Reagan's Revolution (45 page)

Ford had been at a reception at the French Embassy the night of the primar- ies, but notes were passed to him all evening keeping him informed of the events in both states. While the delegate count remained close and Reagan was by no means out of the race, Ford had once again found renewed life. A thrilled President told his supporters, “This is going to play very well all over the United States,” and described the win as “fantastic.”
⁷⁷

“Before yesterday, the President looked weak, on the ropes, beleaguered. Today, he is the victor, successful, in charge. . . . But there are still questions about the strength of his candidacy, the nature of the race he has run, and the prospects for the Republican Party,” wrote Elizabeth Drew in
American Journal
.
⁷⁸
The seesaw battle had “seesawed” again. One Ford aide, mindful of Rog Morton’s disastrous comment about rearranging deck chairs on the
Titanic
several weeks before, told the
New York Times
they’d “re-floated the
Titanic.
”
⁷⁹

Still, according to the
Times
, Reagan led in the delegate count, 506-432, with 392 still uncommitted from New York, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Mississippi, and elsewhere. The paper had done an informal survey of uncommitted delegates and speculated that the bulk leaned towards Ford, but in such a fluid situation, no one could know with certainty.
⁸⁰
Other media organizations had slight variations in their numbers, but all agreed that Reagan was ahead.

R.W. Apple Jr. in the
Times
summed up the situation writing, “Mr. Ford thus revived a sickly campaign, but he remains a sorely beleaguered incumbent who has already lost six primaries. He is expected to lose more next Tuesday, possibly as many as five out of six on the schedule—Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada—as attention shifts back to the South and West, Mr. Reagan’s strongest areas.”
⁸¹
The key phrase in the
Times
account, for both Ford and Reagan was, “expected to lose.”

Ford’s campaign hierarchy had decided to stay positive. Ford would stress the accomplishments of his Administration and what he planned to do in a new term, and let his surrogates take it to Reagan. Still, Reagan was dictating some White House decisions as planned speeches in California by Kissinger were abruptly cancelled.
⁸²
They also had a rare double advantage working for Ford for once. The President had certainly regained some momentum with his wins in Michigan and Maryland. But six primaries were ahead where he could lose all, thus effectively lowering his expectations.

Two days after the Michigan primary, Reagan pressed on to Nevada, the home state of his Campaign Chairman, Paul Laxalt. At an airport press conference, he was asked if he could have put Ford away had he won in Michigan. Reagan, accompanied by Jim Lake, Marty Anderson, and others, replied, “I don’t know whether we would have wrapped it up or not. Certainly that race was a crucial one for him, and not for me. It was a make-or-break for him. . . . If there had been some kind of miracle there, it would have been quite a blow to him.”
⁸³

Privately, Sears and company had hoped to get 40 percent in Michigan, but that was water over the dam. They were looking to the next six primaries, only several days away.
⁸⁴
Most observers believed all six were in what was “Reagan Country” in the South and the West, and that Reagan would extend his delegate lead over Ford while also recapturing the psychological edge. Only Oregon was seen as possibly going for Ford.
⁸⁵
Still, Reagan’s campaign was not going to give up Oregon without a fight, as Reagan would campaign there for some of its thirty apportioned delegates. He would also stump in Arkansas and Tennessee.

Reagan’s campaign in Nevada included stops in Reno, Elko, and Las Vegas. He was well received by large crowds in all three cities.
⁸⁶
As it turned out, Reagan and Ford both campaigned in Oregon the Saturday before the primary. Reagan spoke at a long planned forum at a Masonic Hall in Portland, while Ford gave a “major policy address” at Lewis and Clark College near Portland.
⁸⁷

The primary would be closed and, as in the case of virtually every other battleground state, the Republican hierarchy in Oregon was fully supporting Ford, along with elected officials, including moderate Republican Senators Bob Packwood and Mark Hatfield. The state GOP had a moderate tradition, and there was a built-in cultural resentment in the state towards anything Californian. Still, a recent poll conducted by the
Oregonian
had Ford with 48 percent, Reagan with 35 percent, and 17 percent undecided. Reagan had run against Richard Nixon in 1968 in Oregon, but Nixon smashed him, 67 percent to 21 percent, with Rockefeller getting 12 percent in a write-in effort. And Reagan’s foreign policy issues, including the Panama Canal and détente, were not uppermost in Oregon Republican primary voters’ minds, as they were in other more conservative states.
⁸⁸

Carter was having problems too. Labor leaders were growing suspicious of him and renewed their effort to draft Hubert Humphrey into the race.
⁸⁹
They were hoping to win a brokered convention if Carter fell short of the 1,505 delegates needed for the nomination. Also, he was caught in a problem of his own making, when he denied ever offering support for Lt. William Calley, who had been convicted for his conduct at My Lai during the Vietnam War. Carter, as Governor, had expressed support for Calley, calling him a “scapegoat.”
⁹⁰

Meanwhile, rumors began to emerge from New York that State Republican Chairman Richard “Rosey” Rosenbaum was planning to discard his previous plan to keep his delegation officially “uncommitted.” It was learned that he had invited all 154 GOP delegates to Albany for a meeting on the Monday before the next round of primaries. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller would also attend. Rosenbaum was also rumored to be mulling an outright personal endorsement of Ford as well.
⁹¹

One hundred and seventy-six delegates would be decided in the May 25 primaries, most of whom were presumed to be for Reagan. If Rosenbaum, who controlled approximately 125 of New York’s 154 delegates, threw them toward Ford, he would create a huge psychological and numerical advantage for the President and deal a serious blow to Reagan. Sears had hoped to pick off a healthy number of the New York delegates, and he thought a big Tuesday by Reagan would aid him in making his case. Nineteen delegates from throughout New York State, led by Brooklyn Chairman George Clark, had already broken with the uncommitted agreement and endorsed Reagan. Ford’s campaign was fearful of further erosion of his expected delegate base towards Ronald Reagan, especially if he scored a big win on Tuesday.

In a press conference with reporters from Tennessee, the President said he was not currently considering Reagan as a running mate. Ford explained, “I have read that Mr. Reagan does not want to be considered for Vice President and I have taken him at his word. Under those circumstances he is not being considered.” He did share with the reporters that both of the state’s Senators, Bill Brock and Howard Baker, were under consideration.
⁹²

Several months before, Sears had decided that Reagan would not campaign in New Jersey, no money would be spent there and sixty-seven delegates would thus be surrendered to President Ford without a fight. Ford, with the support of the state’s Republican Party, including virtually all its elected Republicans such as liberal Senator Clifford Case, was able to then devote additional resources to states like California and other places where Reagan was actively campaigning. Ford hoped to score a breakthrough in these states anyway.
⁹³
Once again, a decision by Reagan’s high command would be bitterly debated.

Nonetheless, Reagan’s New Jersey supporters decided to move forward on their own. They filed a statewide slate, as well as slates in eight of the state’s fifteen congressional districts just minutes before the deadline, on April 29. But Ford’s forces played hardball, as the ballots for the primary buried the Reagan delegates’ names, making them difficult to find on primary day.
⁹⁴

The
New York Times
described the Gipper’s forces in the Garden State as “political nobodies.” The leader of Reagan’s team was a little-known phone installer, Robert Davis, forty-one, who had been active in conservative politics in the state for a decade and had been a leader in Young Americans for Freedom. The paper did note that what they lacked in resources, they made up in energy, which was lacking in the Ford campaign.
⁹⁵

Reagan’s New Jersey supporters opened up a headquarters, and at their first meeting a typical cross-section showed up: small businessmen, retirees, housewives, and college students. They all were estranged from the Republican Party’s status quo, and they all were dedicated to conservatism and its messenger, Ronald Reagan. Their angst was best summed up in a quote given to the
Times
by Mrs. Eleanor Day Winmill: “A vote for Ford is a vote for Kissinger and I’m not going to let the Republican Party sell our country down the river or down the Panama Canal either.”
⁹⁶

Meanwhile, hearing the rumors from New York about supporting Ford before the national convention, the previously uncommitted delegates in Pennsylvania also switched their decision and voted, eighty-nine to nine, to adopt a resolution supporting Ford’s nomination. The resolution had been drafted by Congressman “Bud” Shuster and was immediately endorsed by Senators Hugh Scott and Richard Schweiker. While holding the delegates technically “uncommitted,” the resolution was in fact another major boost for Ford.
⁹⁷
Still, Reagan, Sears, and their supporters held out hope that some in the Pennsylvania delegation might change their minds about the conservative candidate.

The weekend before the May 25 primaries, Reagan campaigned in Tennessee, where he spoke to thirty-five hundred cheering supporters at Tennessee Temple College on his opposition to limited war: “Never again should this country send its young men to die in a war unless this country is totally committed to winning it as quickly as possible.”
⁹⁸

But in a press conference, he ran afoul of the zealous supporters of the long controversial Tennessee Valley Authority.
⁹⁹
The TVA had been a New Deal project and was a source of consternation to supporters of the free market in the rest of the country for many years. It had been intended to supply low-cost electricity to the poor of Tennessee during the Great Depression and pay for itself. But its size and scope had grown over four decades. And American taxpayers subsidized it all.

Even the most conservative politician in Tennessee bowed down before the subsidized god of TVA . But Reagan told the assembled reporters, “I still believe in free enterprise, and the government doesn’t have any place in it.” Reporters pressed him: would he sell TVA? Reagan replied, “We’d have to look at it.”
¹⁰⁰

The Ford campaign jumped on this statement as did Senator Baker and virtually every Republican official in Tennessee. Baker, one of the classiest men on either side of the aisle, went easy on Reagan in his statement. After all, Governor and Mrs. Reagan had been his houseguests several nights before. Baker had invited the Reagans, even as he was supporting Ford’s nomination. He told the
Washington
Post
that he did not “allow my politics to interfere with my friendships.”
¹⁰¹
Baker also appeared on
Face the Nation
and speculated that Reagan’s comments could “cost him dearly in Tennessee, Kentucky and possibly Arkansas.”
¹⁰²

Reagan tried to backtrack, telling the media that while he had no plans to sell the TVA, he was “philosophically opposed” to it. But he had difficulty shaking the issue. Ford immediately criticized Reagan’s comments, telling a hastily arranged group of Tennessee reporters in the White House, “I think it’s been a very, very important energy producer in that great part of our country, and I believe it’s continuing to perform a very important responsibility.”
¹⁰³

Rog Morton, Ford’s Campaign Chairman, issued a statement, piling on: “Mr. Reagan’s statements will be weighed carefully next Tuesday by thousands of voters in Kentucky and Tennessee who depend on TVA for jobs and lower power rates.” In addition to lining up these critical comments, the President Ford Committee also attempted to persuade Republicans in Kentucky, who would also be holding a primary on May 25 and where voters also enjoyed the subsidized electricity generated by TVA, to vote against Reagan.
¹⁰⁴

Goldwater was also experiencing his own problems as he whined to Sally Quinn of the
Washington Post
. In the aftermath of criticizing Reagan over the Panama Canal, conservatives had deluged the curmudgeonly Senator’s office with letters, telegrams, and phone calls denouncing him. “I didn’t realize Western Union would send telegrams like that,” he told Quinn.
¹⁰⁵

While Reagan was on the defensive, Ford embarked on a five-day swing through California, Nevada, Oregon, and Ohio. But he stuck to the plan his campaign had re-introduced in Michigan to avoid confronting Reagan directly. The movement towards Ford in New York and Pennsylvania, along with the chance of winning Oregon, had visions of a first ballot nomination dancing in the heads of Morton, Cheney, Spencer, and the President. Now, with Reagan in trouble in Tennessee, their spirits were brightening even more. And all six of the forthcoming primaries would send proportional delegates to Kansas City, so Ford was assured of getting his share from each. Still, most observers believed—or hoped— that neither Reagan nor Ford would win the necessary delegates needed for a first ballot nomination and the Republicans would have a good, old-fashioned donnybrook on their hands in Kansas City.
¹⁰⁶