Reagan's Revolution (50 page)

Devine and Blackwell were of no mind to give up even one slot. Their job was to win as many as possible for Reagan. Bond was up for re-election and only moderately conservative, but he was personally popular with the Missouri Republicans. Devine and Blackwell relented, and Bond was awarded the last delegate position.
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It was one of the few examples of charity by either side. Danforth was denied a delegate slot.
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Ford was wiped out at the Missouri convention and embarrassed himself by attending. His aides had erred and assumed they had a tighter control of the event than they really did. Once again, finger pointing was going on inside of the President Ford Committee. But Reagan’s forces were elated. Andy Carter, Reagan’s Political Director told the
Washington Post
, “This was the first convention since the primaries ended, and we won it big.”
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The results also opened up new worries for Ford—that he could never match Reagan as a public speaker at the state conventions, and that his followers lacked the passion of the Reaganites. Ford’s people were being “out hustled” by Reagan’s passionate supporters. “These Reagan people don’t care: they’re absolutely ruthless. They want all of it. Our people just aren’t used to this uncompromising hardball stuff,” Jim Baker—misidentified as “Fred” Baker— told
Time
. Baker’s complaint was uncharacteristic for the normally cool Texan.
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Reagan’s speech in Springfield had electrified the hall and may have moved some soft Ford supporters or uncommitted delegates over to his side. Reagan would speak to the Iowa state convention the following weekend, and Baker, Spencer, Rogers Morton, and Dick Cheney worried that Reagan might do there what he and his team had done in Missouri.

The President expressed his own concerns about his ability to match Reagan’s fierce oratory in an interview with
Time
columnist Hugh Sidey, telling the respected journalist, “I’m the first to admit that I’m not an accomplished speaker. My own speechmaking ability from a text is not first class. . . . I have developed a bad reputation both as to speeches and presentation.” He also betrayed his concerns about his campaign’s abilities compared to Reagan’s.
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After the weekend, Reagan had closed the gap once again and trailed Ford by only approximately seventy delegates. The
Washington Post
estimated that Ford had 958 delegates and Reagan had 887. There remained another 259 delegates to be selected.
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Iowa’s state convention took place on June 19 and culminated a six-month delegate selection process that had begun with the January caucuses. Texas’s state GOP convention was also to be held that weekend, but since Reagan had earlier won all 96 delegates, there was no doubt as to who would get the last four.
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Republicans in Washington State would also be holding their convention. Reagan had near total control and was assured of getting nearly all the delegates available.
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On the other hand, Ford had almost complete sway over the upcoming Delaware state GOP convention and hoped to win all of the 17 delegates they would send to the national convention.
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The Federal Election Commission issued the June reports of all the candidates. Reagan had whittled his debt down to around $150,000 from the million-dollar debt he’d been carrying. The surge in funds was a direct result of his nationally televised address, his direct mail and the recent release of FEC funds. If there was any doubt as to the closeness of the race between Ford and Reagan, it was shown in the filings with the federal agency. Since the beginning of the campaign, Ford had raised and spent $11.4 million while Reagan had raised and spent $11.3 million.
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Ford had planned to campaign in Iowa where both he and Reagan were to appear on the same dais for a dinner honoring RNC Chairman Mary Louise Smith, who was from the state. But Ford ducked out at the last minute and some Reaganites speculated he just wasn’t up to a personal confrontation with Reagan.
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In fact, a crisis was developing in Lebanon and hundreds of Americans were at risk from Arab terrorists. Ford decided to forgo campaigning to monitor and oversee the Americans’ evacuation.
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Mrs. Ford was sent in his place and, as the
Washington Post
reported, aimed “an apparent barb at Reagan: ‘This is a very delicate time and issues have to be handled with great delicacy. You cannot be forceful in a way that would get our country in trouble.’”
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At the Iowa convention Ford won nineteen delegates and Reagan won seventeen. Still, the Reagan forces were pleased, as they had won more than originally expected. The results came after many protracted late night and early morning discussions, as well as stubbornness on the part of one pro-Ford state delegate, who at the last minute switched his vote to support a friend who was running as a pro-Reagan delegate to Kansas City.
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Ford, in fact, should have done much better in Iowa. His Campaign Chairman, Governor Robert Ray, had confidently predicted that Ford would win twenty-three delegates and Reagan only thirteen.
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Once again, Evans and Novak had the inside dope on how the Ford forces flubbed their chance: “Adding to Reagan’s skill in selling himself here as Goldwater never could was a continuing stream of mistakes by Ford’s managers. Lack of nerve, poor timing and a simple ignorance of known political facts by Ford operatives all took their toll.”
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Simply put, the Reagan forces, led by Sears, bluffed the Ford forces into surrendering a stronger position when it came to control of six at-large delegates.
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Sears had not made a lot of money playing poker for nothing. Conservatives had lodged numerous complaints against Sears during the previous year over the Campaign Manager’s tactics and decisions. Some of the complaints were justified, but Sears also possessed a “creative conceit” that allowed him to pivot and focus the campaign’s and the media’s attention in new directions. He also excelled at the “inside baseball” aspects of hardball convention negotiations and strategies. Through June, July, and August of 1976, Sears per- formed one magic act after another to keep Reagan’s chances alive and moving forward.

Unlike in Iowa, Reagan’s forces in Washington state had the strength to seize all the delegates available. But a threatened walkout, this time by Ford’s supporters, forced a settlement.
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Nonetheless, Governor Dan Evans, a Ford supporter, was refused a delegate position—as was another Ford supporter, North Carolina Governor Jim Holshouser, at his state’s convention the same weekend.
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That Washington’s Reaganites denied Evans a slot was understandable. He had spoken out loudly against Reagan, as he told the
New York Times
several weeks before that a Ford-Reagan ticket would be a “sure ticket to disaster. It would reinforce all the President’s weaknesses.”
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Of course, Evans was also promoting himself for the second spot if Ford won the nomination.

Reagan had addressed the Washington convention and later summed up his feelings to reporters, saying, “All in all, a good weekend.”
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Reagan’s coordinator in the Evergreen State was Dale Duvall, who had started out working with the Ford campaign, but concluded that Ford could not be elected President. Duvall had been courted by Andy Carter and Frank Whetstone from the national office of Citizens for Reagan, but had made it clear that if he were to make the switch, then he would have to be in charge. They agreed, and Reagan’s fortunes in the Evergreen State improved immediately under Duvall’s decisive leadership.
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When Reagan spoke in Washington, he turned the “electability” argument on its head, telling the delegates, “Look at the record in California, where I was elected in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 2-to-1 and I won the Governorship by nearly a million vote margin.” As the
New York Times
reported, “‘This electability thing’ is now the first subject Mr. Reagan brings up when he talks to undecided Republicans in the last 10 states choosing national convention delegates.” For some months prior, Ford had tried to make this his issue.

At the North Carolina GOP convention, delegates were selected in accordance with party rules, and so were apportioned, twenty-eight to twenty-five, according to the primary vote back in March which Reagan had won, 53 percent to 47 percent.
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But Tom Ellis, mindful of the possibility that neither candidate might win on the first ballot in Kansas City, loaded the delegation with pro-Reagan supporters at his state convention.
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Although bound on a first ballot at the national convention, they would be freed to vote their individual preference on any subsequent ballots.

In Colorado, which was also beginning its selection process that weekend, Reagan won the first three slots available. Reagan eventually took twenty-six delegates to only five for Ford.
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Ford was being outgunned in the early state conventions, but he was not without resources. He invited the uncommitted delegates from West Virginia to lunch, presumably not to talk about how the Mountaineers would do in football that fall. But six declined the invitation, and Governor Arch Moore told reporters it was because they were for Reagan.
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The invitation to the West Virginians was just the beginning of the pampering uncommitted delegates would receive from the White House.

Ford also invited the New Jersey delegates and alternates over for cocktails in the East Room of the White House and fielded questions for forty minutes. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller had traveled to the state in June to plead with the delegates to change their stance.
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Sometime after meeting with Rockefeller, Tom Kean, the speaker of the New Jersey Assembly and head of Ford’s campaign in the state, went on television to pronounce the Reagan nomination a “disaster” for the GOP.
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The Pennsylvania and Maryland GOP delegates would also receive a much-coveted invitation to the White House.
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Reagan was inching up on Ford, and the
Washington Post
blared the headline: “Republican Race Grows Tighter Still.” Under the byline of the estimable David Broder, a story detailed how Reagan had closed the gap with Ford. He was now only down fifty-five delegates.
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“According to the estimates of the rival camps, the scorecard when the final state conventions are finished on July 17 will show Mr. Ford no more than 25 votes ahead of Reagan and could conceivably put the former California Governor a handful of votes in front. In either case, the balance of power will lie with the bloc of uncommitted delegates, now numbering 159,” Broder wrote. The paper’s freshest estimate of the race for delegates between the two put Ford at 997 and Reagan at 942. And Reagan was expected to do well in the next three state conventions in Montana, Idaho, and New Mexico on the weekend of June 26.
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Ominously for Ford, Broder continued, “If the Reagan estimates prove right, the Californian could regain the lead in the delegate count . . . for the first time since early May.”
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The key phrase in Broder’s piece was “estimates.” In fact, media tabulations fluctuated enough to keep people guessing. The Ford forces accused Sears of floating phony counts, and Sears accused Morton and Baker of doing likewise. Both sides were heavily engaged in this psychological warfare for good reason: supporters, volunteers, the media, and all involved had a common interest in keeping the race lively and interesting. And it was important for Sears to motivate the Reagan forces while simultaneously attempting to demoralize Ford’s supporters by boasting about Reagan’s delegate counts.

Reagan was once again on offense, telling crowds and supporters that it was Ford, and not he, who was a regional candidate. Reagan explained that he had been doing very well in the primaries and conventions in the South and the West, and that these states would be needed in the fall campaign against Carter.
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America’s attention was turned momentarily from the nail biter between Reagan and Ford to two breaking stories about conspiracies. The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that charged the members of the FBI and CIA with conspiring to cover up evidence in the days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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Also, Anthony Provenzano, “Tony Pro,” a “Goodfella” of longstanding who had been rumored to have been involved with the disappearance of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, was indicted in connection to a 1961 murder of another Teamster official.
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Although the weekend of the twenty-sixth was another good one for Reagan, he came up short in Minnesota and did not pick up a proportional amount of delegates as some reformers had proposed at the state convention.
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In the end, he received only ten of the forty-two delegates. Reagan made a speech to the convention and was only politely received. Mrs. Ford campaigned there and wore a button that said, “Betty’s Husband for President,” never suspecting how much this message was undermining Ford’s authority as President.
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The previous day, Mrs. Ford had experienced a horrific event in New York. Dr. Maurice Sage, president of the Jewish National Fund of America, was about to present Mrs. Ford with a Bible when he collapsed and died of a heart attack. While Secret Service agents tried to revive him, Mrs. Ford coolly and kindly led the crowd in a silent prayer for the man.
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