Ronnie and Nancy

by Bob Colacello

  Meanwhile Tom Reed, who had become Air Force secretary in the November shuffle, advised Dick Cheney to call the only person who could persuade Reagan to pull out—Holmes Tuttle. According to Tuttle, however, another move Ford had made around this time to burnish his image with the right actually worked against him with Reagan. In late October, when New York mayor Abe Beame begged the federal government to guarantee the bonds of his nearly bankrupt city, Ford refused, which resulted in the notorious Daily News headline ford to city: drop dead.

  “The governor had been talking about all the cities being in bad shape,”

  Tuttle recalled. “That convinced us. We took a poll throughout this country, and the poll showed us there was strong support for what Governor Reagan was talking about. He was the man, so we decided to run. . . .

  [But] we said, ‘Well, maybe we’ll wait for another poll.’ So we waited three weeks or thirty days, and we took another one. When that happened, we met up at the governor’s house. It was a go, and we went.”69

  On November 20, Reagan, having informed Ford the day before, held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington to announce officially that he was a candidate for president. Presenting himself once more as a Citizen Politician and vowing to respect the Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican,” he nevertheless declared, “Our nation’s capital has become the seat of a buddy system that functions for its own benefits—increasingly insensitive to the needs of the American worker who supports it with his taxes. Today it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that have brought us our problems: the Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business and big labor.”70

  The reference to big business was the idea of John Sears, who quite brilliantly realized that Reagan could appeal to traditionally Democratic blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt as well as to his base of affluent Sun Belt suburbanites. It did not endear Sears to Tuttle, Dart, and the rest of 4 4 8

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House the Kitchen Cabinet, though they had to marvel at the efficiency with which he launched the new Reagan campaign. Immediately following the press conference, the Reagans, accompanied by a large contingent from the national media, boarded a chartered 727 for a two-day blitz of the four key early-primary states: New Hampshire, Florida, Illinois, and North Carolina. The Secret Service attached to the Reagans assigned the couple the code names that would follow them the rest of their lives: his was Rawhide, hers Rainbow.71

  At every stop, Sears had organized well-planned, well-controlled, and well-timed-for-TV events. For a brief frightening moment, however, at the first stop in Miami, a rally outside a Ramada Inn near the airport, things went awry when a young man waving a toy pistol was wrestled to the ground by the Secret Service as the Reagans stepped off the platform.

  A terrified Nancy blamed Ronnie for not precisely following the Secret Service’s instructions. “From now on,” she told him, “if the Secret Service tells you to turn to the left, turn left! Do what they tell you to do!”72

  Nancy’s hysteria was somewhat justified. In September two assassination attempts with real guns had been made on President Ford’s life. The first, in Sacramento, was by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a member of the Charles Manson Family; the second, in San Francisco, was by Sara Jane Moore, a prisoners’ rights fanatic.

  Three weeks after Reagan announced, the latest Gallup Poll had him at 40

  percent, Ford at 32 percent—numbers that boded well for Sears’s blitzkrieg strategy of knocking the President out of the race with quick wins in New Hampshire in February and Florida in March. By the end of the year, the Reagan campaign had raised $2 million, against $1.7 million raised for Ford.73 After spending Christmas Eve at the home of Charles and Mary Jane Wick—the start of another Reagan ritual—and New Year’s Eve at the Annenbergs’, the Reagans headed for New Hampshire.

  On his first day in the Granite State, wearing two sweaters and a ski jacket in 7-degree weather, Reagan told three hundred residents of Moul-tonborough that détente with the Soviet Union had become a “one-way street.” He continued, “I think it’s time for us to straighten up and eyeball them, and say, ‘Hey, fellas, let’s get this back on the track where it’s something for something, not all one way.’” If he were president, he added, he would tell the Russians for starters to get out of Angola, where they were Reagan vs. Ford: 1975–1976

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  backing the pro-Communist side in a civil war—“or you’re going to have to deal with us.” The next day New York Times columnist James Reston wrote,

  “The more bonnie Ronnie talks, the better President Ford looks. . . . For del-icacy of language and precision of policy, [Reagan] makes Mr. Ford’s statements on détente and Angola seem almost eloquent and statesmanlike.”74

  On a second trip to New Hampshire, Reagan went after the welfare system. “There’s a woman in Chicago,” he said. “She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards, and is collecting veterans’ benefits on four nonexisting deceased husbands. And she’s collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000.” His listeners, however, kept bringing up his proposal to save the federal government $90 billion annually by transferring most of its welfare and social service programs to the states. No, he had to keep telling them, that did not mean that New Hampshire would have to enact an income tax or a sales tax to cover the costs. A Gallup Poll released on January 10 now had Ford and Reagan running neck and neck, with 45 percent each. On January 12, Reagan disavowed his proposal, calling it a “mistake”; one day later he disavowed his disavowal.75 Under Stu Spencer’s guidance, Ford made hay of his opponent’s gaffes, calling his economic plan “pure political demagoguery” and asserting that Reagan was too “extreme” a conservative to win against the Democrats in November.76

  On February 24, Ford beat Reagan by 1,300 votes out of 108,000 cast, and took seventeen of the state’s twenty-one convention delegates. Reagan, who had celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday in New Hampshire, called it a

  “virtual tie.”77 But Paul Laxalt, who had spent the previous night with Ronnie and Nancy waiting to uncork the champagne, saw it for what it was.

  “We couldn’t believe it,” he wrote. “Ron Reagan had never lost a race.”78

  He lost three more states in early March, Massachusetts and Vermont on the 2nd, and a week later, more significantly, Florida, where his state campaign chairman had originally predicted a two-to-one victory—and where Ford beat him by ten points. But in his speeches around Florida he had found his issue, the Panama Canal, his bogeyman, Henry Kissinger, and his voice. In Winter Haven, on February 29, he accused the secretary of state of having a secret plan to give sovereignty over the canal to Panama, then ruled by a leftist military dictator, General Omar Torrijos. “If these reports 4 5 0

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House are true,” he asserted, “it means that the American people have been de-ceived by a State Department preoccupied by secrecy. They are due a full explanation. Presumably Mr. Ford has not been fully informed by the State Department, for if he were, I cannot imagine he would knowingly endorse such action. . . . When it comes to the Canal, we bought it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and we should tell Torrijos and company that we are going to keep it!”79

  He went even further in Orlando four days later, especially regarding Kissinger, whom he condemned as the architect of America’s retreat in the face of “Soviet imperialism” in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. “Last year and this, the Soviet Union, using Castro’s mercenaries, intervened decisively in the Angola civil war and routed the pro-Western forces. Yet, Messrs. Ford and Kissinger continue to tell us that we must not let this interfere with détente. We have given the Soviets our trade and our technology. At Kissinger’s insistence, Mr. Ford snubbed Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the great moral heroe
s of our time. . . . Mr. Ford and Dr. Kissinger ask us to trust their leadership. I confess I find that more and more difficult to do. Henry Kissinger’s stewardship of United States foreign policy has coincided precisely with the loss of United States military supremacy.”80 Reagan’s attacks on Kissinger were so strident that Bill Buckley, whose National Review was enthusiastically “plugging for Reagan,” called him on Kissinger’s behalf and argued that the Panama Canal issue was more complicated than he was making it out to be.81

  The day after Reagan’s Florida defeat, The New York Times reported that Ford’s campaign advisers were sending signals to Reagan “to end his insurgency—and perhaps join the Republican ticket as a running mate.” Dick Cheney was quoted as saying that the White House would not hold a grudge against the Californian for things said in “the heat of the campaign.”

  With Nancy at his side, Reagan dug in his heels and told the press, “The incumbent in these first couple of primaries has thrown the whole load at us, he has shot all the big artillery there is, used everything in the incumbency he can, and we are still possessing almost half the Republican vote.”82

  The following Tuesday, Ford took Reagan’s native state of Illinois, 61

  percent to 39 percent. Ford declared “a great victory and another real clincher in our effort to win the nomination and go on to victory in 1976.”

  Stu Spencer said that Reagan should withdraw, “the sooner the better.”83

  Eleven out of twelve living former Republican National Committee chairmen had already endorsed Ford, the only exception being George H. W.

  Reagan vs. Ford: 1975–1976

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  Bush, who had been made director of the CIA by Ford and was therefore obliged to remain neutral.84 The National Republican Conference of Mayors and seven of the thirteen Republican governors called on Reagan to quit the race. All of this only served to fuel Reagan’s stubbornness. Arriving at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, with Jimmy Stewart, who called Reagan “a friend of mine,” Reagan told reporters to tell Ford to quit.85

  Laxalt recalled that the campaign was so broke by then that they had barely been able to pay for the 727 to fly them to North Carolina, and according to Nofziger even Nancy Reagan had come to the conclusion that it was time to throw in the towel. Nofziger was stunned when a frazzled Mike Deaver told him, “You’ve got to talk her out of it.” He knew he was not Nancy’s favorite, but he agreed to give it a try. “Ronnie has to get out,”

  Nancy blurted when Nofziger walked into their hotel suite. “He’s going to embarrass himself if he doesn’t.” At that moment Reagan walked out of the bedroom and, realizing what was going on, said, “Lynwood,” using his pet name for Nofziger, “I’m going to stay in this thing until the end. I still think we can win.”86

  Nancy helped save the day in North Carolina, however, by strongly supporting Thomas Ellis, the local campaign chairman, when he pleaded with Harry Treleaven, the campaign media consultant, to air a half-hour videotape of one of Reagan’s hard-hitting Florida speeches. For Ellis, the tape of Reagan sitting at a desk in a studio and talking directly into the camera was reminiscent of his 1964 Goldwater speech. Until then Treleaven had insisted on thirty-second spots filmed at Reagan rallies, and he feared that Reagan’s professionalism in a studio setup would remind voters of his career as an actor. In the four days before the primary, the campaign ran the Florida tape on fifteen of North Carolina’s seventeen TV

  stations, and it is generally credited with turning the tide in the state, which Reagan won with 52 percent of the vote.87

  There were twenty-one more primaries to go. In April and May, Reagan won Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, and Arizona while Ford took Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Michigan. In Nebraska, the Ford campaign ran radio ads in which Barry Goldwater attacked Reagan’s stand on the Panama Canal, saying it was based on “gross factual errors” and could “needlessly lead this country into open military conflict.” Flabbergasted, Nancy told reporters, “I feel as if I have been stabbed. . . . Of course, everyone knows what my husband did in 1964 for him.” According to Nofziger, the spots 4 5 2

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House continued to run “until Nancy personally called [Goldwater] and complained. Reagan won Nebraska anyway by a lopsided margin, but things were never the same again between Goldwater and the Reagans.”88 Edith Davis also made a call to her Phoenix neighbor. “She called him up in his Senate office,” Richard Davis told me, “and she called him a cocksucker.

  That was all over Washington and Phoenix—see, Barry Goldwater wanted to be secretary of defense under Ford.”89

  The primaries ended on June 8, with Reagan winning California by two to one and Ford sweeping New Jersey and garnering most of the delegates in Ohio. On the last weekend, Ford ran the most negative TV ads of the campaign, focusing on Reagan’s recent comments on the situation in Rhodesia, where black guerrillas were fighting against the white government of Ian Smith: “Last Wednesday, Ronald Reagan said he would send American troops to Rhodesia. On Thursday he clarified that. He said they could be observers, or advisers. What does he think happened in Vietnam? . . . When you vote Tuesday, remember: Governor Ronald Reagan couldn’t start a war. President Ronald Reagan could.”90 Once again Nancy was outraged, but this time the focus of her fury was Stu Spencer, whom she blamed for the ads. “It was quite a while before I could forgive Stu for that one.”91

  By July 18, after the eleven states that didn’t hold primaries had chosen their delegates in conventions, The New York Times had Ford with 1,102

  delegates, only 28 short of the number required for nomination. But Reagan was not far behind with 1,063. About 100 delegates were still uncommitted, and they were fought over fiercely in the month leading up to the convention. According to Laxalt, “We soon realized that competing for these delegates against the White House wasn’t a fair fight. Ron would call them—even visit with them personally—and did reasonably well. But then Jerry Ford would invite them to a meeting in the Oval Office. It was like a guy with a Volkswagen vying for the attention of a girl against a competitor who has a Rolls-Royce.”92

  “I was furious,” Nancy later wrote. “President Ford took full advantage of his office. He brought dozens of uncommitted delegates to the White House for lunches, cocktails, meetings, and dinners. He invited an entire state delegation to have lunch with him. In July, he invited Clarke Reed, the chairman of the Mississippi delegation, to a State Dinner for Queen Elizabeth. . . . Over the July 4 weekend, he invited seven uncommitted delegates Reagan vs. Ford: 1975–1976

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  to watch the tall ships sail into New York Harbor from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.”93 The 1976 Bicentennial celebrations marked a turning point in the national mood: patriotism was suddenly back in style.

  On July 11, the Reagans were in Palm Springs for the wedding of Frank Sinatra and Barbara Marx, a tall, gorgeous blonde who three years earlier had divorced her first husband, Zeppo Marx. The ceremony took place at Sunnylands, with Freeman Gosden as Frank’s best man and Bea Korshak, the wife of the shadowy Beverly Hills lawyer Sidney Korshak, as the maid of honor. The 130 guests included Spiro Agnew, Sammy Davis Jr., the Armand Deutsches, and the Gregory Pecks. The New York Times noted, “Reporters were made to stand outside the gates in temperatures approaching 115 degrees.” The reception was held at the Sinatra compound, a mile down Frank Sinatra Drive from the Annenbergs’.94

  After the wedding, Reagan flew east with Sears on a two-day “raiding expedition” to try to turn around delegates pledged to Ford in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The head of the Pennsylvania delegation, Drew Lewis, was “rumored to be unhappy” with Ford, according to Nofziger.95 Sears, who realized that things were looking grim, had come up with the bold idea of having Reagan announce his choice for vice president prior to the convention—which had never been done before—in hopes of winning over enough delegates from the Northeast to put him over the top. Now he decided that the best choi
ce to accomplish that was Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker, who was a childhood friend of Lewis’s and a member of the same small religious sect, the Schwenkfelders. The only problem was that Schweiker was seen as a liberal who might turn off Reagan’s core supporters.

  Before going to Reagan, Sears convinced Laxalt, Nofziger, and Deaver one by one of the wisdom of this maneuver. On July 20, Laxalt got his fellow senator and Sears together in his Capitol Hill office, and Schweiker, after deliberating with his wife for two days, agreed to fly to Los Angeles for a secret meeting with Reagan. Sears flew out a day in advance and sold Reagan on the idea of a liberal running mate while simultaneously making the argument that Schweiker was not really a liberal. “He’s against gun control, he’s a big man in the Captive Nations movement, and he’s against abortion,” Sears told Reagan.96 On July 24, Nancy had a lunch at home for the Schweikers, Sears, and Laxalt. According to Sears, “I remember 4 5 4

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House that it was paramount that Justin Dart and Holmes Tuttle be there to meet them as well. ‘We have to do this, John,’ Nancy said to me. ‘It won’t change anything, of course. You understand that, but we’ve got to have them here so they can think they have okayed the decision.’ ”97 After three hours of talking, Reagan told the younger man, “I’ve made a decision, Senator, and I’d like you to be my running mate.”98

  On the morning of July 26, Reagan made his announcement on television in Los Angeles, and Schweiker called Drew Lewis, who not only refused to switch sides but also called President Ford and reaffirmed his support. The right wing was outraged; Howard Phillips, director of the Conservative Caucus, said Reagan had “betrayed the trust of those who look to him for leadership.”99 “Never mind that Kennedy had picked Johnson in 1960 to unify the Democrats,” an exasperated Nancy said.