Reagan's Revolution (58 page)

Yet rather than selecting sixty solid Reagan supporters, Reed attempted to placate all elements in the party by picking liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Of course, no one at Citizens for Reagan was paying any attention to the Mississippi convention in April of 1976. At that time, they were desperately trying to keep Reagan’s campaign alive.

In a May story about the uncommitted delegates from New York, Pennsylvania, and other states including Mississippi, the
New York Times
reported, “In Mississippi, for example, the challenger [Reagan] is thought to have overwhelming support among 30 delegates who have not yet declared their preferences. Clarke E. Reed, the State Party Chairman, said it was ‘very likely’ that Mississippi would adopt an informal unit rule, as it had in the past, and thus give all of its convention votes to Mr. Reagan.”
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Both camps saw the story and drew their own conclusions. The Reagan campaign took comfort from the story. They could work on uncommitted and wavering delegates from other states. For Ford’s forces, the report meant that trying to pry anything loose from Mississippi, especially since it would abide by the unit rule, would be a waste of time. Still, as Ford inched up on the nomination, Reed was inching away from Reagan.

In the first week in July,
Time
magazine wrote, “Reagan is . . . confident of winning all of Mississippi’s 30 seats since the delegates have adopted the unit rule (whoever wins a majority, however narrow, gets all thirty). Ford is pondering a last-minute trip to Mississippi. ‘The delegation is probably 2 to 1 for Reagan now,’ says GOP National Committeeman Clarke Reed. ‘But who knows? Hard work could push it either way.’”
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Later in the month, Reed told the same publication he would urge the delegation to switch if “it appears Ford is the man.”
²⁰
Reed was also telling other publications inferentially that Mississippi was not locked up for Reagan as previously thought. Comments like these made the Reagan forces want to strangle Reed. They had enough on their plates with attempting to win some uncommitted delegates, preparing for the looming convention, and continuing to put up a brave front that would keep all their forces in line until they could figure something out in Kansas City to win the damn thing. But Reed was telegraphing invitations to Harry Dent, Jim Baker, and Dick Cheney to come into the state for Ford and play havoc.

And play havoc they did.

Dent had been brought aboard the Ford campaign to help the President in the South. A charming, roguish, and eminently knowledgeable South Carolinian, Dent had been slightly brushed by the Watergate scandal while working on Nixon’s White House Staff, so he kept a low profile and had resisted pressures to join Ford’s campaign until May. Dent had been the Nixon Administration’s liaison to the South to “hold the hand of the South while the Nixon Justice Department enforced busing to achieve school integration.”
²¹
Although he had not been implicated in any wrongdoing, his unpleasant experience with the special prosecutor made him sensitive to the political atmosphere of the day. He thought his formal presence on the campaign might prove an embarrassment to President Ford and his effort.

Dent knew Clarke Reed and understood his strengths and weaknesses. So too did Mounger. “Clarke is one of the weakest individuals,” he said in an interview years later.
²²
“Mississippi was to account for most of my waking hours for the next three months, through the end of the GOP convention on August 19,” Dent wrote in his book,
The Prodigal South Returns to Power
.
²³

Dent, Jerry Jones, and Cheney were among the few who had understood the changing nature of the conservative opposition to Ford within the GOP, and Dent was frustrated in his inability to educate others in the White House, the Republican National Committee, and later the President Ford Committee of that alarming development.

“For Ford, however,” Dent wrote
,
“there were two problems: Ronald Reagan’s frustrated desires left over from his abortive 1968 nomination try and Ford’s political advisers who seemingly refused to understand the Reagan threat and the difference between a primary season and the general election.”

“The essence of the Ford problem,” Dent continued, “was the failure to see the Republican Party realistically as the conservative party it is.”
²⁴
Yet Dent also had a blind spot about Reagan. He constantly described Reagan’s followers as “Birchers,” a derisive reference to the John Birch Society, a group founded in the late 1940s and named after what was believed to be the first victim of the Cold War, an American Army officer who had been captured, tortured, and killed by the Communist Chinese.

Reed started receiving phone calls from Dent, Cheney, Ford aide Bill Timmons, as well as Cabinet Secretaries Earl Butz and Bill Simon, all of whom pressured him to support the President. But he was also getting calls from Reagan, Keene, and Sears, reminding him of his promise.

Dent slowly kept badgering Reed to announce his support for Ford, in private and public, otherwise he would be on the losing end by staying with Reagan, the prospect of which drove Reed crazy. Dent was also working inside the Mississippi delegation courtesy of Gil Carmichael, a car dealer and Doug Shanks, a Jackson city commissioner. Both were active Ford supporters. Another key to Dent’s strategy was John Davis, who had been working in Ford’s Southern office until it was closed in the spring and he was laid off to save money. It was Davis, according to Dent, who initially alerted him to the notion that opportunities existed in Mississippi for Ford. “There’s gold to be mined in that Mississippi delegation. I think we can turn the Reagan tide in Mississippi around and win all thirty votes under Clarke Reed’s unit rule,” Dent recalled Davis telling him. Shanks had already stated publicly that he might not abide by the unit rule and break precedent to vote for Ford at the convention.
²⁵

In the meantime, as the situation developed in Mississippi, Dent was calling uncommitted delegates in other Southern states, including his home state. He told them that Mississippi was crumbling and that when it switched to Ford, Reagan’s challenge would be finished. Other Ford operatives were calling delegates in the North to hold them in line, telling them that Reagan was not even holding his base. This tactic was especially effective in Pennsylvania, where Sears was making a strong pitch for a group from the Philadelphia area.

Reed, like many others, thought the campaign would be over shortly, as both Citizens for Reagan and the President Ford Committee were attempting to implement early knockout strategies. No one, especially Clarke Reed, could foresee the extended trench warfare of the campaign. He also told
American Journal
author Drew, “the delegation’s not deliverable,” in complete contradiction to his promises months before to Keene.
²⁶

“The worst thing that happened to Clarke Reed in his entire career was the fact that it wasn’t over early. Because he then discovered that he put his delegation together in the sloppiest manner imaginable, that he had trouble on both sides, that he couldn’t deliver it—at least to the extent that he thought he could. That was not a result of deviousness. That was a result of weakness, and a result of trying to please everybody,” Keene told Witcover.
²⁷

From Shanks and Carmichael to Davis and Dent, the message of “don’t give up on Mississippi” finally caught the attention of Cheney in June. Rog Morton, like others at the Ford campaign, was still assuming Mississippi’s delegation would support Reagan. But when Morton learned that Dent was dealing directly with Cheney on the matter, Morton got hot and told Dent as much. Later, Cheney intervened and “advised Morton that he was taking a special interest in Mississippi,” according to Witcover.
²⁸

Reed and Pickering were in Washington for a GOP meeting on June 25 and were invited to the White House by Cheney. By design, each was escorted into a private meeting with Ford in the Oval Office. Pickering went in first. He then exited with the President, in full view of Reed, which only served to fuel his paranoia. As Dent recounted, “When we got into the East Room, the military aide announced, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States!’ Walking in with the President was Pickering. When Reed saw this he was astonished, and his startled reaction showed. Reed needed to know we might win Mississippi without him. Now he saw that potential for the first time.”
²⁹

Reed was then taken into the Oval Office for his own meeting with the President. Although he did not yet break his promise there and then, he was weakening. But Reed did invite Ford to Mississippi to meet with the delegates, and the President accepted. The Mississippi bloc was the largest group of undecided voters, and Ford’s nomination was on the line.
³⁰

But after working over Reed for two months, Dent was getting tired of waiting for him to switch. So, together with Shanks and Carmichael, Dent began calling and sending telegrams to the other Mississippi delegates, telling them that others in the delegation were wavering or had already gone over to Ford, and their vote could put him over the top. They obviously had not consulted Mounger, who was busy organizing a tennis tournament, or Pickering. When Reed found out about these calls and telegrams, he hit the ceiling and the pro-Ford effort was halted. Mounger also was furious. Mounger had told Reed for months that he had been planning this tournament and not to schedule anything for that time period. In between managing 256 kids from all over the world, Mounger made desperate phone calls to hold the line for Reagan after being chided by Reed to do something. Mounger shot back, “You are just as committed to Reagan as I am . . . it’s your turn to do something for a change!”
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The fight boiled over when Reed scheduled a meeting with all sixty delegates and alternates to plead with them to stay uncommitted, in accordance with their original plan. Nonetheless, Dent invited Cheney to attend and speak on Ford’s behalf, and Keene and Andy Carter were there to represent the Reagan camp. Cheney only attended reluctantly. The feeling around the Ford campaign was that if Cheney was rebuffed, the situation would reflect badly on Ford.

Reed’s intention may have been an attempt to keep his promise to Keene or to simply protect his position heading to Kansas City. But on the eve of the meeting, the
New York Times
carried a major story that was headlined, “Shift of Mississippi G.O.P. To Ford Termed Imminent.” James Naughton reported, “Such a reversal would represent a severe, and perhaps final, blow to Mr. Reagan’s effort to wrest the nomination from Mr. Ford. Until the President’s agents moved into Mississippi it had been expected that the Californian would have the support of at least 25 of the 30 members.”
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The meeting took place on Sunday, July 25 in Jackson, the state capital. According to Witcover, Dent told the assembled crowd, “Now my good friend Clarke is probably a little peeved with us because we’ve been down here trying to lobby you good folks. But I told Clarke that you can’t dress sixty beautiful women up in bikinis and put them on Broadway, and not expect Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan to turn their heads and look at ’em.” Playing on their resentment of the northern liberals in the party, Dent said, “It’s a question of whether Clarke’s gonna be the kingmaker or Rosey Rosenbaum’s gonna be the kingmaker. That is, New York, or Mississippi.”
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Cheney followed Dent. Keene wrapped up the meeting, making an abbreviated pitch for Reagan. Both took a few questions. The meeting ended with the delegates having decided, thirty-six to seven, not to break the unit rule. Several abstentions and missing delegates accounted for the deficient seventeen votes. This decision represented a victory for Reagan and a defeat for Ford. The delegation did, however, reaffirm Reed’s invitation for Ford to come to Mississippi.
³⁴

Reed momentarily went with the Reagan program by forcing the vote on the unit rule and embarrassing Shanks and Carmichael. Reed accurately summed up the real position of the Ford supporters in Mississippi in the
New York Times
, “They can’t have it both ways that ‘we’re for the unit rule if we win but if we lose we’re going to break it.’” And the young Shanks sanctimoniously told the paper, “I’m going to do what I consider morally right. I’m going to put Presidential politics above state politics. I’m going to exercise my conscience.”
³⁵

While everyone milled around the lobby of the Ramada Inn, talking with the national reporters who had come to cover the meeting, Keene took Reed, but not Mounger, aside and reviewed the national situation for Reagan and his precarious position. Keene told Reed that Reagan’s chances were slipping away, and that there was only one thing to do to try to salvage the campaign: select a running mate. Then Keene confided to his old friend Reed the name of the man who would be announced the very next day: Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. His selection represented the very “ticket-splitting” that Reed, Reagan, and other conservatives in the party had criticized for years.

Keene recalled that Reed was not terribly upset about the decision and thought the choice of Schweiker might be better received by the Mississippi delegation than previously thought. After meeting with Reed, Keene flew back to Washington to begin calling Reagan supporters around the country to prepare them for the bombshell that was about to be dropped the next day. Mounger told Keene that Reed was preparing to double-cross Reagan, but Keene didn’t believe him. “David believed Reed was a man of his word,” Mounger said.
³⁶

Washington was abuzz the next day at the Schweiker announcement, and Reed—in contrast to his calm response to Keene—decided to go ballistic. Reagan’s supporters in Mississippi and across the South called Reed to complain about Schweiker, which only added to his easily agitated state. Cheney and Dent consulted and knew that Reed would be highly persuadable at this point. Dent called Reed to cajole him once again to switch to Ford. Mounger too was agitated about the choice of Schweiker, but he got over it: “I jumped straight up in the air and out of my shoes but I landed back in them. The only man in the U.S. that didn’t end up back where he started was Clarke.”
³⁷
Mounger was right. Despite the complaints by Reagan’s conservative supporters, most stayed in Reagan’s camp. Reed was the only prominent delegate to change his support to Ford.