Union Party (United States) - Demise of The Union Party

Demise of The Union Party

The Union Party was disbanded shortly after the 1936 elections. Presidential nominee Lemke continued to serve in Congress as a Republican, eventually dying in office while serving an eighth term. Father Coughlin announced his retirement from the airwaves immediately after the disappointing returns of the 1936 election, but returned to the air within a couple of months; upon U.S. entry into World War II, the Roman Catholic Church ordered Father Coughlin to retire from the airwaves and return to his duties as a parish priest, and he died in obscurity in 1979. Townsend, already quite elderly, saw his movement largely supplanted by the enactment of Social Security the next year and also largely became quite obscure afterwards, although he lived until 1960. Smith became even more of a radical fringe figure who eventually became an early proponent of Holocaust denial. He died in 1976.