In the role of executive secretary of Young Americans for Freedom Viguerie gained relationships with William F. Buckley, William A. Rusher, Frank Meyer, and other conservative intellectuals. Viguerie later recalled that inspired by these thinkers "I tried to get as caught up as I could in the classics of conservative thought, but it didn't take long for me to realize I’d never really catch up. ...realized what we didn’t have were marketers. I made a conscious decision to fill that niche—that hole in the marketplace—by immersing myself in the study of marketing for the next 10 years." That year, F. Clifton White began travelling the nation exhorting conservatives to gain control of their local Republican Party organizations so they could elect conservative delegates to the Republican National Convention during the next electoral season. This effort helped convince Goldwater to run for President and gave the conservatives a voice in the party that they felt had been deflected in 1952 when the popular Eisenhower had been selected over the conservative Taft.