William A. Rusher ’44

Known as the “conservative’s champion,” Bill Rusher died April 16, 2011, after a long illness in San Francisco, where he had lived for 22 years.

He graduated from Princeton in May 1943 after majoring in politics and rooming with Stan Cleveland, Ho Marchant, and Konrad Mueller, all members of Court Club. Bill was executive secretary of Whig-Clio and won the Freshman Debating Prize. After three years in the Army Air Corps, from which he separated as a captain, he earned a Harvard Law School degree and worked for seven years in New York.  

William F. Buckley hired him to become publisher of the National Review, where he worked for 31 years. A nationally known conservative, he wrote five books, lectured widely, regularly appeared on radio and TV, and was influential in the Republican presidential nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Unsuccessful in starting a new political party of conservative Republicans and Democrats — the New Majority Party — he became an adviser in Ronald Reagan’s first campaign. Late in his career, he became a senior fellow with the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. For 36 years he wrote a syndicated newspaper column called “The Conservative Advocate.”  

Bill, who never married, left no immediate survivors.