Reagan's Revolution (48 page)

Later, at an airport press conference in Santa Barbara, Reagan attempted to quell the situation, telling reporters, “Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not talking about sending troops to Rhodesia. I’m talking about a plan to hopefully preserve the peace and I don’t think it calls for any troops.”
¹⁷¹

While Ford made a quick dash to New Jersey the weekend before the June 8 primaries, and Rockefeller was sent to a meaningless meeting of Maryland’s GOP, Stu Spencer produced a commercial that widened the chasm between Ford and Reagan and helped to create a permanent rift that never really healed between the two men.
¹⁷²

Reagan landed in Columbus on Saturday, June 5, where Charlie Black awaited his arrival. Upon landing, Black rushed aboard and handed Reagan a piece of paper and said, “Governor, before you get off, I think you’d better read this.”
¹⁷³
Reagan did, and Black saw the anger rise in his face. Reagan slammed his fist against the bulkhead of the plane and yelled, “That damned Stu Spencer!” Reagan cut his hand from hitting it so hard.
¹⁷⁴

The paper Black had handed Reagan was the script for a new Ford commercial that read,

Last Wednesday, Ronald Reagan said that he would send American troops to Rhodesia. On Thursday, he clarified that. He said they could be observers or advisers. What does he think happened in Vietnam? When you vote Tuesday, remember, Governor Reagan couldn’t start a war. President Ronald Reagan could.

The radio and television commercial was airing heavily in California and there was little Reagan could do, except to attack it. Angrily, he told the media the commercial was an “absolute fabrication and misstatement of fact.” The
New York
Times
said, when talking to the media, “the words poured out of him in angry snapping tones.” Reagan gained his composure and then shook his head sadly and said of Ford’s campaign, “I wished they had chosen to campaign on a higher plane.”
¹⁷⁵

Reagan could, however, take some comfort in winning nineteen of the remaining twenty-one delegates up for grabs in Virginia. In all, Reagan took thirty-five of the Commonwealth’s fifty-one delegates. Reagan’s leadership in Virginia had charitably offered to give two more delegate slots to Ford supporters in the interest of party unity but when it went out for a vote, the Reagan rank and file voted against the move.
¹⁷⁶

Reagan also won fifteen delegates in caucuses in Louisiana and picked up an additional three delegates in Colorado, for a total of thirty-seven for the weekend. Once again, Reagan was slowly closing the gap with Ford. The count now was 803 for Ford and 687 for Reagan, according to the
Washington Post
.
¹⁷⁷

Massachusetts Democrats also met over the weekend and elected Birch Bayh’s only delegate in the country, Thomas P. O’Neill III, the state’s Lieutenant Governor and son of the powerful House Speaker. He was known as the “million dollar delegate” because of the amount Bayh had spent on the primaries, all for naught.
¹⁷⁸

Reagan had opened up a 24 percent lead over Ford in California according to the respected Field Poll, and his victory was not in doubt. Three hundred thirty-one delegates were available on June 8—by far the largest amount contested in one day of voting.
¹⁷⁹

In the end Sadly on Ford. Although Ford defended the advertisement vociferously, Reagan crushed him in California, 66 percent to 34 percent.
¹⁸⁰
Years later, Spencer would laugh and say, “I probably added eight points to Reagan’s margin in California!” Spencer was one of the most talented and toughest operatives around in 1976, but that year his judgment about how to stop Reagan was sometimes clouded by his anger at Reagan and others in the campaign he blamed for real or imagined slights.
¹⁸¹
As previously stated, he also was reported to have remarked to another polical operative in early 1975, “It’s one thing to elect that right-winger as Governor, it’s another to elect him President!” Spencer was no conservative, and most observers in 1976 thought he was much more in tune philosophically with Ford than with Reagan.
¹⁸²

Spencer reconciled with Governor and Mrs. Reagan several years later, but not before a memo had been prepared for President Ford with talking points for a conversation with Reagan in September of 1976, one month after the Republican convention. The memo detailed items the President should review with Reagan regarding fundraising, campaigning that Reagan could undertake to help the ticket and the like. Handwritten at the bottom of the page by Dick Cheney, after seven typewritten points, was an extra line: “Don’t mention Stu Spencer.”
¹⁸³

Reagan had been invited on Sunday, June 6 to appear on the ABC program,
Issues
and Answers
. While most candidates welcomed an opportunity to appear on national television, Reagan declined so he could make the most of the few remaining hours in Ohio before the primary. Ford meanwhile appeared on the CBS program,
Face the Nation
.
¹⁸⁴

The Republican candidates could barely conceal their contempt for each other. Ford returned to his earlier strategy of attacking Reagan head on, as he told the Associated Press that Reagan’s opposition to the Panama Canal Treaties could lead to “guerrilla warfare” and also warned of a Republican “debacle” if Reagan were nominated.
¹⁸⁵

Reagan was a bit more reserved when he told the AP of Ford, “He places his faith and confidence in his longtime buddies in the Congress and they turn him down. I have said that leadership today, I believe, calls for going to the American people and telling them the truth.”
¹⁸⁶
Reagan was realistic about the chances of his delayed campaign in Ohio and set a very low goal of winning ten of the ninety-seven delegates available. Just seventy-two hours before the filing deadline, Reagan had only filed slates in two-thirds of the congressional districts.
¹⁸⁷
Sears had called Loren Smith at the Reagan campaign headquarters to ask him how many petitions Reagan would have to sign. The total, as Smith recalled, was somewhere around three hundred. Sears then asked him how long would it take Reagan to sign that many petitions? Smith had his secretary time himself with a watch while he signed his name over and over and then gave Sears his answer.
¹⁸⁸

Reagan’s self-appointed chair in Ohio was Peter Voss, another conservative who had upset the Republican Party establishment, as was the case of Reagan activists in various states.
¹⁸⁹
Voss was running the campaign out of his living room and was being assisted by Jim Kuhn, a young volunteer. Both were working at Charlie Black’s direction, along with a small, ragtag group of committed Reagan supporters including State Senator Buzz Lukens, Congressman John Ashbrook, and another youngster named John Kasich.
¹⁹⁰
Black only had about $100,000 to devote to television advertising in the last days of the primary. But even that was an improvement—originally, the campaign had only planned to spend $50,000 in Ohio. Sears was feeling confident about California, so some money was shifted to Black’s operation.
¹⁹¹

Once again, Reagan was behind the eight ball. By not filing in eight districts, Reagan handed twenty-four uncontested delegates over to Ford. Reagan concentrated on the more conservative districts in the southern portion of the state, rather than the outside chance of beating Ford in the statewide primary, which would award twenty-eight at-large delegates to the winner. Black frankly told David Broder at the
Post,
“It’s a real longshot for him to win statewide.”
¹⁹²

Ford campaigned in Ohio the Monday before the primary, beginning his day in Cincinnati after an event in Cleveland the previous night. Accompanying him were Governor Rhodes and Senator Robert Taft Jr., son of the conservative Senator who inspired so many—including Reagan. Rhodes crassly reminded the audience that Ford had promised the construction of a uranium enrichment plant for Portsmouth and that Ohio had been given more latitude in the Highway Fund by the Ford Administration than any other state. Rhodes strongly implied that with such tributes to the state, the least they could do was vote for Ford.
¹⁹³

Ford was a bit subtler, as he told the crowd, “In 1976 I don’t want to see a reliable Ford turned in for a flashier model.” He also made reference to “the tragedy of 1964,” drawing an allusion between Goldwater and Reagan yet again.
¹⁹⁴
Ironically, Reagan had nothing but kind words to say about Goldwater. But Goldwater criticized Reagan hard in private, Ford called Goldwater a disaster in public, and Goldwater was supporting Ford over Reagan.

But Reagan still hadn’t cooled off over the ads Spencer had produced, and he startled some of his supporters when he suggested he might not support Ford if he were the nominee. He attacked Ford anew and charged him with “taking the low road.” Reagan had always said he would support Ford if he were unable to defeat him for the nomination, until now. Reagan told reporters when pressed on whether he really meant to withhold support for Ford, “Just say you caught me at a moment when I didn’t want to answer that question.”
¹⁹⁵

Ford tsked-tsked Reagan, telling reporters, “I am very disappointed that someone would put a personal view above a party view.”
¹⁹⁶
On the other hand, Reagan had never called Ford a warmonger as the Rhodesia commercial had implied Reagan was. The
Washington Post
reported, “When the President personally endorsed the commercials, Reagan flew into a rage.”
¹⁹⁷
Reagan’s campaign was deeply concerned that although the commercial was backfiring on Ford in California, it might cause damage in Ohio and New Jersey, where voters did not know him as well as those in his adopted home state.

During a two-hundred-mile motorcade, Ford handed out more federal largess, as in Middletown, where he announced a limitation on the importation of stainless steel pots and pans, surely pleasing to the workers at the Armco plant there. He also announced thirty-six million dollars in new construction for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base when he was in Dayton, which was considered a Reagan stronghold.
¹⁹⁸

Carter was about to close the sale with the Democratic Party, despite Brown’s late entrance into the race and the fact that Hubert Humphrey was once again making noises about accepting a draft at the convention. Carter was ahead in Ohio and was assured a large share of proportional delegates from California and New Jersey.
¹⁹⁹

On June 8, Reagan won big in California, as expected, and swept all 167 delegates. But he only won six of the ninety-seven delegates in Ohio and only four of the sixty-seven delegates in New Jersey. His total for the day to 177, far less than the 200 his campaign had once hoped for.
²⁰⁰
“We put too much money into California. That money could have been spent in Ohio and elsewhere,” Bell bitterly recalled.
²⁰¹

The primaries had concluded, but eleven state Republican conventions remained where the selection of delegates would be decided. Ford was ahead uncomfortably in the delegate count, 961 to 856. But many of these conventions were in the West, “Reagan Country.”
²⁰²
In fact, one cover of
Time
in June featured photos of Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan with the caption, “Our Next President (Pick One).” The story led off, “Now the choice is down to three—and they are among the most unusual politicians in the nation’s history. The next President of the United States will be either Jimmy Carter, the one-term Georgia Governor who has had the most spectacular political rise since Wendell Wilkie in 1940; or Ronald Reagan, the two-term California Governor who staged the most successful challenge against an incumbent since Theodore Roosevelt took on William Howard Taft in 1912; or Gerald Ford, the longtime Michigan Congressman whom fate, Watergate and the 25th Amendment propelled into the Oval Office.”
²⁰³

It was still, as Reagan reminded his crowds, “Anybody’s ballgame.”

11
CONTENTIOUS CONVENTIONS

“There’s no room for charity now.”

A
fter thirty Republican primaries in which over nine million people voted during a six month period, after thousands of workers and volunteers dedicated hundreds of thousands of hours, and after millions of dollars spent by the two campaigns, the party was no closer to deciding who would lead the GOP than it had been at the beginning of 1976. The contest between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan was tied like a wet shoelace.

Although the primaries had concluded without a nominee selected, the battle might finally be decided in the eleven remaining state GOP conventions to take place prior to the Republican National Convention in August.
¹
But conventional wisdom had been wrong all year, so it was anybody’s guess whether Reagan or Ford could formulate a breakthrough in these state GOP meetings and lock up the 1,130 delegates needed for a first ballot nomination.

Some in the party hoped to avoid a protracted fight in Kansas City, to avoid airing the GOP’s dirty laundry in public yet again. But after Nixon, Watergate, Agnew, and the woes of the Ford Administration there was little chance that anything was left to further damage the Republican Party. In fact, the protracted fight was happening whether or not the party elders wanted it. “What some Republican professionals feared was a nasty summer, a bloody convention—and a party split so badly that only a shotgun pairing of Ford and Reagan on the same ticket could heal it,” wrote
Newsweek
.
²