Kemper Arena was an ultra-modern structure that had cost over twenty-three million dollars to build and seated seventeen thousand. Unbeknownst to anyone, its silent concrete, steel girders, and glass would behold history in the making. Less than three years later, the arena’s roof collapsed during a thunderstorm in 1979. Perhaps the boisterous and noisy GOP delegates of 1976—through four passionate days and nights of exhorting their candidates, yelling at speakers at the podium, cheering for Nancy Reagan and Betty Ford, stomping their feet, blowing horns, and leading demonstrations for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan into the wee hours of the morning—contributed to weakening the arena’s superstructure and thereby hastened its eventual collapse.
Over thirty thousand people descended on the city, including 4,515 delegates and alternates—more than double the number that had gone to Miami Beach four years earlier. Nine thousand members of the media were also present. Others included campaign staffs, foreign dignitaries, White House staff, Secret Service personnel, vendors, and the like.
The city had not hosted a national political convention since 1928, when the Republican Party nominated Herbert Hoover. Some wags tried to draw a correlation between 1928 and 1976, but time would prove that, as far as the GOP was concerned, they had nothing in common. In fact, 1976 joined 1856, 1860, and 1964 as the most important Republican conventions in the party’s history, and one of the most important in American history.
But none of these convention years was uppermost in the mind of President Ford. He was thinking about the convention of 1884, when incumbent President Chester A. Arthur was turned aside by his own party. Ford did not want to become only the second President to be rejected by the GOP.
Pro-Ford forces had near total control of the entire convention apparatus— even down to the details of the official program, which featured twenty-three photos of Ford and only one of Reagan. Also, Ford’s delegates were awarded the choicest and closest hotels, while Reagan’s delegates were relegated to motels as far away as seventy miles from the convention center. One Reagan delegate told Robert Nakamura in the
Political Science Quarterly
, “The tactics used by the people in power—the Republican National Committee—were ruthless, cold-blooded and bordering on the fringe of being unethical.”
5
Before heading to Kansas City, John Sears held a press conference in Washington and claimed a pickup of another twelve uncommitted delegates for Ronald Reagan. He attempted once again to cast as much doubt on the delegate count as possible.
Jim Baker disputed Sears’s claim, telling reporters that eleven of the twelve had already been counted in the Ford campaign’s tabulations as committed Reagan supporters. Only one, State Senator Fred Eckert of New York, was a new, public supporter of Reagan. But after his private meeting with Ford several weeks earlier, it was evident to Baker that Eckert had been a Reagan fanatic all along.
6
Reagan himself noted Eckert’s eccentricity. Memos had been prepared by David Keene with lists of uncommitted delegates for the Governor to call. After speaking with Eckert, Reagan scribbled next to his name, “He is very conservative. Agrees with my every position. He (and this must be a secret) is going to K.C. to vote for me.”
7
Sears was also floating the media-inspired “Trojan Horse delegate” argument; that many of Ford’s delegates really preferred to vote for Reagan. This was true enough in North Carolina, Florida, and other states. But it was also offset by some of Ford’s own Trojan Horse delegates. For example, Indiana delegates were legally required to vote for Reagan on the first ballot, though most clearly favored Ford. Still, Sears’s fog machine was working, and most observers, save possibly the estimable Baker and his team of delegate hunters, believed that neither man had the delegates locked up for a first ballot nomination in Kansas City.
Several months earlier, Baker had righted the delegate operation of the President Ford Committee. He had assembled a top-notch team including his key assistant, Peter McPherson, to count, cajole, and coddle GOP delegates. And Dick Cheney was asserting increased discipline over the Ford White House. Each morning Cheney, Stu Spencer, Bill Timmons, Rog Morton, and Bob Teeter would meet at the White House to review the day’s events, including Ford’s travels and public activities, the campaign’s activities, and how to coordinate the day between the two.
8
Yet some elements of the campaign still creaked along, especially the areas under Campaign Chairman Morton’s control. Morton was ailing at the time, but he was still under heavy criticism, especially for his too-frank comments to the media. “Maybe some new leadership over here would be stimulating,” he told the
Washington Post
.
9
Ford himself had upbraided Morton several times for his intemperate statements.
Ford’s problems aside, Reagan was having his own trouble in spades with his own delegates and those who had, previous to the Dick Schweiker announcement, wanted to be his delegates. Many of these Reagan delegates in Ford clothing were still bristling over the selection of Senator Richard Schweiker. One real Trojan Horse delegate from North Carolina told
Time
, “Nobody’s going to break the law for Reagan now.”
10
The delegate was referring to one stratagem under consideration by the Reagan operation: that delegates simply violate the directives from their state leaders and vote for Reagan rather than Ford at the convention. Another tactic under consideration was for these Trojan Horse delegates to abstain on the first ballot, possibly denying Ford the nomination. Then they would be free to vote their individual consciences in the balloting that would follow.
To prevent this possibility, the Ford-dominated Republican National Committee passed the so-called “Justice Amendment” that would mandate that all delegates abide by their state laws as they pertained to procedural matters. Still, the RNC had no jurisdiction over the convention, and the matter would have to be taken up by the Rules Committee and the Platform Committee in Kansas City.
The Reagan team, led by Paul Laxalt, fought the proposal. The issue was but one more part of the delicate balancing act the campaign was attempting to perform. On the one hand, they wanted to win the nomination, but not in a way that would enrage the Ford forces and cause them sit on their hands in the fall, as moderates and liberals did in 1964. As Jim Lake said, “You are talking about a strategy that would make the Ford people mad. We want to get the nomination, but we also want to win in November.”
11
Time
magazine reported,
In addition, many Ford-bound delegates really preferred Reagan. They are Republican right-wingers who had been assigned by local party leaders to vote for the President because he won a proportion of their state’s popular vote in the primaries. If the voting at the Kansas City convention goes to a second ballot, a number of Ford’s 18 Vermont delegates would shift, and all but two of his 25 North Carolina delegates would jump to Reagan.
The finish would be so tight that John Sears, Reagan’s campaign manager, predicts that his man will be ahead, but perhaps by three votes—1,031 to 1,028. Ford’s aides forecast a squeaker victory for the President.
12
Minor delegate movement between the camps and between committed and uncommitted status was greeted by the media with the fanfare usually reserved for visiting heads of state. A headline blared over a story in the
Washington Post
by Margot Hornblower, “Reagan, Schweiker Pick Up 6 Delegates in Northeast.”
The series of personal delegate meetings, which began. . . in Mississippi and will continue this week in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, is part of the final frantic scramble for votes before the Kansas City convention 10 days away. Although Mr. Ford is 72 votes ahead of Reagan, by the Washington Post count, the character of the race could still change with 119 delegates remaining uncommitted and others changing their minds daily.
13
Baker and his delegate honchos must have dreaded picking up the newspapers every morning.
In another story on August 6, the
Post
also reported, “Reagan picked up two delegates in New York and two in New Jersey, while in Minnesota a Reagan del- egate and a Ford delegate announced that they are now uncommitted.” The newspaper’s count had Ford at 1,106 and Reagan at 1,034 with 119 uncommitted delegates.
14
From early on both campaigns had assumed that delegates would decide which candidate to support by considering ideology, who could most likely win in the fall campaign, or what was in the national interest. They were sorely mistaken. One New Jersey delegate, Joseph Yglesias, told Hornblower he had decided to support Reagan because, “Mr. Ford failed to show concern about the loss of jobs at a Bayonne military base.”
15
Yglesias had replaced a Ford delegate who had died one month earlier, and a credentialing fight was looming over whether or not to seat the stand-in delegate.
As both campaigns, the White House, the media, the interminably infuriating delegates, party staffers, and hangers-on were all preparing to descend upon Kansas City, the Ford and Reagan camps were confronted with fresh problems. For Ford, the economy was cooling and unemployment had gone up for the second month in a row. This was in contrast to the primary season, when Ford had complained about how he had not received any credit from Republican voters for the turnaround in the economy. His point was well taken.
From 1975 to 1976, the GNP had turned around, from negative growth to a sharp spike in positive growth. And, just as importantly, inflation had been halved, from over 12 percent to 6 percent. The Ford campaign hoped the slowdown in the economy would not adversely affect the President’s ability to gather the last remaining delegates needed for the nomination. But it was another headache they did not need.
Reagan’s problem was more immediate and threatening. Several disgruntled conservatives made a clandestine effort to oust Schweiker from the ticket. Led by Senators Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, they made clear their unqualified support for Reagan, but their qualified support for a Reagan-Schweiker ticket. Since the stunning announcement of Schweiker, conservatives—especially those independent of Citizens for Reagan, had fumed privately and publicly. But the attempt by Helms and Thurmond was the first real effort to dump Schweiker.
While Reagan was favored by most conservatives, these purists did not shy away from criticizing him. Still, their anger was not aimed directly at Reagan so much as Sears and Schweiker, whom they felt free to criticize. Conservative circles hummed with talk of an “open convention” to select another running mate for Reagan, should the Californian gain the nomination. Escaping their attention was the obvious fact that if Reagan did win the nomination in Kansas City, it might very well be due to both Mr. Sears and Mr. Schweiker.
Reagan and Schweiker also struggled to gain support among uncommitted delegates. They made a foray into the Senator’s home state and found the pickings thin. A luncheon in Philadelphia was attended by about half of the state delegation. While the event was cordial and both Reagan and Schweiker were well received, it did nothing to turn around any more delegates for the ticket.
Reagan and Schweiker both noted to the media the continuing pressure being placed on delegates by the Ford operation. Reagan said that Ford operatives were, “virtually breaking down the door” to keep delegates in line. Reagan and Schweiker told the media that the five Pennsylvania delegates who had previously announced support for Reagan were now being harassed and ostracized for doing so by the President’s campaign. Ford’s Chairman, Drew Lewis, denied their charges.
16
Schweiker took an unusually hard hit from columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, two of the few political journalists immune to the charms of Sears. The duo charged, “Whereas poisonous erosion of Reagan strength in the South can be blamed on Schweiker, he cannot take credit for modest Reagan advances in the Northeast.”
17
They were also continuing to have problems with the national media, who kept hammering Reagan and Schweiker on their philosophical differences. Things were somewhat better in West Virginia, where Schweiker spoke to the GOP state convention and received a standing ovation. They also managed to pick up one previously uncommitted delegate there.
Suffering from buyer’s remorse, Clarke Reed told the reporters he “may have overreacted” when he endorsed Ford over Reagan several weeks earlier. Reed did throw the Reagan camp a bone when he expressed the sentiment that many delegates would like to know Ford’s choice ahead of time. The incoming State Chairman in Mississippi, Charles Pickering, had also moved from supporting Reagan to undecided like others. But Keene felt he did so cunningly, in order to maneuver with the uncommitted delegates and turn them back toward Reagan.
18
Outside the glare of the national media, John Sears and Dick Cheney discussed how to minimize friction between the two warring camps in Kansas City once the nomination was decided. They initially agreed that the winner would call upon the loser immediately after the roll call vote. Also, they were to meet in private, without staff or family in attendance. Later, once the convention was underway, Sears added the proviso that Ford not offer the Vice Presidency to Reagan, which Cheney said he would carry to the President for his consideration.
19
Staff assignments had been handed out for the two camps. Nofziger was to manage the convention operations for Citizens for Reagan. His counterpart would be Bill Timmons, a veteran of convention politics who managed the 1968 and 1972 conventions for Richard Nixon. Timmons was a well-regarded player in GOP politics who, like Nofziger, was fiercely loyal.