William Leach Spicer (October 10, 1918 – September 23, 1991) was a businessman from Fort Smith, Arkansas, who from 1962 to 1964 was the embattled state chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party.
Originally supported for the position by Winthrop Rockefeller of Morrilton, Spicer soon broke with Rockefeller, the party's key financial backer, over matters of policy issues and party function. Spicer declined to seek reelection as the chairman, but he had resisted intraparty calls that he resign before his term ended in August 1964. He suggested that he could support a "Republicans for Faubus" organization against Rockefeller's gubernatorial bid in 1964, but he remained committed to Republican presidential nominee Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, whom Rockefeller supported once Goldwater was nominated.
Background
A native of Yell County in western Arkansas, Spicer was the only child of William Jacob Spicer (1893–1979), a Methodist minister for sixty-four years, and the former Ora Leach (1896–1989), hence his middle name. The couple married in 1917 in Logan County, Arkansas. William J. and Ora Spicer are interred at Oak Hill Memorial Cemetery in Booneville in Logan County. Spicer's paternal grandparents were Monroe Moses Spicer (1876–1926) and the former Delia C. Cummings (1873–1957); they are interred at Stony Point Cemetery, also in Logan County.
In the 1930 census, Spicer was living with his parents in Woodruff County in eastern Arkansas. In the 1940 census, Spicer, then twenty-one, was listed as residing still with his parents in Wynne in Cross County, also in eastern Arkansas, where his father, then forty-six, was a pastor. In 1946, Spicer married the former Freda Cowell in Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, possibly while having been on military duty during World War II. The couple had three children, David, Michael, and Sarah Spicer. Mrs. Spicer died in Australia in 1983.
The owner of a chain of drive-in theaters, Spicer in 1956 challenged the incumbent Democrat James William Trimble of Berryville for Arkansas's 3rd congressional district seat and received 34,318 votes (38.7 percent) to Trimble's 54,281 (61.3 percent). Spicer carried Newton and Searcy counties but lost his own Sebastian County, where he polled 46.7 percent of the ballots. Spicer finished six percentage points behind the 1952 Republican congressional candidate, John H. "Jack" Joyce, an attorney from Fayetteville and a fighter pilot in World War II who in that campaign opposed the continuation of the Korean War.,
Spicer's fellow Republican, Ben C. Henley, a lawyer from Harrison in Boone County, also in northwestern Arkansas, ran that year against U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright but finished with only 17 percent of the vote.
Spicer as chairman
When Ben Henley, stepped down in 1962 as the state Republican chairman, Rockefeller publicly endorsed Spicer for the position. At the time Spicer faced opposition in the central committee from Henry M. Britt of Hot Springs, the party's 1960 gubernatorial nominee against Orval Faubus and an attorney and later a judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court. Upon his election as chairman in a bid for party unity, Spicer named Britt as the Republican general counsel. Though in the 1950s, Spicer and Britt had supported Dwight D. Eisenhower, by 1963 they were early backers of Goldwater. Spicer called himself a "conservative Republican. I am opposed to socialism and these liberal pinkos in every form and fashion."
Spicer and Britt expected to control federal patronage through the state party committee and were unwilling to cede authority to Rockefeller, who had been since 1961 the state's Republican national committeeman. Within months of his becoming chairman, Spicer was engaged in bitter political attacks on Winthrop Rockefeller. The cause of the disagreement between and the Spicer-Britt forces was related to both patronage and differences in partisan philosophy. Spicer had wanted Rockefeller's party-building activities coordinated through what he called the "state organization."