When a populist outsider roils a party and mobilizes voters 

What’s new about a persuasive progressive upsetting the Democratic Party while mobilizing thousands of passionate voters to the party’s rolls? Well, where today stands Bernie Sanders once stood Upton Sinclair – resident of Pasadena and Monrovia.

By 1934, 51-year-old Sinclair was one of America’s best known and most celebrated writers. His 1906 novel The Jungle prompted regulation of the meat packing industry, and his Socialist views struck a populist chord during the tumultuous decades between the World Wars.

At the depths of the Great Depression, with more than 700,000 Californians unemployed as thousands arrived from other states looking for work, poverty became the key issue in the California gubernatorial contest. 

EPIC utopia

In 1933, Sinclair re-registered as a Democrat while preparing his bid for governor. Sinclair had twice unsuccessfully run as a Socialist Party candidate.

He published a pamphlet outlining his goals if elected called I, Governor and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future and named his program EPIC (End Poverty in California). His EPIC campaign soon registered nearly a third of a million new Democrats and ended Republican majority rule in the Golden State.

In his pamphlet, Sinclair envisioned the state’s transformation into a socialist utopia called the Cooperative Commonwealth of California. As the election gained steam, it was, in the worlds of historian Kenneth S. Lynn, “even money” on Sinclair to win.

A remark about getting the state into the movie business, and having his friend and supporter Charlie Chaplin run the effort, galvanized Hollywood’s movie industry and the Hearst-controlled media to oppose Sinclair.

MGM produced a series of newsreels called “California Election News” portraying communists among Sinclair’s supporters. Hearst papers ran photos of bands of unemployed invading California that were later revealed to be unused publicity stills from a feature film called ‘Wild Boys of the Road.’

Move to Monrovia

Sinclair lost the election (although he won nearly 38 percent of the popular vote) and in 1943, moved to Monrovia, where he purchased a 1923 neo-Mediterranean home at 464 N. Myrtle Avenue and won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel ‘Dragon’s Teeth.’ Sinclair continued writing throughout a long life, living to 90 and being recognized for important contributions to regulatory efforts for safer food. His political views progressed to include opposition to Soviet totalitarianism following World War II.

After Sinclair’s death in 1968, the home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark.

Sinclair’s legacy lives on today, according to The Campaign of the Century author Greg Mitchell, who said in a public radio interview on KCPP that Sinclair’s opponents “invented the modern political campaign as we know it.”

Upton Sinclair pioneered a literary form of investigative journalism with his 1906 novel “The Jungle,” an expose of harsh conditions in the meat-packing industry. Months before his death at age 90, Sinclair is acknowledged by President Johnson during the 1967 signing of the amended Meat Inspection Act. The Upton Sinclair House, located at 464 N. Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia, was his home between 1942 and 1966. Photos: Public domain, federal agencies