The Reagan people were putting renewed pressure on Reed after they heard the NBC report, telling him that he could partially make it up to Reagan for his previous betrayal by sticking with them on 16-C and delivering his thirty votes to support the proposal.
Reed was once again flopping around like a large mouth bass in the bottom of a fishing boat. Dent was unrelenting in his drumbeat to him about being a “kingmaker” and had told Witcover at the time, “There was a battle going on to retake Clarke Reed. We had Clarke’s body but we didn’t have his soul.”
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Complicating Dent’s task were his new orders from Baker. Previously, the Ford campaign wanted to dissolve the unit rule and split the vote. But now Baker could only count 1,130 votes for that evening against 16-C: just enough to win but far too close for comfort. He now told Dent all 30 of Mississippi’s votes were needed for Ford.
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The margin for the nomination was, according to his counts, more comfortable for the next evening. But for Baker, those twenty-four hours were an eternity away. How many other Clarke Reeds might be out there, telling him one thing and then doing another?
Both campaigns had surrogates address the assembled Mississippi delegates and Reagan himself came by to answer questions. Also, Reagan’s friend, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. spoke to the Mississippians. Finally, Dent and Dave Keene were asked to leave the room and even when John Connally showed up to speak on Ford’s behalf, he was rebuffed by Barbour.
Keene had made it clear to Mounger that 16-C was the last chance for Reagan. “You lose this thing and it’s over; that’s it. If Mississippi goes down the chute on 16-C, we lose it on the floor, we lose the nomination.”
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Both sides now needed all thirty of Mississippi’s votes. After a good deal of deliberations and recriminations, the delegation finally voted.
Haley Barbour left the room after the vote and bumped into Dent, who anxiously wanted to know the outcome.
“Y’all won,” said Barbour, glumly.
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One delegate missed the vote, but no matter, as Ford prevailed thirty-one to twenty-eight. Thirty votes had been taken out of the Reagan column for 16-C and placed in the Ford column against 16-C. Baker had the cushion he needed for the President. Reed deliberately cast his vote at the end, when the outcome was clear, for Reagan—even as he knew it would do no good for the Californian.
Word spread quickly throughout Kansas City of the Mississippi delegation’s switch to Ford. The psychological impact for Ford and against Reagan was resounding. Sears had commitments from individual delegates in New Jersey and Pennsylvania to support 16-C, but when they found out about Reagan’s collapse with the Magnolia State GOP, they ran for the tall grass. Gil Carmichael and Doug Shanks were exultant while Mounger and Pickering were crestfallen. Most of the rest were simply glad it was finally over and went to have some beer, courtesy of Coors.
While the Mississippians were shuffling off for beer, increasing numbers of uncommitted delegates were shuffling off into the Ford column. No point holding back now, and they might as well go with an apparent winner.
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Adding to Reagan’s woes was the
CBS News
report that had, for the first time in the network’s tabulations, placed Ford over the top with 1,132 “firm or committed” delegates.
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The highlight of Tuesday evening was the keynote address by Connally. He did not disappoint the delegates, as he ripped into Carter and the Democratic Party. But eyes in the Reagan and Ford camps were not on Connally’s speech. They were anticipating the showdown over 16-C.
After Connally spoke, the convention heard from a number of delegates arguing from the podium supporting and opposing 16-C. One who argued against it was a pretty blonde form South Carolina, Sherry Martschink, who had driven both camps to distraction over the preceding several months as an uncommitted delegate. She clearly relished the attention from all, including the media. Martschink was booed heavily during and after her speech.
Speaking in favor of 16-C was Reagan’s old friend from Missouri, Tom Curtis, who had been a Congressman and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission. Leading the pro-Ford group against 16-C was Michigan Senator Bob Griffin, who was also Ford’s Floor Manager.
But again, before the convention could get down to business, round two began of the battle of the candidates’ wives. Mrs. Ford entered the arena first and was greeted with loud applause, followed by Mrs. Reagan a few minutes later. The Reaganites on the floor went wild, engaging in a long and loud welcoming ceremony for the pretty former actress. She stood in the VIP skybox designated for Reagan and his close friends, high above the floor. For minutes on end, she waved and the crowd cheered. And each time the band struck up “California Here I Come,” the cheers grew even louder and longer. Disco singer Tony Orlando, sitting with Mrs. Ford, would dance with her when the band played his song, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” giving the cue to Ford supporters to cheer more loudly than the Reagan supporters.
Dole tried but failed to bring the convention under control from the podium. At one point, he quipped to the milling Republicans, “Will the delegates please take their seats . . . or any seat.” Still, the famous Dole temper was visible several times that evening as the proceedings fell further and further behind schedule.
Morton blundered again when his interview with the
Birmingham News
appeared in a story headlined: “Ford Would Write Off Cotton South?” In this story, which circulated among the Mississippi delegates, Morton had speculated to the paper that Carter was too strong in the South and that Ford might bypass the region. This caused renewed angst among many in the delegation.
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On the floor, under heavy questioning by CBS correspondent Dan Rather, Morton backtracked from the story, and Rather invited Morton to go over to the Mississippi delegation to explain himself. A quick-thinking Ford operative, watching this unfold, arranged for an order via walkie-talkie to Morton to leave the floor—immediately.
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Bringing Reed back into line required a phone call from Ford himself to Reed on the floor to calm him down and assure him he would not bypass the South.
Reed received a new request via phone from Sears in the Reagan trailer. Sears sought to salvage some votes for Reagan by having Reed hold a quick caucus and dissolve the unit rule. Reed was simultaneously boiling mad at Morton for his comments, was under a crush of reporters at the back of the hall, and was being interviewed live by Tom Pettit of NBC and other journalists. So he could not have moved to hold the caucus Sears had asked for, even if he had wanted to. Pettit reported that the Mississippi delegation was “coming apart at the seams.”
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Mounger, Keene, and Pickering also tried to get the delegation to re-caucus, given this development—knowing it would stiffen the spines of the Reagan delegates. But the Ford supporters in the delegation refused to leave their seats on the floor. They knew that as long as they remained on the floor and did not leave to meet with the alternate delegates, a quorum would be impossible, and the unit rule would hold for Ford. The last hope of retaking Mississippi for Reagan collapsed.
“In a convention hall aboil with emotion, the former Governor’s partisans demanded a rules change requiring Mr. Ford to disclose his running mate and ‘tell us who is on the team before asking us to join it,’” wrote the R.W. Apple Jr. in the
New York Times
.
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About the only person in Kansas City who was keeping his cool was Reagan himself, who would be seen periodically throughout the evening watching the proceedings on television and laughing at some of the charges leveled at him and Schweiker from some speakers at the podium.
Tempers were running high. A confrontation involving Nelson Rockefeller took place on the floor before the vote, when a Utah delegate ripped out the white phone that connected the New York delegation to the Ford command post after he saw Rocky had taken a Reagan placard from a delegate in the North Carolina contingent. Perspiring heavily through his shirt, the Vice President held up the phone and attached cord for all to see, but many saw the image as a metaphor of his inability to communicate with his own party. Rockefeller finally relented and gave the Reagan sign to a delegate, but not before ripping it in half. Security had escorted the Utah delegate, Doug Bishoff, out of the hall. Later, the Secret Service arrived to escort Rockefeller off the floor as well, fearing the altercation might lead to a more threatening situation.
Rosenbaum was using the phone at the time and was surrounded by a crush of reporters. Dole, visibly angry, gaveled and asked repeatedly for the hall to come to order, for the aisles to be cleared, and for the vote to proceed. But it was to no avail. The famous incident ended on a light moment when Tom Brokaw of NBC interviewed an extraordinarily large delegate from North Carolina, who had taken it upon himself to break up the scuffle over the sign that now involved Rockefeller and the delegations of Utah, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Brokaw told the man, “Well, given the dimensions of you, I doubt anyone is going to take it away.” Reagan, watching on television, dissolved in laughter.
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The next night, handmade signs held up by Reagan delegates appeared on the floor saying, “Rocky don’t steal this sign.”
“Whistles, catcalls and a scuffle on the floor delayed the debate and drowned out the voices of the speakers on both sides,” wrote the
Times
.
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Earlier in the day, anticipating the pent up anger of the Reagan delegates, the Ford campaign had announced it would not fight Reagan’s “Morality in Foreign Policy” plank. Sears’s only card to play was 16-C. Secretary of State Kissinger had arrived quietly in Kansas City and had urged the Ford campaign to fight the foreign policy plank, but they wisely demurred. Knowing how he antagonized the conservatives in Kansas City, the campaign had kept him under virtual house arrest.
Time had expired for debate, and Dole directed a roll call vote on 16-C after the Chairman of the Idaho delegation, Wayne Kidwell, asked to be recognized. Dole did, and Kidwell notified the podium that he had the support of a majority of the delegations from his state, New Mexico, Texas, California, Alabama, and Arizona to ask the convention for an up-or-down roll call vote on 16-C. According to the rules, delegations from six states were required in order to make this motion.
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The states voted alphabetically. During the previous week, in the rules committee hearings, some Ford supporters worried about the possibilities of ballot momentum for Reagan as many of the early states favored him. Ford’s Representatives to the rules committee attempted to have the states vote randomly, but this was shot down as a ridiculous idea.
As the convention got down to business, a blue cloud materialized over the hall. The tense delegates lit cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. Ashtrays were plentiful, but when they overflowed, delegates simply stubbed their cigarettes on the floor.
After Dole confirmed that the six states indeed wanted a vote, the balloting began. Reagan pulled out to an early and healthy lead with the votes of Alabama, Arizona, and California’s big bloc of 167. Colorado extended his lead, as did Georgia and Idaho. It was not until Illinois that a big state went overwhelmingly for Ford. Still, as the states moved along, Reagan had the lead until the voting came to New York, when Ford moved into the lead. Mississippi had taken a pass at Keene’s request, as he hoped for a miracle to bring their thirty delegates back into the Reagan fold.
When the vote came to New Jersey, Senator Clifford Case announced his state’s vote as sixty-two to four against 16-C. But when one delegate, Thomas Bruinoog, moved to have the delegation polled individually, a groan went up from the hall. Sears had called Bruinoog and asked for the vote, believing he had been betrayed by several of the delegates after they learned of Reagan’s loss of Mississippi earlier in the day. Sears wanted their duplicity on record. When Texas voted all hundred delegates for 16-C, a prolonged cheer went up from the Reaganites in the hall.
The issue was still in doubt at the end of the alphabetical role call of states. Two states had passed and would be asked to now announce their votes. Florida had passed, as Mississippi had done, so it followed Wyoming. Wyoming surprisingly had only voted nine to eight for Reagan. “We did a masterful of peeling delegates out,” Cheney remembered.
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Although the delegation had been heavily pro-Reagan, they had been invited to the White House dinner for Queen Elizabeth and successfully swayed to support Ford. Florida proceeded to cast thirty-eight votes against 16-C and twenty-eight in favor. Only at that point did Ford top the 1,130 votes needed to stop 16-C.
When all the votes had been tallied, Ford defeated Reagan 1,180 to 1,069 on Sears’s Rule 16-C.
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A handful of delegates abstained or did not bother to show up, but the hall went wild with pro-Ford cheers, as all knew this test vote meant Ford would be most likely nominated the next evening.
Mississippi’s thirty delegates voted against 16-C. As it turned out for Ford, their votes were not necessary. But the impact of their announced switch to Ford could not be underestimated. And Reed had lost his chance to clinch the nomination for Ford and make himself a “kingmaker.”
The convention next had to consider the Reagan campaign’s foreign policy plank. It was well after midnight, and the delegates were streaming for the doors. The Ford campaign debated once again whether to fight it or to take a pass. Baker and Cheney worried that opposing the amendment and possibly losing might stop the ballot momentum they had gained from the defeat of 16-C.
Reagan’s foreign policy plank “did everything but strip Henry bare of every piece of clothing on his body,” Cheney recalled. “And Rockefeller and Kissinger were pushing to have the fight to defeat the platform plank. I was arguing this is not the time to have the fight on the platform. And Kissinger said at one point, ‘If you don’t take on this fight, I’m going to resign. I’m going to quit here and now. [Tom] Korologos piped up and said, ‘Well Henry, if you’re going to quit, do it now. We need the votes.’”
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