Reagan won in Nebraska by a surprisingly comfortable margin of 55 percent to 45 percent and took the majority of delegates eighteen to seven.
147
Statewide polls taken for the two of major newspapers, the
Omaha World-Tribune
and the
Lincoln Journal
, had shown Ford with a large lead over Reagan just one month before.
148
It was Reagan’s first win in a closed primary state and this fact was not lost on the President Ford Committee. Over the previous several weeks, they had begun a drumbeat of public complaints about Democrats being able to help pick the Presidential nominee of the Republican Party. The argument met with hostility in the press when the Reagan forces pointed out that the eventual nominee had to appeal to more than just Republicans. Since Reagan was doing so much better with Democrats, wasn’t he the better nominee for the fall campaign?
This was not overlooked by Reagan, either, as he had been stung by charges over the previous several weeks that he was making an appeal similar to George Wallace, telling reporters that his win would “answer some of the charges that have been made in the last few primaries. This kind of confirms it wasn’t a Wallace vote or anything of that kind. It was a legitimate test within the Republican Party.”
149
Despite his new nice guy strategy, Ford got poor reviews in Nebraska. Another major factor in his loss was the “off again—on again” grain embargo against the Soviets and the lingering resentment in this farm state. Ford was also handicapped because of disorganization by his campaign on the ground and its inability to tell primary voters which delegates running were for Ford. The Reagan forces in Nebraska had out-hustled their opponents in the weeks leading to the primary.
Nebraska was disheartening for Carter too, as he lost to a late entry into the Democratic field, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. But it was the Reagan victory that was on everybody’s lips, not the Carter loss. “Frankly, the Ford campaign wasn’t very good,” said his media man, Doug Bailey.
150
R. W. “Johnny” Apple of the
New York Times
wrote that “many influential Republicans” were telling him that “they now consider it possible, if not probable, that Mr. Ford could become the first Republican President denied the nomination since Chester A. Arthur in 1886.”
151
A young Reagan aide, Pat Pizzella, was dispatched to Charleston to see if he could “jumpstart” the local Reagan effort. Pizzella found to his chagrin that the two women in charge did not believe in using direct mail or telephones to organize a campaign. As he recalled, “they mostly sat around smoking cigarettes and b—ed about everything.”
152
One of the women, State Senator Judith Herndon, was publicly rebuked for not allowing a list of the pro-Reagan delegates to be published or circulated. She was fearful of offending the GOP powers-that-were in West Virginia who wanted to be elected as uncommitted delegates.
153
Ford could take some solace over his win in West Virginia, 57 percent of the vote to Reagan’s 43 percent, especially since Reagan had campaigned there, and Ford had not.
154
While the Ford campaign had expected this good news, it had gone three weeks without a win anywhere, so it was welcome.
But the
New York Times
, along with most of the national media, was focused on Nebraska, not West Virginia, and wrote in an editorial, “The Nebraska defeat transforms Mr. Ford’s political condition from serious to critical. If he loses in Michigan next week, it may well become terminal.”
155
And it was Reagan whom the media was now calling the “frontrunner.”
“That damned Stu Spencer!”
A
s the new leader for the Republican Presidential nomination, Ronald Reagan now looked to press the advantage over his wounded opponent. Campaigning in Idaho before heading to Ford’s adopted home state of Michigan, Reagan told a crowd, “With Jimmy Carter the possible, or even probable, Democratic nominee, Republicans are faced with some important questions. Will we, as a party, be offering new solutions to old problems or defending old policies against the attacks of a Democrat who is not part of the Washington establishment?” Reagan continued, “The results of the last several primaries—in both parties—reveal a great desire on the part of the people for a change, an end to politics as usual.”
1
Looking down the road, Reagan told conservatives and the media that it was he, and not Ford, who could successfully challenge Carter in the South in the fall campaign. He said of his eventual choice for a Vice Presidential candidate that he would, “look to the same Republican mainstream for a running mate whose principles are strong and whose practices are sensible.”
2
Media coverage in the weeks leading up to the May 18 Michigan primary included apocalyptic phrases like “crucial,” “critical,” “embarrassment,” “vital,” “embattled” and “last chance,” when describing Ford’s campaign in his home state primary, which would be held two weeks after his disastrous triple loss to Reagan in Indiana, Georgia and Alabama.
The
New York Times
editorialized, “A second unfavorable omen for Mr. Ford is the geographic location of most of the remaining primaries. The Northeast and the industrialized Middle West, the two regions where the President is strongest, have already chosen most of their delegates.” Besides Michigan, only primaries in Ohio, New Jersey and Rhode Island remained. “Otherwise, the candidates fight it out in a dozen Southern, border, and Western states where Mr. Reagan can be expected to do well.”
3
The Reagan campaign weighed a more aggressive effort in Michigan, since it, like Texas, provided for crossover voting. In 1972, hundreds of thousands of Republicans had crossed over to join the other 800,000 who voted in the Democratic primary for George Wallace, helping him win.
4
Now there was a very real threat to Ford that the same might happen in reverse, to Reagan’s benefit. As always, however, money was a major problem for the Reagan campaign.
Adding to Ford’s worries was the fact that Wallace had nearly disappeared from the field and, in Michigan as in Texas, his supporters could be cut adrift to potentially land on Reagan’s shore. Wallace’s political support was fading before the new, ascending son of the South, Jimmy Carter. Wallace would be on the ballot in Michigan but would be doing little active campaigning.
The
New York Times
took a look at the “typical” Wallace/Reagan voters and, in turn at cultural stereotyping, described them as, “nursing their frustrations about government giveaways, welfare cheaters, featherbedding bureaucrats who loaf, and politicians who are tax-squeezing the middle class to pay for social programs that do not work.” A sociologist told the Times they were, “middle class radicals.”
5
Michigan, of course, was the President’s backyard. Though he had been born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha in 1913, his parents had divorced at an early age. After moving to Michigan, his mother remarried a man named Gerald Rudolph Ford. At an early age, his adoptive father, whom he adored, changed Leslie’s name to Gerald R. Ford Jr.
6
President Ford had grown up in Michigan and was voted most valuable player by his teammates when he played center in the 1930s for the Wolverines.
7
Though he’d gone to Yale School of Law and had served heroically in the Navy during WWII, his plan had always been to return to Grand Rapids.
Ford was elected to the Congress after a primary victory over the incumbent conservative Republican, Bartel Jonkman, in 1948. He served for twenty-five years until being tapped by Richard Nixon to become his Vice President.
8
Ford had intended to retire in 1976 after the added burdens of serving as House Minority Leader for eight years and promised his wife as much. They planned on returning to Grand Rapids, where Ford would add his name to a law firm, teach, lecture, play golf, and enjoy his retirement years.
Watergate changed all that.
He had suffered great embarrassment, much of it undeserved, in serving his country as President. Now he was faced with the real possibility of his greatest embarrassment: losing his own home state primary to Reagan and with it, the nomination of the Republican Party. As important as winning the North Carolina primary was to Ronald Reagan, Michigan was even more important to Ford.
He had the usual lineup of elected GOP officials and the Republican state party supporting him in Michigan, but their assistance had been less than decisive in other states and he could not count on their support bringing him to victory now. Typical was Governor William Milliken, yet another of the moderate to liberal Republican Governors supporting Ford. Milliken held little sway over the conservative primary voters in Michigan, and virtually none over the conservative Democrats who were expected to turn out in droves for Reagan.
9
Ford was also taking more flak from the national media, as when one reporter asked him if he would be interested in serving as Ronald Reagan’s Vice President.
10
Even better for Reagan, it was now he, not Ford, whom Carter was attacking. Carter labeled the Californian, “divisive.” But Carter also noted that Reagan “has much more fervent support” than Ford.
11
Widespread discontent in America with “politics as usual” had propelled both Reagan and Carter to the forefront of their parties’ attention. H. L. Mencken once wrote, “The only way to look at a politician is down,” and though politicians had always been the butt of jokes and the focus of derision, in 1976 they were especially despised. Good news for Reagan and Carter, because of all the major candidates running for President, they had never served in office in Washington, worked in a government agency, or lived in the nation’s capital. They were unique outsiders, and each honed a populist message of reform that he would bring to Washington if elected.
Reagan heard more good news out of Indiana when a
New York Times
/
CBS News
post-election poll found that GOP voters in the Hoosier State thought Reagan had a better chance of winning in the fall than Ford.
12
Reagan had also benefited in Indiana from radio commercials and print advertisements produced and placed by the American Conservative Union, just as the organization had done in North Carolina and Texas.
13
Stan Evans, a former editor of the
Indianapolis Star
who had become Chairman of the ACU, told the
New York Times
that Ford was, “operationally a liberal, whatever his subjective opinions.”
14
The group hit Ford hard, including linking him with feminist Congresswoman Bella Abzug of New York City.
15
Panic deepened at the Ford White House as aides continued to try to solve the mystery of Ronald Reagan, his message, and Ford’s lack of appeal. Ford had always been baffled at why, exactly, Reagan had taken him on in the first place. Ford believed that he was just as conservative as Reagan and had earned the right to the nomination. Ford further could not understand why conservatives in the Republican Party could not see that campaign rhetoric was one thing, but ideology should be subdued when it came to governance. Conventional wisdom at the time inside the Republican Party was that if they were to succeed, Republicans had to be “pragmatic,” they had to “broaden the base,” and they had to “compromise.” Otherwise, they would always be in the minority.
Another sign of fear emerged when it was discovered that in a meeting between Ford and Republican elected officials, one Senator suggested that Ford ask for Kissinger’s resignation as a response to Reagan’s attacks. Ford rejected the idea, knowing that to do so would inevitably lead to the conclusion that Reagan had been right all along about the Administration’s foreign policy.
16
At the same time, the League of Women Voters announced that they were planning to host Presidential debates in the fall between the nominees of the two parties.
17
Kennedy and Nixon had participated in four debates in 1960, but Johnson refused to debate Goldwater in 1964, as did Nixon in 1968 with Humphrey and again in 1972 against McGovern. The prevailing thinking in 1976 was that no debates would take place, because one camp or another would feel the risks weren’t worth it.
Bookies in London also now saw Reagan as the favorite. Playboy Bookmakers, a division of Hugh Hefner’s empire, offered odds on Reagan’s nomination at six to four. One month before, his campaign was going off at ten to one against. Ford had been the favorite at eleven to ten, but had fallen to seven to four against him becoming the GOP nominee.
18
Campaigning in Baton Rouge, Reagan predicted a first ballot nomination. District delegates had been chosen in the state, but the delegates to go to the Republican National Convention would be chosen on June 5 at Louisiana’s state convention. Telling the crowd about campaigning earlier in the day in Shreveport, Reagan said, “This morning, I arrived at the airport at Shreveport and saw a crowd I had not anticipated, complete with a high school band. Suddenly it dawned on me: We’re way ahead of where our projections were for this point. So, for the first time, standing there, I said to these people what I discovered suddenly I believe in my own heart, that I can go to the convention with enough delegates to win on the first ballot.”
19
Indeed, Reagan was ahead in the delegate count. Most of New York’s 154 previously uncommitted delegates were about to be thrown into Ford’s pot to help the beleaguered President. But Brooklyn’s Chairman, George Clark, was a conservative who detested liberal Republicans in New York. Clark controlled eighteen delegates and John Sears was hoping to bargain for these and a few more from Upstate New York in the next few months leading up to the convention.
20