Reagan's Revolution (61 page)

The week before the actual convention, many delegates began to arrive in Kansas City for a week of often-heated meetings, hearings, and discussions, as the party’s platform was drafted. “Platform Week” was, for many, the more enjoyable week at a convention. Delegates were able to catch up with old friends, relax at the end of the day, and still get a table at a good restaurant without a reservation. Yet if anyone thought the fights during Platform Week between the Reagan forces and the Ford forces would be any less contentious than the battles of the previous two years, he thought wrong.

Originally, Governor Robert Ray of Iowa, a moderate and a supporter of Ford’s, planned to choose the seven platform subcommittee chairmen. Ray had been appointed as Chairman of the overall platform committee, and his candidates all were supporters of Ford. Wielding those eight gavels would have given Ford effective control of the entire drafting and rules process.

But Charles Coy, a Reagan delegate and member of the platform committee, objected and offered an amendment that passed forty-two to thirty-nine. This measure allowed each subcommittee to chose its own Chairman. It was a significant victory for Reagan and only passed because so many Ford Representatives to the platform committee had failed to show up for the Sunday evening meeting. Ford spokesman Peter Kaye told the
Washington Post
, “The right-wingers always come early and stay late.”
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Another important advance for Reagan came when a delegate from North Carolina offered a resolution that provided for all the subcommittee hearings to be open to the public and the press. The Reaganites were convinced that the moderates would ramrod amendments through to support the President and undermine Reagan. Although this resolution did not pass in its original form, Congressman John Anderson offered a substitute amendment that provided for the hearings to be open until mid-week, when the entire platform committee would revisit the issue. Anderson’s amendment eventually passed. Reagan’s supporters believed he would get a fairer deal if the processes were open to scrutiny.

Reagan’s campaign was moving ahead with two direct challenges to President Ford’s authority. One was made under the guise of reasonableness, while the other was a more direct and harsh challenge to Ford’s foreign policy. Senator Jesse Helms and his able Director of the Congressional Club, Tom Ellis, would lead this second effort. They would coordinate with Peter Hannaford and Marty Anderson on the drafting of this plank.
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These two initiatives were the essence of the yearlong debate between those aligned with Sears’s “pragmatic” strategy and those aligned with Reagan’s conservative supporters.

Since the Schweiker announcement, Sears had been beating the drums daily, claiming that the only fair thing for the Republican Party and for the country would be for Ford to announce his choice for Vice President in advance of the convention. Initially, the media did not give Sears’s line much credence. But slowly, as names began to emerge and the Washington guessing game took off, his story line began to appear more frequently in news reports and political columns. Sears and Baker held dueling press conferences daily, as each tried to gain the psychological advantage over whose candidate had enough delegates for the nomination.

A particularly effective point Sears made was that since Ford was an unelected incumbent, he was in a unique, more tenuous position than past GOP incumbents. Since he had little grip on the party, Ford owed it to the delegates to let them judge for themselves his choice of a running mate. Indeed, Ford had personally paid to send letters to all the GOP delegates and party leaders soliciting their advice on his running mate. Initially, this tactic was part of the counteroffensive against the Schweiker announcement. But the Reagan campaign began to use it against Ford, reasoning that since he wanted their advice, it was simply the logical next step to tell them his choice.

Sears’s plans came together during the first day of the platform hearings when he announced that Reagan proposed an amendment to the platform known as “Rule16-C.” Simply stated, the new rule would mandate that Ford, or any candidate, name his running mate before the actual nomination process began. If 16-C passed and a candidate did not name his choice ten hours before the Presidential roll call, he would forfeit all his pledged delegates.

Sears testified before the rules committee and presented 16-C as a “simple notice rule that says ‘trust the delegates.’”
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He expected the committee, loaded with Ford supporters, to reject the amendment. But he knew the rules of the party allowed for a “minority report” to be filed before the full convention, provided that the amendment received 25 percent of the votes in the full committee of 106 members.

The rules committee for the convention immediately rejected the proposed 16-C. Paul Haerle, the California GOP Chairman and a Ford supporter, charged the proposal was a “misery loves company” gambit. But Sears brushed criticism aside, saying of the rule, “All it does is put the delegates and the people in the candidate’s confidence before he is the irrevocable choice of the party.”
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The committee also voted down another proposed rules change inspired by Governor Jim Edwards of South Carolina. Edwards’s proposal would have compelled both candidates to address the convention before the nomination process began. An amendment proposed by the Ford campaign that would force delegates to vote according to state law rather than their personal choices was set aside for a day to be revisited.

Insight on Reagan’s strategy came from one unexpected quarter, as Vice President Rockefeller told Witcover and Cannon, “They really are interested in winning and not just in ideological concepts.” He also said it represented “a fundamental and interesting shift.”
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Another Ford strategist, Dean Burch, expressed concern that the proposal could draw sufficient votes from Ford delegates to insure its passage.
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Another fight came over Governor Ray’s selection of Congressman Silvio Conte of Massachusetts to head the subcommittee handling abortion and women’s issues. The dispute was not orchestrated by the Reagan forces, but was simply an organic effort by conservatives on the committee who felt Conte was too liberal and would not arrive in Kansas City until later in the week. In his place, they elected Pickering. Still, the remaining six subcommittees voted to approve those chairmen originally proposed by Ray, although Ford’s control of the executive committee narrowed to only eight to six. The executive committee was comprised of Ray and the subcommittee chairmen and co-chairmen.

The full committee heard testimony from a variety of Republican leaders, including Nelson Rockefeller. When questioned, Rockefeller surprised the committee when he said that he felt Ford had made a mistake the year before by not meeting with Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Vice President then elaborated, telling them he had dined in secret with the writer and with AFL-CIO President George Meany.

The committee moved on to the Ford proposal to bind delegates to vote according to their state laws rather than their personal preferences. Ford’s supporters were clearly worried and cited a quote several weeks earlier from Reagan Chairman Paul Laxalt suggesting delegates might vote their personal preferences. The proposed amendment passed the rules committee easily, despite the arguments offered by Reagan’s attorneys, Loren Smith and Roger Allan Moore that the amendment was “insulting” to the delegates.

Passage of the Ford proposal effectively locked up 939 total delegates who came from states that had existing state laws to mandate that delegates vote according to the wishes of the primary voters in their respective states. This was a significant victory for the Ford campaign. “Officials in both . . . campaigns estimate that if the primary results were ignored . . . and they simply voted their preferences, Reagan might gain 25 to 35 votes and Mr. Ford lose an equivalent number,” wrote David Broder.
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The President Ford Committee ultimately won an important final battle in the full platform committee, as the Justice Amendment was approved.

Platform Week was half over, and proposed amendments flew all over the subcommittees. John East and Tom Curtis, two Reagan backers, were working on as many as twenty-two plank proposals, all designed to make the GOP more conservative. East and Curtis drafted amendments pertaining to issues including the Panama Canal, détente, busing, gun control, and trade. On the other side, GOP women’s groups, who supported Ford, were pushing proposals to encourage more women to become delegates.

The national media covered every aspect of the process. Lengthy reports were filed in all the major newspapers and on all three networks. In a long commentary, CBS’s Eric Sevareid pronounced the death of the Republican Party, due in large part to demands of conservatives. Sevareid derided Reagan’s campaign as “a revival tent across the road where the orthodox could kneel and touch the remnant of their true cross.”
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Leslie Stahl, also of CBS, speculated that “Republicans will go the way of the Whigs.” She interviewed Kevin Phillips to make her point and further reported that the party “lacks the critical mass just to stay alive.” She also interviewed both Richard Viguerie and Senator Charles Mathias, both of whom forecast the demise of the GOP.
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Social conservatives achieved a significant victory when a pro-life plank passed Pickering’s subcommittee overwhelmingly. Despite a
Washington Post
survey of a handful of delegates showing a majority favored “a woman’s right to choose,” the party was moving towards the pro-life position Reagan advocated.
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A proposal to reject the Equal Rights Amendment, which had been part of the 1972 platform, was in limbo on a vote that deadlocked seven to seven, despite the plea from Ford to keep it.
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The ERA was a special favorite of Betty Ford. Before the full committee, support for the ERA would eventually be kept in the platform. But this plank won by only by a vote of fifty-one to forty-seven. The mere fact that the ERA was open to question, and the pro-life plank added, was a victory for Phyllis Schlafly, a leader of the social conservatives. At the 1980 GOP convention, the ERA plank would be rejected.
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Since the announcement of Dick Schweiker, Sears had hammered away at the challenge to Ford to name his running mate well in advance of the convention, as Reagan had already done. This tactic began to pay some dividends. Names were beginning to be floated in Washington, from HUD Secretary Carla Hills and Commerce Secretary Elliott Richardson (two liberal nemeses of Reagan) to CIA Director George Bush to Ford’s Ambassador to Great Britain, Anne Armstrong.

The President was beginning to get advice from all quarters, and one of his aides indelicately suggested to
Time
, when Treasury Secretary Bill Simon’s name was floated, “Simon’s perfect: he’s a Catholic with a Jewish name.”
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Despite the fact that White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen told reporters that Ford would not name his running mate prior to the convention, “in the traditional manner,”
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the Washington guessing game would not stop. Neither did the ever-present leaks and speculations coming out of the executive mansion or the President Ford Committee.

John Connally’s name was also being test-driven, but a group of ten Northeastern GOP state chairmen considered issuing a public objection to the Texan. Conservative supporters of Ford were equally chagrined about the names of liberals under consideration. These included including Congressman John Anderson of Illinois, former Pennsylvania Governor Bill Scranton (whose name was second only to Nelson Rockefeller’s when it came to raising the hackles of conservatives who were mindful of 1964), and Washington Governor Dan Evans. Senators Howard Baker and Bill Brock of Tennessee were also on Ford’s list. Brock was one of the few real conservatives on this list. Baker gave himself low chances for being picked when he told
Time
, “In Washington I’m thought of as a conservative, but in Tennessee I’m thought of as a Bolshevik.”
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Beyond ideology, Baker stood little chance of getting the nod from Ford. He was well qualified, but media reports surfaced that his wife Joy had once struggled with a drinking problem, and speculation cast a pall over his name.

But rumors about Ford’s choices and rumors about opposition to supposed candidates for Vice President all served Sears’s attempts to put Ford on the hot seat prior to the convention. Still, the White House, despite the leaks and speculation, was exhibiting unusually good discipline. On making a final choice, Rockefeller told the
Washington Post
, “You’ve got one person who is happy for a period and you’ve lost sixteen friends.”
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To counter Sears’s pressure tactics, the White House implemented a plan to consult with anybody and everybody—including mailing questionnaires to delegates, alternates, and elected GOP officials, soliciting their advice on whom Ford should pick. In effect, Ford was countering Reagan with his own fog machine, and the list grew daily. The search was on for the “perfect” running mate.

The White House released a culled-down list of sixteen possible choices for Ford, and asked many of the prospective running mates to provide detailed information about their backgrounds, including health and finances. Some who immediately declined were Senators Bill Brock, Ed Brooke, and Lowell Weicker. Others who were on the list, but were not asked for the information, included Reagan and Rockefeller.
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Meanwhile, a party that thought itself immune to surprises was surprised once again when Senator Jim Buckley of New York floated his name as a “compromise” presidential nominee. Despite charges then and since from Ford operatives, the move was never orchestrated by Sears or the Reagan team or even revealed to them before the announcement. The move was shrewd, as up to 150 delegates were only pledged to Ford and not committed.