections. The Committee for the Forty-Eight States, a political education committee independent of and older than ACA, helped organize early ACA fundraising activities and provided direct financial aid to the new organization. In the 1960 elections ACA supplied intensive assistance to 52 candidates and other aid to more than 100 additional candidates, a level of activity increased in each election through the end of the decade. In 1968, for example, ACA participated in 268 election campaigns.
ACA's chapter program began in 1961 with the granting of a charter to the Alabama chapter. More than 45 local chapters in more than 20 states were active through 1969. Chapter activities included participation in state and local election campaigns, ratings of state legislators' voting records, and other activities beyond the scope of the national organization.
