Reagan enjoyed campaigning in New Hampshire and did not mind the long hours, but Mrs. Reagan was concerned that the campaign was pushing her husband too hard. At one memorable point, Mrs. Reagan called Nancy Reynolds late one evening. Reynolds was traveling in New Hampshire with Governor Reagan and Mrs. Reagan wanted to know that he was in bed and asleep.
In the hotel were Reagan, Reynolds, Deaver, and Sears. Mrs. Reagan insisted that Reynolds go down the hall and knock on the Governor’s door to see if he was in his pajamas and in bed. Reynolds protested, but Mrs. Reagan insisted. Reynolds knocked on the door and woke the Governor. When she whispered through the door that Mrs. Reagan wanted to know “Ronnie” was in bed and asleep, the formerly slumbering Reagan yelled back at the door, “Can’t I ever escape you two Nancy’s!”
31
The rap on Nancy Reagan in 1976 was that she got involved in campaign strategy and personnel decisions. The whispering was unfair because it was largely untrue. Her concern was the health and well-being of her husband and she mostly confined her concerns to him and him alone in 1976. She too campaigned tirelessly. The Reagans often campaigned separately and tried to avoid flying on the same plane as they sadly remembered a group of parents killed years before in a crash and didn’t want to orphan their own children.
32
Reynolds was an attractive former reporter for CBS’s San Francisco affiliate in 1966 when she first met Reagan. Her father had been a Congressman and later a Senator from Idaho. She had seen many politicians over the years and could distinguish the real deal from the frauds. She went to work for the Governor in Sacramento, reporting to Nofziger, and was utterly devoted to the Reagans. As one of the people in charge of Reagan’s political advance team, she had many responsibilities—even sometimes just holding the door for the Governor, which proved a problem. Reagan balked at allowing Reynolds to hold the door for him and finally said, “My mother told me ladies go through the door first so we can stand here all day and you let me hold that door for you or we don’t go through.” Reynolds finally relented and went through first.
33
She could also be blunt, as when Reagan called her in 1979 to tell her he was running again for President. Reynolds blurted out, “Don’t you think you’re too old?” Reagan, of course, chuckled. The bond between the two was strong. During a trip to Dallas in 1976, Reynolds took Reagan to the wrong building and an empty auditorium. Meanwhile, “2,000 screaming women” were in the building next door, wondering where their hero was. Sears wanted Reynolds fired for the foul-up, but Reagan would not hear of it.
34
As is often not the case with politicians, the charming, gracious man that America saw in public did not differ from the private Reagan. Many politicians preferred to eat their meals in their rooms when on the road campaigning, but Deaver, who knew Reagan better than probably any man alive, remarked that Reagan preferred to eat in public, facing the door of the restaurant so he could see people. He did not mind being interrupted for his autograph and clearly relished his role as a candidate. It was no wonder that his staff was fanatically loyal to him.
35
Reagan’s second tour through New Hampshire since he announced in November was his best yet, and the campaign got high marks for using the candidate to maximum effect. Not much time was devoted to street corner or factory gate handshaking unless it could be developed into a “photo-opportunity” for the media. Reagan was doing his own form of retail politicking through his effective “Citizens Press Conferences.” Reagan also got some help from an unexpected quarter in the form of TV commercials starring his old opponent, George Christopher, former Mayor of San Francisco, whom Reagan had defeated in 1966 for the California Republican Party gubernatorial nomination.
36
Some political observers worried that Reagan was becoming “overexposed,” which could dilute his star quality. But the crowds were good, and high expectations for Reagan in New Hampshire were once again creeping out of Pandora’s box.
Things were different in Florida. The upcoming Sunshine State primary was slated for March 9 and both candidates were having their share of troubles.
Congressman Lou Frey, head of Ford’s operation in Florida, was overly optimistic for some in the Ford camp about the President’s chances. He might have even been too optimistic for his own good. A curious story was filed at the end of January by seasoned political reporter Loye Miller Jr. for the Knight News Service on the topic of Florida and the Ford campaign. Frey apparently had told the President “that his chances of beating Republican challenger Ronald Reagan are excellent,” but another person talking with Frey heard the opposite—that Frey was “almost entirely negative.” Worse, according to the source, Frey thought Reagan’s Florida operation was “better organized.”
37
Frey denied the story, but the damage was done.
Other problems dogged Ford in Florida. Frey complained about the lack of supplies, Bo Callaway’s leadership, and being undercut by the national campaign through leaks to the media.
Things weren’t always easy for the Reagan campaign, either. Concerned that the Governor might be misquoted, the campaign had hired Dana Rohrabacher to travel with Reagan and tape all of his interviews and pronouncements. Rohrabacher also took the best “sound bites” and fed them via telephone to radio stations for their news reports.
38
Reagan’s son Ron was supposed to help Rohrabacher, but he didn’t like campaign work. Lake later said, “He was a pain in the butt.”
39
Jim Lake, Reagan’s New Hampshire Manager, was a Californian with a background steeped in agriculture and had gone to work in the Nixon Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Agriculture after a stint on Capitol Hill. After rejecting two offers from Deaver to go to work for Reagan, he finally agreed to take over the duties of the Washington office of the State of California beginning in February of 1974, after Deaver convinced him that Reagan would run for President in 1976. He signed with the campaign immediately after Reagan left office, and he seemed to be one of the few who got along with both the Washington crew and the Californians. He was unflappable and, as both Becki Black and Nancy Reynolds said, “all the women in the Reagan office had a crush on Jim.”
Lake worked from the campaign headquarters at the old New Hampshire Highway Hotel in Concord, a favorite lodging, eating, and drinking establishment of in-state and out-of-state political reporters and politicians. It was just down the street from the state capitol building. The hotel was old, creaky and had a certain rundown charm, like a dowager/aunt whom time had passed by. Lake’s unenviable task—trying to build and then hold together the New Hampshire organization for Reagan—required he spend as much time “babysitting” and “handholding” local politicians as he did trying to win the primary.
Few required as much hand-holding as New Hampshire Governor Mel Thomson. Thomson had his following, especially in the blue-collar neighborhoods around Manchester, but he also had his enemies within the more moderate elements of the state’s GOP. Lake told Reagan that Thomson should not be allowed to get too close to the campaign, but Reagan genuinely liked the man. Lake did manage to limit joint public campaigning by the two to just one day around Manchester. Any more was too risky; Thomson was an unguided missile. On one occasion, the New Hampshire Governor went on
Meet the Press
two Sundays before the New Hampshire contest and told the world that Reagan would defeat Ford by 5 percent. Lake complained to Thomson that he needed to stop making unrealistic predictions for Reagan, but the damage had been done.
A bigger pain was materializing for Reagan in Florida, however—one that would dog him in New Hampshire as well. Just as he was starting to get beyond the problems of his “$90 billion” speech, Reagan seemed to suggest making Social Security voluntary, the same issue that tripped Barry Goldwater so badly in 1964. The issue incubated for several weeks until it exploded in Reagan’s face right before the Florida primary.
40
But before that, the Ford campaign had some toe-stubbing of its own to do.
The President Ford Committee had picked up on Reagan’s musings about Social Security, conveniently overlooking the fact that Reagan had qualified his suggestion about privatizing the insolvent retirement plan by saying that all current and future recipients should be protected. The Ford campaign sent out dozens of sample press releases to their supporters in New Hampshire and Florida with blank spaces for people to fill in their names and hometowns. The problem was that some Ford supporters simply wrote in the information rather than retyping the releases or redrafting them so that political reporters would not all receive the same identical press release, which of course, they did.
41
Reagan seized on the Ford goof and had some fun with the releases, quoting “Blank said this about Reagan, and then another person named blank said that about Reagan.” Turning more serious, Reagan then called it “a little bit dishonest” and filed it under the category of “dirty tricks.”
42
Ford spokesman Peter Kaye was forced to backtrack, admitting he had prepared the releases. He insisted that their intention was as a guideline for local officials. He denied that the campaign was not trying to put words in their mouths. As it turned out, sending out some common sense to these people would have probably been a better plan for Kaye than filling in the blank press releases.
On the eve of his sixty-fifth birthday, Reagan headed for North Carolina once again with a newfound spring in his step after his third New Hampshire tour de force. He showed his biting wit, such as when a supporter asked him whom he preferred the Democrats to nominate. Reagan quipped, “Bo Callaway.” Someone also mistakenly addressed him as “Governor Ford” to which Reagan, grinning with deadpan humor replied, “I didn’t stumble when I came in.”
43
Rowland Evans and Bob Novak wrote of Reagan’s recovery in New Hampshire, “What Reagan must do now, many advisers feel, is shift attention to what may be the most vulnerable policy and personality in the Ford Administration: détente and Henry Kissinger. In his basic new speech lasting 35 minutes, Reagan devoted 30 seconds to foreign policy, rejecting détente as ‘a one way street’ for the Soviet Union. Invariably, it gets more applause than anything else. If the $90 billion monster is truly vanquished, Reagan’s focus may soon switch from governmental accounting to global strategy.”
44
New Hampshire had no lack of characters, as evidenced by Governor Thomson and
Manchester Union-Leader
editor Bill Loeb, but another Reagan supporter, Stewart Lamprey, the former speaker of the state house stood out. Lamprey ran Richard Nixon’s successful campaigns in New Hampshire in 1960 and 1968. But by 1976, his passion was less about politics and more about making a buck. He had developed the first computerized list of 165,000 registered Republicans in the state in 1976. Although he had endorsed Reagan, Lamprey sold the list to both the Reagan and the Ford campaigns, pocketing five thousand dollars from each.
45
He also had a phone bank contract worth approximately $50,000 with Citizens for Reagan working in Laconia, where paid operators would call the list, asking Republicans for whom they intended to vote and a list of approximately sixty-five thousand Reagan supporters was eventually developed from these calls. Lamprey’s callers spent the balance of the month calling undecided voters, about 14 percent, to see if they had made up their minds and for whom.
46
Ford’s campaign was relying on volunteers to man his phone banks. Ford was using about seventy-five phones located all over the state, while Reagan was using just five, all located in one office in Laconia. Lamprey, the ever-present character in New Hampshire Republican politics, did know his state, and as far as three weeks in advance, he said the race between Reagan and Ford was too close to call.
47
Meanwhile, Ford’s campaign hierarchy finally had their fill of Frey in Florida and replaced him with Stu Spencer’s longtime business partner, Bill Roberts. Although he was ailing with diabetes, he began to immediately turn the campaign around and thus increase Ford’s fortunes in Florida.
A new Harris Survey was released of Republicans nationwide, which showed the President with a razor thin lead over Governor Reagan, 47 percent to 45 percent, a statistical dead heat.
Even better for Reagan, however, was his growing lead over Ford among self-identified conservatives within the GOP, 54 percent to 41 percent.
48
These conservatives constituted the motivated base of the party. They were the volunteers—the small contributors who formed the “hardcore” of the GOP. They would turn out to vote in Republican primaries even if dogs and cats were falling from the sky.
Not surprisingly, Ford was leading among the moderates, the white collar, the more educated, and the higher income individuals within the Republican Party. In an interview with CBS, Ford took on one of the more controversial issues of the day: abortion. The President said that he was against abortion and that he favored returning the issue to the states, but, unlike Reagan, he was against a constitutional amendment to overturn abortion. Ford thought that the Supreme Court was wrong in the case of
Roe v. Wade
, which nationalized and legalized abortion, but he opposed taking effective measures to correct the ruling.
49
No sooner had Ford completed his interview with Walter Cronkite, than Betty Ford issued a statement of her own from the White House, disagreeing with her husband on abortion. “I am glad to see that abortion had been taken out of the backwoods and put into the hospitals where it belongs,” her statement said. The missive also restated her support for the
Roe v. Wade
decision.
50
The editorial pages of the nation’s newspapers had a ball, using Mrs. Ford to bash Mr. Ford. The
Boston Globe
, one of America’s leading liberal newspapers wrote, “President Ford would be a better man and a better leader if he paid more heed to his wife, Betty, who is consistently demonstrating that she has more sense, honesty and moral courage than the man she married.”
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