Nonetheless, Ford stolidly carried on with his efforts to forestall Ronald Reagan’s challenge. He was getting help from Cabinet officials who were aggressively campaigning for him in New Hampshire. They included Treasury Secretary Bill Simon; Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, David Matthews; and Elliot Richardson, who had recently become Secretary of Commerce, replacing Rogers C.B. “Rog” Morton, who was reassigned to help out with the President Ford Committee. Also campaigning for Ford were Senator John Tower of Texas and former Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton. Tower was a favorite of conservatives in the state.
5
Some Ford surrogates went too far in their rhetoric for Reagan’s supporters. San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson campaigned in New Hampshire, telling voters that Reagan was “the worst Governor in the history of the state.” Reagan’s Californian supporters like Lyn Nofziger and Peter Hannaford were especially angered at Wilson, and it took some of them years to forgive him.
6
An important development for Reagan was the decision of the United States Supreme Court to uphold California’s “winner take all” primary system. The winner of the state’s GOP Presidential primary would carry all 167 delegates with him to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City. Since no one really thought Ford had a shot to beat Reagan in his backyard, these delegates were considered by all to be safely tucked into Reagan’s back pocket.
7
However, two additional decisions by the Supreme Court in January of 1976 came in the now-famous
Buckley v. Valeo
case. These decisions dealt with the new federal campaign laws and would have a direct bearing on the Reagan Presidential effort. One would be calamitous, the other beneficial.
While the Supreme Court declared most of the legislation that created the Federal Election Commission constitutional, it ruled that Congress had to reconstitute the FEC. The original act, signed into law in 1975, called for Congress to appoint four Commissioners and for the President to appoint two. However, the Court ruled that because the FEC performed executive functions, Congress had no role in appointing Commissioners, only approving them. Therefore Congress’s role was a clear violation of the separation of powers doctrine of the U.S. Constitution.
8
This decision would hurt the Reagan campaign because of ensuing bureaucratic foot-dragging by Congress and naked politics by the Ford White House. The Court directed Congress to rewrite that portion of the FEC Act, which it did, but in its own sweet time. When the bill arrived at Ford’s desk for his signature, it languished there for a time, effectively stopping Reagan from receiving over $1.5 million in matching funds when his campaign desperately needed money. Reagan arguably lost the Wisconsin primary because of the coffer shortfall caused by the Ford White House.
The Court’s second decision was more advantageous for Reagan. While it upheld the constitutionality of limiting individual contributions to a single candidate to $1,000 per election cycle and $25,000 per donor for all federal campaigns, it struck down regulations limiting the actions of independent groups of individuals working together to affect the outcome of a federal campaign. Congress had written in the original bill that independent expenditures to support or oppose a candidate for federal office must be limited to $1,000. The Court held that such limits violated parts of the First Amendment and were thus unconstitutional.
9
This decision would prove vitally important for the Reagan campaign. At critical points in his challenge to Ford, independent conservative groups like the American Conservative Union and the Young Americans for Freedom provided much needed grassroots support when Reagan’s campaign was flagging. This was especially the case in North Carolina, where the ACU would eventually spend tens of thousands of dollars helping Reagan.
10
Democrat Jimmy Carter burst on the national scene with his win in the Iowa Caucuses in January. The importance of the Iowa Caucuses had been growing for the Democrats since George McGovern scored his breakthrough there in 1972, but the Republicans would not put much emphasis on it until 1980. A non-binding straw poll was held for the GOP, but only in 2.5 percent of all precincts. Ford won by a narrow margin: 45 percent to 42.5 percent for Reagan. It was interpreted as a setback for Ford, since Reagan made no effort in Iowa whatsoever, and Ford had the support of the state GOP and Governor Robert Ray, a popular moderate Republican.
11
Meanwhile, the Ford campaign made sure that Reagan could not remove the “$90 billion” millstone that hung around his neck in New Hampshire. It continued to drag him down wherever he campaigned. In Bloomington, Illinois, Reagan finally relented. He admitted that “I guess I made a mistake in the speech I made in Chicago last September in trying to point out that if six [programs] that I named [amount to] $90 billion, or one-fourth of what the present government is spending.”
12
Marty Anderson was called in to salvage Reagan’s position on the issue. Anderson worked well with the Governor. “We worked very closely together. It was my responsibility to give him all the research papers. He would spend a lot of time by himself with papers spread out, glasses on, writing.”
13
In Anderson’s modified version, the federal government would spread some tax revenues around to help cushion the impact of transferring some programs to the states.
But in spite of the beating that Ford and the press administered to the Governor on his first campaign swing through New Hampshire, his pollster, Dick Wirthlin, had good news. Wirthlin reported that Reagan had a five percentage point lead over Ford in mid-January.
14
In his State of the Union address, President Ford ironically proposed transferring over $10 billon of federal revenue to the states so they could administer the Medicaid program. Fred Barnes, writing for the
Washington Star
, noted the probability that the proposal came as a result of the Reagan initiative and the Ford proposal was “put together for its political value in combating Reagan” because the legislation “has yet to be drafted and probably will not be before next month, at the earliest.”
15
Ford also turned sharply right on food stamps, a cap on pay for federal workers, restraint of federal spending, and a proposed 9 percent increase in defense spending after a 7 percent increase the previous year. In contrast, from 1969 to 1975, defense spending had only increased 8 percent over those six years. The
New
York Post
told its readers that the Ford speech was in fact, “New Reaganism.”
16
Maybe Ford realized it too late. Unhappy with the speech, the President transferred four of his speechwriters to other government jobs while installing Robert Orben, who had once written jokes for Red Skelton and Jack Paar, as head of his speech writing department.
17
All the major Presidential candidates released their medical records in January, and both Reagan and Ford were in excellent health. Reagan had mild allergies and wore contact lenses. Ford had undergone surgery twice on his knees for damaged cartilage from his football days at Michigan. While arguably unnecessary for the American people to also know that Ford had hemorrhoid surgery or that Democratic contender Senator Frank Church had a testicle removed, in post-Watergate America “full disclosure” and “candor” had become the watchwords— even if it meant knowing the tiniest, seamiest and most personal details of a politician’s life.
18
Reagan was striving desperately to move into other issues, but three priceless weeks of campaigning had been lost in New Hampshire. Team Reagan knew that there were only three resources in any campaign: time, money and people. Of these, time was the most important because it determined how much money you could raise and how many people you could reach. Once it was lost or squandered, you could not get it back. Still, it would take several more days before he could move on, as he was asked again about the list of specific federal programs Jeff Bell had included at the end of the “$90 billion” speech text.
“I never did pay any attention to that list,” the
Boston Globe
reported Reagan saying about Bell’s addendum to the now infamous September speech in Chicago. “That was just some stuff the economists gave me. I didn’t even agree with all the things on that list.”
19
To charges that his plan would result in higher taxes, Reagan replied, “That’s the same kind of crap I heard when I proposed welfare reform when I was in Sacramento.”
20
The
Boston Globe
wrapped the story, saying, “But he became particularly angered when he accused the Ford campaigners of preceding him [Reagan] into a state where he is campaigning and feeding some local politicians with figures on what the Reagan plan allegedly would mean in each particular state.”
21
While campaigning in New Hampshire, Ford told Reagan supporters, “By the end of this calendar year some $96 million dollars will have to be paid New Hampshire, to its ten counties, to its thirteen cities and 221 townships.”
22
There was a growing sense in the Ford camp that the Reagan insurgency had been blunted, but they also had difficulty coordinating their own public expectations. After the State of the Union, the
Boston Globe
sniffed that Ford “tried to steer a safe and conservative course for the ship of state last night, slightly to the left of Ronald Reagan’s right-wing rhetoric. After the New Frontier, the Great Society . . . his call for a ‘new realism’ sounded like a low key battle cry. . . . [I]t is doubtful that the ‘new reality’ will make the kind of mark left by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.”
23
Indeed not. Ford was still a mediocre campaigner, and it was not unusual for a crowd to come to see Air Force One or the Presidential motorcade and then listen to the first few minutes of Ford’s speech before drifting off, having lost interest in whatever the President was saying.
Nonetheless, a week after the State of the Union, Ford’s fortunes were beginning to brighten in Massachusetts.
NBC News
released a survey of 535 registered Republicans in the Bay State, which showed Ford favored by 50 percent, Reagan by 38 percent and the rest undecided. It was a dramatic turnaround for Ford because Reagan, had incredibly led Ford among Massachusetts GOP voters 43 percent to 40 percent in the previous survey. Ford’s job approval with Massachusetts Republicans also rose in one month from 51 percent to 56 percent. Reagan’s problems in New Hampshire were clearly washing over Massachusetts.
24
These successes probably fueled the Ford campaign’s delusions about Reagan. As
Time
magazine reported earlier in the month, “they insist that the Reagan force is relatively small.”
25
The Ford team rarely seemed to know the full measure of their foe. At one point, White House counselor Bob Hartmann raised the possibility of urging Ford to debate Reagan. The idea fell flat with the cooler heads in the Ford operation. While the Reagan campaign did not pick up on the idea to formally challenge Ford to a debate, Reagan did mention it at one press conference in Concord. It would have been foolish for the often-awkward Ford. With his easygoing charm and quick wit, the Great Communicator would have very likely trounced the President, and such an opportunity was the last thing the Ford campaign needed to be handing the opposition.
Reagan was getting back on the offensive in New Hampshire, though the rebound was slow. During the second of his three planned tours of the state, he attacked Ford on the budget, charging that the deficit would be much higher than previously announced by the government and would put the country “on the road to re-inflation.”
26
Reagan also handled the hecklers better. Both Ford and Reagan picked up protesters in New Hampshire. A group calling itself the “People’s Bicentennial Commission” showed up at Reagan’s public appearances, waving signs that read “Fat Cats for Reagan.” Given Reagan’s continued money woes, his campaign would have probably welcomed a few fat cats if there were any interested in giving him money.
Ford’s protesters took a different approach. Perhaps as an allusion to
Bedtime
for Bonzo
, at one appearance in New Hampshire during a “town hall” meeting, someone wearing a gorilla costume stood and asked the President of the United States a question, which he dutifully answered.
27
While most candidates would either ignore protesters or scream at their aides about them, Reagan killed them with kindness. At each stop where there were protesters, Reagan walked right over to chat with them. At one protest site, a girl charged that Reagan was part of a conspiracy between Detroit and government to build roads. Reagan told the young protester that people buy cars and they would not be happy driving over pastures. In his chat with the girl, Reagan gave her a quick and simple lesson about the laws of supply and demand. The leader of the protesters smiled at that one and told a reporter from the
Washington Star
, “He’s incredibly good.”
28
When a little girl asked him after a speech in Dumbarton what he would do to improve schools, he said “The first thing I would do would be to get the Federal government out of the business of trying to run the schools and give that responsibility back to state and local government.” The crowd went wild.
29
Reagan was back on his conservative message of limited government, the free market, anti-Communism, and anti-Washington. Often, it would be mixed with humor, as in the case when one voter asked his position on busing, and Reagan replied, “There’s only one busing program I’m in favor of, and that’s busing the Federal bureaucrats out into the countryside so they can meet the people.” He concluded most speeches by saying, “I am not a part of the Washington establishment and I don’t consider that a disadvantage.”
30