In contrast, Hoover, while a member of the Republican Party, which had long been discredited in the South and Southwest because of the Reconstruction experience, was a native of Iowa, one of the most rural states in the union. He was a Protestant who openly and forcefully supported Prohibition. Unlike Smith, he was untainted by any association with machine politics. Rather, his character and reputation seemed sterling. He had saved Europe from starvation in the aftermath of World War I by leading a volunteer relief campaign, he was a self-made millionaire, and, as secretary of commerce from 1921 to 1928, had helped produce the current economic boom. J. Frank Norris, a leading fundamentalist pastor in Texas, campaigned across the state on behalf of Hoover saying that the only real issue in the campaign was Smith's Catholicism. Norris and others painted dire pictures of the future should Smith be victorious. The pope would actually be running the country and very quickly separation of church and state and freedom of religion would be relics of America's distant past.