Nixon's Secret (45 page)

Nixon also recruited former Arizona Republican State Chairman Richard Kleindienst. He had campaigned for Kleindienst when he ran a hopeless campaign for governor in the days before the Republican Party became a force in mostly Democratic Arizona. Kliendienst was personally close to Goldwater and had been inserted by the senator into his own 1964 general election campaign as “field director” (White, who had engineered Goldwater’s nomination, was nearly frozen out of the Goldwater general election. Instead, Kliendienst wisely pulled him in as a de facto “codirector.”).

Kleindienst reprised his 1964 role in the Nixon campaign, running field operations and reporting to campaign manager John Mitchell. Together, Mitchell and Kliendienst built the most sophisticated delegate tracking and handholding operation Republicans had ever seen. If you were a national party convention delegate, the Nixon men knew where you were in 1964, what brand of Scotch you drank, and what bank held your mortgages. Occasionally, a delegate would get a call from his banker telling him, “Nixon’s the one.”

Mitchell recognized Reagan as the biggest problem, but he was slow to recognize the true force of Reagan’s late grab for the nomination. Instead, fulfilling Nixon’s wish to win big, he focused on guiding Nixon through a series of overwhelming primary victories. In fact, the lack of formal opposition after Romney dropped out in late February reduced Nixon to shadow boxing Rockefeller and Reagan.

After Reaganites attempted a Nebraska write-in, Reagan allowed his name to stay on the Oregon primary ballot.
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Still, turnout in the Republican primaries was high because President Johnson and the Vietnam War, coupled with inflation and a decline in the buying power of the dollar, made Republicans eager for change. Nixon swept them all, winning an average of 67 percent of the vote and racking up dozens of delegates bound by law to vote for him on the crucial first ballot.

Nixon called Mitchell in Miami Beach from a hotel in Montauk, Long Island, where he had gone to polish his nomination acceptance speech and relax, to the extent that Richard Nixon could relax at all.

“Is there anything I should know before I head there? Anything you want to tell me?” he asked.

“No,” said the taciturn and confident Mitchell, who then hung up. By the time Nixon landed in Miami Beach, Reagan’s dash for the nomination was in full bloom. Thurmond and Dent asked for a meeting with Mitchell and Nixon as the clamor for Reagan surfaced in Nixon’s Southern strongholds.
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* * *

Reagan had already dazzled a routine and sleepy platform committee hearing. “We must reject the idea that every time the law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker,” he said. As for campus radicals, the California governor said, “It is time to move against these destructive dissidents, it’s time to say, ‘Obey the rules or get out.’” Reagan brought the committee to a standing ovation when he said, “It is time to tell friend and foe alike that we are in Vietnam because it is in our national interest to be there.”

Looking tanned and fit and wearing an off-white linen sports jacket, Reagan turned on the Hollywood charm to chip away Nixon’s support, seeking that elusive delegate who would tip the majority of a Southern state, bound by the unit rule, to the California governor. The unit rule required that a state’s entire delegate vote be awarded to the candidate who had a majority of the delegation. At the same time, White and his agents reminded conservatives of Nixon’s 1960 selection of Lodge and his acquiesce to Rockefeller’s demands for revisions in the 1960 Republican platform. Fatefully, Nixon had flown to New York in the middle of the night—without the knowledge of his campaign manager Len Hall, his top aide Robert Finch, or his press secretary Herb Klein—to meet Rockefeller at his Manhattan manse and hammer out a revised platform. Conservatives called it “the sell out on Fifth Avenue,” while Goldwater denounced it as the “Munich of the Republican Party.”

“Tricky Dick?” White’s men whispered. “He’s a loser.”

M. Stanton Evans, boy-wonder editor of the
Indianapolis News
, produced a polemic, “The Reason for Reagan,” which was published and mailed to all Southern and Western delegates. The booklet made a case for Reagan’s record and his suitability for 1968. It bore no disclaimer, save the author’s name and title. White called on
National Review
publisher Bill Rusher, an ally since Young Republican days, to get the pro-Reagan treatise out to activists.

“A Proven Winner,” said the Reagan posters with the actor’s broad-shouldered Hollywood-style photo, subtly echoing Rockefeller’s “Rocky has never lost an election.” Rockefeller unveiled the support of six former Republican National chairman, including Len Hall, once Nixon’s campaign manager and now running Rockefeller’s convention operation; Meade Alcorn, who had been GOP chairman under Eisenhower; and Arthur Summerfield, who had also chaired the committee under Ike. It was difficult for Rocky to gain a foothold despite the fact that his grip on the mighty New York delegation was complete. Senator Clifford Case was holding the New Jersey delegation, where Rockefeller thought he had strength. He was also denied a sweep in neighboring Connecticut, where Nixon snatched three delegates from the wealthy Fairfield County suburbs.

Ultimately, Nixon and Mitchell would have to undertake a risky gambit to insure their success on the first ballot. Both men knew that a surging Reagan would erode their support on a second ballot. Nixon’s reputation as a loser would resurface as his candidacy faded on subsequent ballots, while a Reagan vs. Rockefeller battle ensued. Bergen County New Jersey Republican Chairman Nelson Gross and Atlantic City state senator and political boss Frank S. “Hap” Farley quietly had commitments for Nixon from a third of the delegates pledged to liberal Senator Clifford Case, as a favorite son, on the first ballot. Mitchell convinced Gross and Farley to have a delegate call for a roll-call vote in which each delegate would step to the microphone to record their vote on national television. What came next shocked the hall.

Case fumed as New Jersey delegate after New Jersey delegate trooped to the microphone to vote for Richard Nixon. Nixon had challenged no other favorite son, despite a raft of supporters in Ohio where Governor Jim Rhodes held the delegation as a favorite son in a maneuver to help Rockefeller. Nixon had support in the delegation including that of former Senator John Bricker and Congressman Robert Taft Jr., but made a decision not to mount an insurgency (A US attorney appointed by Case would later indict Bergen County Chairman Nelson Gross on corruption charges, even though Gross was briefly appointed assistant secretary of state.).

The spadework in the South was important to Nixon’s convention strategy. He actually toured all eleven states of the Confederacy between 1967 and 1968 and had carefully targeted the South in his campaign trips for congressional and Senate candidates in 1966. Nixon was still a celebrity as a former vice president and presidential contender, and his appearance allowed congressional candidates to both raise money and publicity they could not otherwise earn. Everywhere he went, Nixon buttoned down commitments from the Goldwater men, who universally saw Nixon as the candidate to stop the deep-pocketed and despised Rockefeller. He recruited Mississippi GOP Chairman T. Clarke Reed, and Goldwater firebrand John Grenier.

In Georgia, Congressman Howard “Bo Callaway” signed on. Callaway had run first in the Georgia governor’s race when Democrats nominated arch-segregationist Lester Maddox and a progressive former Governor Ellis Arnall ran as an independent. The Georgia Constitution requires a candidate of the governor to get a majority of the vote so when that did not occur, it was thrown to the Democratic legislature. They awarded the governorship to Maddox.

South Carolina textile magnate Roger Milliken committed to the former vice president after a discussion on textile trade policies. Milliken and his brother Gerrish, who lived in Connecticut, had been substantial fundraisers for Goldwater.

Even as Nixon toured the South, he was careful to pledge his support for civil rights and to reject segregation. Nixon said he would support an anti-segregationist plank in the national Republican platform but would not denounce state Republican platforms, saying any attempt to dictate to them would be unrealistic “and unwise.” Nixon knew that Goldwater’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act had made him popular in the South but eliminated him as a national candidate in the rest of the country. He would not set foot in the same trap; he had a strong record on civil rights as a US senator and vice president. After all, as vice president, Nixon had defended Eisenhower’s decision to send the National Guard to Little Rock, Arkansas, to quell violence and ensure safe desegregation of the schools.

The week before the Miami Beach convention kicked off,
Time
magazine published a cover of a dream Republican ticket: Nelson Rockefeller for president and Ronald Reagan for vice president. Rockefeller had commissioned a series of polls that allegedly showed that he ran stronger than Nixon against Humphrey in the industrial states of the Midwest and the northeast. He spent lavishly on newspaper ads touting his poll numbers, with the headline “Rocky has never lost an election.” Never really a convention threat, Rockefeller’s strategy was undone when a Gallup poll was published just days before the convention showing Nixon leading the wealthy New York governor by sixteen points.
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While Reagan and White and their ragtag band of operatives tried to pry delegates off of Dick Nixon, Dent arranged to send a telegram from “Ole Strom” to every Southern delegate:

Richard Nixon’s position is sound on law and order, Vietnam, the Supreme Court, military superiority, fiscal sanity, and decentralization of power. He is best for unity and victory in 1968. Our country needs him, and he needs our support in Miami. See you at the convention.

—Strom Thurmond US Senator

Thurmond worked the phones relentlessly, calling state chairman and delegation leaders at their Miami Beach hotels. Thurmond was blunt: He told sympathetic chairman that he “loved Ronnie Reagan” and that “he would support him next time” but it was crucial to nominate Nixon, who could be competitive in every region in the country, while Goldwater had only scored in the South and the West.

Still, Reagan maneuvered. While posing as a “favorite son” candidate for California, Reagan traveled widely in his secret attempt to stalemate a Nixon first-ballot victory, in hopes the convention would turn to the former movie star. Nixon told me himself that “the convention’s heart belonged Reagan” and the California governor would have been nominated if he had stumbled.

The actions of Nelson Rockefeller in late 1967 and early 1968 are perplexing. As noted, Rockefeller had supplied Michigan Governor George Romney with money and staff early in the race, only to see him self-destruct. Then Rocky jumped in as an announced candidate with the best pollsters and advertising men Madison Avenue could buy. He paid millions for a nationwide media blitz to convince Republicans Nixon was a loser and that only Nelson Rockefeller could win for the GOP. It was a flawed strategy.

The irony, of course, is that both Reagan and Rockefeller believed that had Nixon stumbled, the nomination would fall into their hands. Because Rockefeller spent millions of dollars in massive but ineffectual national advertising just before the convention, he is remembered today as the principal challenger to Richard Nixon in 1968. Rockefeller breezed into Miami Beach, where his top political aides George Hinman, Jack Welles, Bill Ronan, William Pfeiffer, and George Humphries set up shop at the Americana Hotel.

Rockefeller bought the support of six former Republic national chairmen to back his last-minute bid, holding a rally on a windy Miami Beach to announce their support. Present were former Republican national chairmen Bill Miller (who had been Goldwater’s running mate in 1964), Meade, Alcorn, and Hall, who had borne the title of campaign manager in Nixon’s 1960 campaign. “Six Former Republic National Chairman Can’t Be Wrong,” a painted banner declared from above the podium. But they were.

Aides who opposed Reagan’s 1968 national effort told me that a fretful and angry Nancy Reagan was worried that her husband was running too early and might “look foolish.” She was privately furious at Reagan’s aides Lyn Nofziger and Tom Reed, who were among the “presidentialists” who were pushing Reagan to make an all-out bid for the office after barely two years in the governor’s office.
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Reagan’s effort was hampered severely by his lack of a formal declaration of candidacy. At every stop in his well-received pre-convention tour of the South, the former actor was told that his candidacy was desired but that delegate votes could not be committed without a full-bore declared candidacy. The Nixon men continued to exploit the fears of many would-be Reagan backers that Nelson Rockefeller could exploit a split on the right that would leave the reviled New York governor as the party nominee.

Reagan insisted he wasn’t an avowed candidate. When California put his name in nomination, he also insisted he would “be a candidate at that time” who delegates could vote for. This was an uncomfortable role for Reagan, who preferred to be honest with the press and in his political dealings. Reagan chafed at not competing as an open candidate.

In a moment of high drama, Reagan formally announced he was a candidate at the Miami Beach Convention. The announcement stunned and angered Nancy Reagan, who first heard about it on the radio. She blamed Nofziger and former Senator Willam F. Knowland, whose bad political judgment in 1958 had cost him both his Senate seat and the California governorship (Interestingly, many believed Knowland ran for governor instead of for re-election to the US Senate in a foolish gambit to control the California Republican delegation in 1960, try to deny Nixon the presidential nomination and take it himself.).
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Nofziger had allowed Knowland an audience with Reagan, without senior staff approval, where Knowland persuaded Reagan to drop the ruse and become an announced candidate. The idea appealed to Reagan for its honesty and raised his competitive instincts: Reagan wanted be president in 1968.