Reagan's Revolution (53 page)

New FEC reports were issued. For the first time in the campaign, Reagan had actually raised more money overall than Ford.
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Reagan made his first foray into “Ford Country” to meet with “uncommitted” delegates from New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. He was warmly received, but nonetheless came away empty handed. Reagan’s old friend, actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr., introduced him.
¹²⁹
In an interview, Paul Laxalt later remembered this phase of the campaign and recalled that Reagan was never very good with names. “I remember flying to New Jersey and I practically had to hold his hand, point people out to him. He said to me, ‘There’s some guy in New Jersey I’m supposed to be mad at. Can you tell me who?’”
¹³⁰

However, Stephen Isaacs, reporting for the
Washington Post
, told of a meeting in Harrisburg between Reagan and a twenty-one-year-old college student and Republican delegate, James Stein, who had been leaning towards Ford. But after meeting privately with Reagan, he “emerged from the meeting . . . to announce that he was now ‘unleaned.’”
¹³¹

In the meantime, Ford met with two hundred leaders from the American Indian community, but the event was considered a farce as the leaders charged it was all a publicity stunt; they were requested to wear their Indian outfits though few did.
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It was not known if they were asked to also put on “war paint.”

Before the weekend’s final contests, the
New York Times’
count of the delegate race put Ford at 1,067 and Reagan at 1,043, a difference of only 24 delegates.
¹³³
Yet a somber mood was overtaking the Reagan campaign, as the fight for the uncommitted delegates was not proving fruitful.

Ford was also concerned, as he confided in his autobiography,
A Time To
Heal
, “The uncommitteds weren’t the only delegates about whom we had to be concerned. My advisers warned that some of my support was ‘soft,’ that anywhere between 50 and 100 delegates already pledged to me might waver and capitulate to pressure from the other side.”
¹³⁴

Reagan lassoed the twenty delegates in Utah, as expected, and Ford took all thirty-five in Connecticut. According to most media tabulations, which included some uncommitted delegates who had declared for Ford over the weekend, the President had just over 1,100 delegates and Reagan around 1,063.
¹³⁵
Both were within striking distance of the number needed for nomination, but Ford was now far closer. Reagan had won two of every three delegates available in the eleven state conventions and had won the majority of the total popular vote in the thirty primaries. But he would still need to win two of every three of the remaining uncommitted delegates.
¹³⁶
And that was the fly in the buttermilk.

Charlie Black had the unhappy duty of trying to pry a few delegates out of the Nutmeg State. Ford’s in-state supporters at the convention passed a motion to allow only votes for full slates, not individuals.
¹³⁷
Had the convention proceeded under the old rules, Reagan probably would have received five delegates.

Connecticut’s GOP had a reputation for moderation and reform, but not this time. Black told the
Post
, “It was an awfully heavy handed means of adopting rules. They’ve rigged it about as tightly as they could.”
¹³⁸
Ford’s aides, knowing they had total control of the process, sent the President there to meet with delegates and address the convention in Hartford. Fred Biebel, the GOP State Chairman, had previously promised to grant some delegates to Reagan in exchange for fundraising help, but recanted and said that he’d “see to it that Connecticut sends not one Reagan delegate to Kansas City.”
¹³⁹

Reagan meanwhile addressed Utah’s state delegates, assembled in Salt Lake City, where an attempt was made to gavel him down by the convention’s Chairman, as had occurred the previous week in Colorado. This time, however, Reagan had asked ahead of time about a time limit and was told he had thirty minutes to address the delegates. So he was startled when a note was passed to him indicating that he only had two minutes left to speak when he had only reached the thirteen-minute mark.

After upbraiding the note passer to the crowd, Reagan swung into an abbreviated speech, much to the disappointment of the rabidly pro-Reagan delegates in the Salt Palace. Still, Reagan managed to get in a couple of swipes at Carter, telling the delegates that Jimmy Carter was “standing tall in the straddle.”
¹⁴⁰
Christopher Lydon for the
New York Times
wrote, “Mr. Reagan illustrated his view of government as an alien force with a new anecdote about his days in the California Governor’s office. The motto of his inner circle in Sacramento, he said, was: ‘When we begin to talk of government as “we” instead of “they,” we’ve been here too long.’”
¹⁴¹
Once again, as had happened in so many other states, a popular elected official was left off the delegate list because he had made the mistake of supporting Ford instead of Reagan. This time it was Utah Senator Jake Garn.
¹⁴²

Despite the Utah sweep, Reagan had lost precious ground to Ford over the weekend, and many in the media were beginning to smell defeat in the air. Lou Cannon flew back to California with Reagan and wrote a story that enraged the Reaganites. A banner headline in the
Post
the following Monday screamed, “Reagan’s Camp: Air of Resignation.” The story led, “Ronald Reagan has returned home to his ranch from the last Republican state convention, with some of his top aides and supporters acknowledging privately that he may have reached the end of the Presidential political trail.”

Cannon proceeded to describe Reagan as “subdued.” Reagan spoke as if his candidacy was over when he told the journalist, “I think my candidacy has been worthwhile.” Reagan visited the press section of the plane to thank the journalists who had been covering him for many months and told them, “I don’t have a complaint in the world. I think you’ve all been fair as hell.” Reagan also worried how he would be treated at the convention, and Cannon concluded his piece by writing, “They were the words of a seemingly defeated candidate who was going back to his ranch content, believing that he had done his best even if that best proved to be not quite enough for victory.”
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In fact, Reagan was exhausted. When he was exhausted, he became more reflective—but never defeatist. Reagan just needed to get his batteries recharged. Anybody who knew the man knew that that word “quit” was not a part of his vocabulary.

At that point, the
Washington Post’s
tabulators had 1,093 delegates for Ford and 1,030 delegates for Reagan, with 136 uncommitted.
¹⁴⁴
According to Cannon, Sears and Deaver were so mad at the journalist over the story that the pair refused to speak to him for a year.
¹⁴⁵
Time
, like other media publications, had the race much closer than the
Post
. According to their count, it was 1,104 for Ford and 1,090 for Reagan.
¹⁴⁶

All hell broke loose the next day when the Reagan campaign held a press conference. Senator Paul Laxalt, Reagan’s Campaign Chair, assailed the
Washington Post
and an unnamed network. “What we are seeing on the part of the
Washington Post
and at least one television network is an effort to psych out Ronald Reagan’s delegates, potential delegates and supporters. It won’t work. They are not about to be fooled into forfeiting that chance by liberals in the media who . . . are fearful that Reagan will win,” Laxalt told the reporters.
¹⁴⁷

Sears also participated in the press conference and announced that, in fact, Reagan had enough delegates to win a first ballot nomination. As part of his tactic, Sears released the names of three previously uncommitted delegates from North Dakota, Virginia, and Delaware who were declaring their allegiance to Reagan.
¹⁴⁸
Baker scoffed to
Time
that “He’s blowing smoke.”
¹⁴⁹
Of course, in making the charge, Baker himself was blowing smoke back at Sears by casting doubt on his claims.

The situation was so fluid that the media had to take both Laxalt’s charges and Sears’s claims seriously. They had seen Reagan’s team pull more than a few rabbits out of the hat over the past year. But they had yet to witness the biggest, most shocking, most impressive and most controversial magic trick ever performed by John Sears, a.k.a. “Mandrake the Magician” to his supporters and things unquotable to his detractors.

12
THE SCHWEIKER STRATAGEM

“Do you think he’d do it?”

A
t the conclusion of the last round of Republican state conventions in the middle of July 1976, neither Ronald Reagan nor Gerald Ford had the delegates necessary for a first ballot nomination in Kansas City. Virtually all media organizations calculated that Ford was short of his goal by between thirty and forty delegates, while Reagan needed somewhere between fifty and seventy to reach the magic number of 1,130. Reagan had pulled closer due to superior work by his field staff in the state conventions, but not close enough. William Shannon, in a column for the
New York Times
wrote, “The prolonged competition between President Ford and former Governor Reagan had the quality of a death struggle.”
¹

Still in play were the last remaining uncommitted delegates who would decide which of the two candidates would lead the Republican Party against Jimmy Carter in the fall campaign. And when many of the uncommitted delegates were pressed and asked whom they were leaning towards, Ford was moving even closer to his goal.

Citizens for Reagan put up a brave front, but the situation was getting worse. The former Governor of California, though persuasive and popular, could simply not match the perks that Ford could offer including invitations to state dinners, private meetings in the Oval Office, lunches in the East Room with the President and personal phone calls from Cabinet officials. Several were also invited to sit on the deck of an aircraft carrier, the
USS Forrestal
, in New York Harbor with Ford to celebrate the country’s bicentennial.
²
Ron Nessen recounted in his book a joke that was circulating around the White House: An uncommitted delegate from New Jersey received a phone call from the President asking him to a state dinner with Queen Elizabeth. After a long pause, the delegate said to Ford, “What’s for dinner?”
³

Such jokes weren’t far from the bizarre truth. In a survey of uncommitted delegates, the
Washington Post
reported that one, James White of Rochester, New York, told the paper, “I hope they’re sending Air Force One for me, because I won’t settle for anything else.”
⁴
Newsweek
reported, “By day, he was the President of the United States . . . but at night, Gerald Ford was a candidate running just slightly scared, retreating to the White House family quarters to call uncommitted delegates around the U.S. and earnestly seek their support in what was an increasingly tight and tense race for the Republican Presidential nomination.”
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The Reagan campaign was also having its candidate call all the uncommitted delegates. He spent hours on the phone soliciting their support, guided by detailed memos written for him by Buzz Lukens, David Keene, and others. For hours on end, Mrs. Reagan would place the phone calls for Reagan, hand the phone to him, and he would discuss world events and the progress of the campaign, make small jokes, and remind them to call if they had any questions.
⁶

During each call, Reagan would make notations on the memos, such as after his conversation with Mrs. Gail Healy, a delegate from Mississippi: “A good talk. She had many questions—I think she was pleased with the answers. Still says she is waiting to make her decision but I think the call was worthwhile.”
⁷

But Reagan, like everybody else, was also getting the runaround from some, as in the case of Bill Patrick, another Mississippi delegate: “He’s for me . . . but then says he won’t make a decision until the other side has had a chance to tell it’s side. . . . Then he adds he hopes he won’t hear anything to change.”
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Next to a phone call he made to Joe Margiotta, the GOP Chairman for Nassau County, New York, Reagan wrote, “I don’t know whether this call was useful at all. . . . I tried to get into a discussion of who had the best chance nationally . . . to sum it up, he terminated the conversation.”
⁹
Keene had written in his memo that although Margiotta was a machine politician and committed to Ford, Reagan’s charm might keep him from working overtime for Ford. It didn’t. Next to some names were neat, small cursive notes by Mrs. Reagan that said, “No ans. We’ll keep trying.”
¹⁰

Reagan wasn’t converting anybody, but he was helping to hold most of them in an uncommitted posture in the face of the Ford White House and Jim Baker’s full court pressure campaign. But it was only a matter of time before they began to buckle. Sears feared that the trickle could become a stampede long before the convention and that Reagan’s long campaign would arrive in Kansas City “dead on arrival.”
Newsweek
referred to the efforts by Ford and Reagan as “vote grubbing.”
¹¹

Baker and Stu Spencer hit the road to “chat up” uncommitted delegates on their home turf. Baker went to Louisiana, and—in what appeared to many as a fool’s errand—Spencer headed for Oklahoma. Still, the mere fact that Spencer was headed into the heart of “Reagan Country” must have sent chills through the Reagan campaign. Sears told author John Robert Green in
The Presidency of
Gerald R. Ford
, “The incumbent could offer them anything. And he could do it. So we were in a position where if we just stayed and did nothing, we were gonna be beaten.”
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Reagan confided to author Lee Edwards later, “There are still machines with that kind of power. . . . In those areas where people are told how to vote, we lost.”
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To make matters worse for Reagan, some delegates previously committed to him, or still uncommitted—including a few in Virginia and Louisiana, like David Treen—were moving to Ford, having been persuaded that he had a better chance against Carter than Reagan.
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