the Nazi Party in Germany, Smith tried to form an alliance with the non-interventionist America First Committee, but did not succeed. In 1943, Smith formed the America First Party, essentially appropriating the name. He became a member of William Dudley Pelley's fascist Silver Legion of America, which was patterned after Hitler's brown shirts. (Pelley was later convicted for violating the Espionage Act in 1942 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but he was acquitted in 1944 for violating the Alien Registration Act.) Smith told an audience of Silver Shirts, "We're going to drive that cripple out of the White House," meaning Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After moving to Michigan, Smith ran for the United States Senate as a Republican from there, but lost in the primary. In 1947, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith cited Smith's Christian Nationalist Crusade along with Merwin K. Hart's National Economic Council and the Ku Klux Klan as "organized anti-Jewish organizations... which had significant influence, resources and membership." In late 1947, Smith moved CNC offices from Detroit to St. Louis. Presidential bids Smith ran as the America First Party candidate in the 1944 Presidential election, winning 1,781 votes (1530 in Michigan, 281 in Texas). In 1948, with running mate Harry Romer on the Christian Nationalist Party ticket, he received 48 votes. Smith's only other bid for the presidency was in 1956, when he received eight write-in votes in California. "Gerald Smith ran for president because he lusted for power, but his hatred for Jews and his relentless crusade against them had no such 'rational' motivation... Smith was fascinated by the Office of the President of the United States," wrote biographer Glen Jeansonne. Post-war activities In the early 1950s, at the time of the appointment of Anna M. Rosenberg as Assistant Secretary of Defense, the Anti-Defamation League published an article attributing the attacks on Rosenberg's loyalty to "professional anti-Semites and lunatic nationalists", including the "Jew-baiting cabal of John Rankin, Benjamin Freedman and Gerald Smith". Smith's activism in the Los Angeles area was opposed by a coalition of Jewish and black groups; a headline in the B'nai B'rith Messenger called him "the Little Fuehrer". In 1956, Smith joined a strong campaign against the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act. He was among such opponents as those who nicknamed it the "Siberia Bill" and denounced it as being part of a communist plot to hospitalize and brainwash Americans. It