Many in the East among the intelligentsia of the academy, the media, and the elites of the Republican and Democratic parties had an extremely low opinion of Reagan’s intelligence. They were unaware of how extensively he read, wrote, and listened. Yet his speeches were laced with vivid prose, historical facts, and intellectual humor—all designed to get his point of view across to his audience. Their persuasiveness always mesmerized his listeners. No politician in 1976 could paint the verbal picture that Ronald Reagan could. Of the failures of the U.S. Postal Service, Reagan said,
Thirty-five years ago you could make a telephone call long distance from San Francisco to New York and it cost you $20 and 70 odd cents. And for that amount of money, you could send through the Post Office from San Francisco to New York 1,036 letters. Today, you can make the same phone call for 56 cents. And for that amount of money you can only send five letters. So the government is suing the phone company.
10
To illustrate the failures of collectivism practiced by the Soviet Union, Reagan said,
They have had more than half a century without hindrance or interference to fully implement and put into operation socialism in that country. And we could be just like them. We’d start by cutting our paychecks 80 percent, moving 33 million workers back to the farm, destroy 59 million television sets, tear up 14 out of 15 miles of highway, junk 15 out of 20 of our automobiles, tear up two-thirds of our railroad tracks, knock down 70 percent of our houses, rip out nine-tenths of our telephones, and then all we’d have to do is find a capitalist country that would sell us wheat on credit so we wouldn’t starve.
11
Hubert Humphrey called Reagan’s criticism of government a “disguised new form of racism.” Although Jimmy Carter was also campaigning on the same anti-Washington theme as Reagan, Humphrey said his comments did not apply to Carter but only to Ford and Reagan.
12
Next in line for the Ford-Reagan contest was Wisconsin. Reagan had expected to do well there, especially because it was a crossover state with a heavy Catholic population. Before the term was coined, these “Reagan Democrats,” in states like Wisconsin felt a cultural and social affinity for Reagan. Charlie Black, Reagan’s Midwest Political Director, was directing the grassroots effort in the state but he bumped up against the Reagan campaign’s financial troubles. Black said that “without money, there were no radio or television commercials, there was no money for phone banks, for mailings, or most importantly, for polling. It was just maddening because you knew Reagan could do well there.”
13
Exacerbating the Reagan campaign’s money problem was the new matching fund system set by the Federal Election Commission. For a time, these regulations doomed the role of the fat cats in national politics. Now, money had to be raised in small chunks from a variety of states if a Presidential campaign decided to take the matching funds from the federal Treasury. It was a Rube Goldberg operation to say the least, as campaigns spent untold dollars copying checks and producing report after report, giving rise to a growing cottage industry of accountants and lawyers, all working to protect their new “Full Employment Act.” More than one political operative over the years has speculated about the aching irony of the hard-earned twenty-five dollars some pensioner had sent to their favorite candidate, only to have it pay for a lawyer’s lunch at The Palm in downtown Washington. Aggravating the financial problems of the Reagan campaign was that many of their small donors sent cash and money orders along with checks. These donations had to be “qualified” by the campaign before they could be submitted for matching funds to the FEC.
14
Volunteers worked long hours calling donors all across the country to verify their contributions and to obtain their addresses and information about their employment.
15
Phil Alexander, David Bufkin, and Maiselle Shortley were three young conservatives working long hours for little pay, qualifying checks under Angela “Bay” Buchanan’s and Paul Russo’s supervision. They would open envelopes and make copies of the checks. If money came in the form of cash or money orders, they had to track down the donor and get the required information, including occupation, to satisfy the FEC. It was a grueling process, and the teams worked around the clock in twelve-hour shifts.
16
Complicating Reagan’s money problems was the fact that Sears spent willy nilly and there was never a budget. Bruce Eberle had assiduously built a house file for the campaign that at the time included over eighty-five thousand names. After Reagan won in North Carolina, a mailing went out that netted an astonishing $778,000, almost a hundred dollars per name. This success rate was unheard of then and since in direct mail fundraising. Reagan had that much drawing power among the conservative base.
17
Eberle, like others in the campaign, butted heads with Darrell Trent, the campaign’s Comptroller. Trent was brought in to bring order, but he immediately called in Eberle, whom the campaign hadn’t paid in months, and accused him of double billing. Eberle was widely known and universally liked and respected in the conservative movement. He was genuinely shocked when someone questioned his integrity. Eberle was eventually paid, but not without a fight with Trent. Eberle raised millions in the mail for Reagan, and Sears would later confide to Jim Lake that while the campaign made a lot of mistakes, they had at least hired the right direct mail fundraiser.
Despite the Reagan campaign’s fundraising efforts and mistakes in money management, many of the financial difficulties were beyond their control. Because of congressional foot-dragging, the FEC went temporarily out of business on March 22, 1976. This was at a time when Citizens for Reagan was owed well over a million dollars in matching funds.
18
Congress eventually passed and sent a bill reconstituting the FEC to the White House. On May 5 the legislation arrived on the President’s desk for his signature, which Ford did provide—six days later. Compounding their money problem was the campaign’s inability to manage its own internal fundraising. This, combined with the Ford White House’s delays in signing a bill that would allow Reagan and the other candidates to receive matching funds, made any real budgetary planning for the campaign impossible.
19
Government bureaucrats and political shenanigans had denied Reagan’s campaign the matching funds it deserved for over a month and a half. The consequences were disastrous for Reagan. Ron Nessen denied that the White House was playing politics with the new FEC bill and instead blamed the Democrats in Congress. “Clearly he’s not trying to ‘starve out’ Reagan,” he told the
Washington Post
.
20
When asked later about the suspected hardball tactics by the Ford White House, John Sears simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “That’s politics.”
21
The campaign tried to obtain additional bank loans against the soon-to-becoming money from the FEC. “The bank just wouldn’t loan us any more money,” Sears said. “I think they were afraid of repercussions from the White House.”
22
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in
Buckley v. Valeo
, political action committees, or “PACs,” became the rage. Through the seventies and eighties, the ruling and favorable postage rates allowed groups to effectively raise money through the mail. Had the Court upheld the limitations affecting these groups, the American Conservative Union and the Young Americans for Freedom could not have spent unlimited funds to run their independent campaigns in support of Reagan. These campaigns provided the vital support Reagan needed in North Carolina, Texas, and other states.
Shortly before the North Carolina primary, Sears flew to Wisconsin to meet with Reagan, Peter Hannaford, and others.
23
Sears’s recommendation was to scrap any future efforts in Wisconsin, including Reagan’s three scheduled days of campaigning. Many in Wisconsin, including Black, fought Sears bitterly. They believed that Reagan could win the primary, or at least some delegates there, with some additional campaigning, but Sears prevailed.
Instead, Reagan would make a thirty-minute nationally televised broadcast to take his message to the American people and appeal directly to his supporters for contributions.
24
The campaign issued a press release announcing this decision and restated Reagan’s intention to stay in the race until the convention in Kansas City. Nonetheless, the announcement led to some speculation in the media and political circles that Reagan might use the speech to withdraw from the race—or would scale back his operations to become a regional candidate.
The new strategy was to focus on the speech by Reagan. There was one small problem, however. All three networks declined the campaign’s request to purchase the time. Reagan was all for the speech and had been pressing Sears and others to put him on television. Following the surprising success of Reagan’s taped address in North Carolina, Sears had now become a convert. Conventional wisdom in 1976 was that the American people just would not want to watch a politician speak for half an hour on television. But then again, Ronald Reagan was not just another politician.
One aide said to the
Washington Star
of the planned speech, “He’ll talk about what America is all about, why there is reason for hope, how things can get better, and how we can fight apathy.” The story continued,
He will talk about what he hoped to accomplish when he decided to make his Presidential race. . . . Reagan doesn’t feel he got a chance to discuss the campaign in a broader, loftier sense in New Hampshire and Florida. “He didn’t get to talk uplift and hope for tomorrow because he got all wrapped up with the $90 billion thing and Social Security and the Loebs and Thomsons,” says one aide.
25
The campaign announced that Reagan would go to California for one week to prepare for the thirty-minute speech, but the skeptical national press did not buy this explanation. In fact, the campaign was in such poor shape financially, the decision was made to take Reagan off the road for a week to save money.
26
As in virtually every other state, Ford had the strong backing of the Republican state party in Wisconsin, and the campaign made plans for two appearances by the President before the primary. Reagan had made four previous stops there but would not commit more time to campaigning there. The Reagan budget in Wisconsin was to total only $100,000, less than one-third of what the campaign spent to win the North Carolina primary.
27
Reagan did make one appearance in the week prior to the Wisconsin primary at a campaign rally in Richmond, Virginia. He appeared tanned and in good spirits, despite telling the crowd he was having trouble getting any of the three networks to agree to sell him a half hour of broadcast time. He speculated that if the networks’ final decision was “no,” then his campaign would put together a string of independent stations to carry the broadcast. “This is part and parcel of a whole ridiculous situation where the incumbent can pre-empt time . . . and I can’t have a thirty-five-year-old movie run on the late, late show without them having to offer equal time,” Reagan complained to a reporter.
28
If Reagan had been Robert E. Lee incarnate, he could not have been more welcomed in Richmond that evening, March 27. When it was announced that Reagan would attend the event, a fundraiser for the Virginia GOP’s annual “Commonwealth Dinner” sold hundreds more of the fifty-dollar-per-plate tickets than it did the previous year.
29
Governor Mills Godwin, a Ford supporter and one of the state executives who had signed the letter sent to Reagan the week before the North Carolina primary urging him to leave the race, was forced to eat a big plate of crow, which was definitely not on the menu that night for the other attendees. Introducing Reagan, Godwin said he had signed that letter “B.C.—Before Carolina.” He added that Reagan’s resurgence “simply proves that even Republican Governors do not always assess accurately the realities of politics.”
30
Reagan, for his part, was hitting on all cylinders, telling the crowd one pleasing political joke after another. The
Washington Star
detailed how Reagan told an old standby about a Social Security foul-up and effortlessly transitioned into his own campaign situation:
A pensioner allegedly received a letter informing him his payments were stopping because he was dead, Reagan explained.
When the recipient of the letter went to his downtown Social Security office to demonstrate that he was not deceased, Reagan continued, he was told no immediate change could be made in the retirement system’s computer banks for restoring his normal payments. But officials offered their client $700 in “funeral expenses” to “tide him over,” Reagan said.
“North Carolina kind of gave me my $700, but I never had any intention of using it for a funeral,” the former California Governor told [the] crowd.
31
Reagan was well known for his sense of humor, especially in zapping his opponents. While Governor, he once encountered a young hippie holding a sign that read, “Make Love Not War.” Reagan later told reporters that “from the looks of him, I don’t think he could do either!”
32
Reagan finally scored a breakthrough in his negotiations with the networks when NBC announced that it had decided to sell Reagan one half hour of media time for a national broadcast. The speech would take place on Wednesday, March 31 at 10:30 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. The address would take place the night before April Fool’s Day, but no one for a second, especially Ford, thought Reagan was fooling. Reagan would go up against two “cop shows.” CBS was broadcasting
Blue Knight
, and ABC was airing its top-rated
Starsky and Hutch
.
33
Initially, all three networks had turned down Reagan’s request. They cited various reasons, but Reagan objected and responded by firing off telegrams to the chairmen of each, protesting the fact that while he was shut out, President Ford had easy access. Such an arrangement was not “in the interest of fairness and justice” or “the people’s right to know. . . .”
34
“Reagan aides have complained that Ford, through Presidential press conferences and other devices, can obtain massive free media exposure unavailable to his GOP challenger,” recorded the
Washington Star’s
Martha Angle.
35
Smith and Mark Fowler, who was doing pro bono legal work for Reagan, went to New York and walked between the offices of the three networks, lobbying for Reagan. CBS flatly turned them down. ABC said they would consider it, but an executive at NBC seemed moved by Smith’s “fairness” argument. He told Smith to come back in half an hour and when he did, the General Counsel for NBC, Corey Dunham, told the elated attorneys that NBC would sell Reagan one half hour of time.
36
In changing their mind, NBC issued a statement, which read,