Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (25 page)

Peter Hannaford said that Reagan's taking control of the campaign “was the beginning of the end for Sears.”
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Sears “was almost sulking … on the bus,” remembered Ed Meese.
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Poker-faced, Sears told the media, “It remains to be seen whether I'm great or a fool.”
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Reaganites already had an answer for Sears's self-query, but they were delighted that Reagan was finally taking control of his own destiny. Reagan wrote in confidence to one supporter, “I never thought the nomination was a sure thing [and] I don't think so now, but I'm going to fight like h—l.”
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Only twenty-two delegates were at stake in New Hampshire, but much more was involved for Reagan. If he lost to George Bush in New Hampshire, his campaign would be over. Forever. There was no tomorrow. This was it for the Gipper.

Just a few days earlier, all the Reagan regional political directors had gathered together in secret to come to some consensus about the campaign. At this point, they were all temporarily off the payroll. There was no money to pay them. Together, they decided that the “handlers”—Sears chiefly—were getting in the way. Ernie Angelo, now running Texas, was deputized to go see Reagan and deliver their message. Angelo did in private, and though Reagan said little, the regional director could tell he was taking it in and was deeply troubled about his campaign.
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In late January Sears was summoned to Washington to face thirty of Reagan's congressional supporters, led by Congressman Tom Evans of Delaware. But Sears ducked the meeting at the last minute and instead sent Charlie Black. The furious Reaganites peeled Black's skin off and told him that the Reagan campaign manager should stop worrying about his own goddamn press and start worrying about Reagan's.
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Black barely escaped.

Reagan and Sears were hardly speaking to each other now. When they did talk, Reagan complained, Sears “didn't look you in the eye, he looked you in the tie.”

Late on a plane trip, Reagan was standing in the aisle, twirling his glasses at one o'clock in the morning while most of the press corps were sleeping off their evening booze session after filing their stories. Reagan joked aloud—to see whether anyone was paying attention—that maybe he needed a new campaign manager.
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In fact, Reagan was not joking, but none of the slumbering and anesthetized journalists stirred.

N
EW
H
AMPSHIRE WAS TYPICALLY
cold, but the February chill was no match for the frosty relations between Jerry Carmen and John Sears. Carmen rarely spoke to the national office of Reagan for President anymore, except to tell them to
stay out of his state or to schedule more days in New Hampshire for the Gipper to press the flesh. “From now on we are going to see the kind of campaign I have been wanting,” he told the Associated Press.
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Carmen, a chain smoker, was going through four packs a day of filterless Camels. The fingers on his right two fingers had been stained a sickly yellow.
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He was locking horns almost daily with Reagan aide Helene Von Damm over money and the candidate's schedule. “He wanted all of Reagan's time,” she lamented.
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Carmen was also butting heads over all manner of things with Reagan's advance men, including the redoubtable Jim Hooley and Rick Ahearn. (The two burly Irishmen proved to be inventive as well as formidable. Off salary like the rest of the campaign, Hooley and Ahearn scavenged for food at receptions; after one poorly attended event, they gladly appropriated boxes of sad-looking roast beef sandwiches and lived off them for days.)
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Carmen sent word that Reagan must campaign much more than originally planned in New Hampshire or he would lose. Period. In the 1978 New Hampshire Senate campaign the conservative underdog, Gordon Humphrey, had shown the power of advertising on Boston television stations, which reached the populous regions of the southern half of the state, when he scored the biggest upset of the year over incumbent Democrat Tom McIntyre. But Reagan's campaign, nearly broke, had precious few dollars for the expensive Boston market. The cost to air a sixty-second prime-time commercial in Boston had gone up from $4,800 in 1976 to $7,400 in 1980.
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If Reagan hoped to have any chance, he'd have to engage in the retail campaigning that traditionally had been the hallmark of the New Hampshire primary.

Television airtime wasn't the only major cost taxing the cash-strapped Reagan operation. Campaigns were getting more and more expensive, especially with double-digit inflation. The cost of brochures had doubled, as had the cost of a per-person interview by a pollster, from $8 to $16. A ninety-six-passenger Boeing jet, for a four-day charter, cost $37,500 in 1976, but by 1980, that same plane for the same amount of time cost more than $70,000. Consulting fees, natch, also went up. In 1976, Charlie Black was making $1,500 per month working for Reagan; in 1980, he was making $2,500.
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However, if one calculated the untold hours staffers like Black put in, their take-home pay was less than that of a garbage collector. Sometimes these weary political operatives felt they were no different from trash men, cleaning up after their candidates.

Along with the growth in the consulting community, so too had the Secret Service grown in size, budget, and functions. In 1963, the “Service” had 389 agents and an annual budget of around $5.5 million. By 1980, there were 1,552 agents and a hefty budget of $157 million.
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After the assassinations of President
Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, Congress greatly expanded the role of the Service to include protective details for, besides presidents and vice presidents, their spouses and children, former presidents—and viable presidential aspirants. This meant that Ted Kennedy was assigned a detail, as were Reagan, Phil Crane, John Connally, and George Bush; the Service deemed them viable candidates because of the amounts they had raised.

The Secret Service agents had to guard against becoming indifferent to someone who treated them badly, like Jimmy Carter. That was not a problem for Reagan's detail, who adored Reagan and looked forward to working with him. Sometimes, though, they were too obsessive in keeping supporters away from Reagan, and complaints were heard. Reagan had looked too imperial to Iowa Republicans; for that reason Bush had wisely refused the protective contingent before the Iowa caucuses.

Carter's code name was sometimes “Lock Master,” sometimes “Deacon.” Mrs. Carter's was sometimes “Lotus Petal,” sometimes “Steel Magnolia.” Kennedy's was “Sunburn.” Bush's was “Sheepskin” and Mrs. Bush's was “Snowbank.” The then hard-drinking “George Bush Jr.,” as the Secret Service had him erroneously listed, was “Tumbler.” Reagan's was “Rawhide” and Nancy's was “Rainbow.”
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The Reagans were so fond of their code names that they asked the Service to break precedent and keep them for the entire campaign, and later his presidency.
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Ted Kennedy's protective detail was the largest and most bureaucratic. He had three teams working to guard him, one that worked in advance of each stop, a second that traveled with him, and a third whose job it was to work with the local law-enforcement officials to block roads and traffic so Kennedy's motorcade could barrel through red lights and stop signs. It didn't win him a lot of votes, but these agents were doing their utmost to ensure that Kennedy was not lost on their watch. Because of the Service's zealousness, agents often ran roughshod over state and local law-enforcement officials. It was not unusual for fistfights to break out. Still, with thousands of nuts out there and more than four hundred people in the active files of the Service—people the agency believed were truly capable of killing a president or a candidate—diplomacy often took a backseat.
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Kennedy also traveled with a full-time doctor and nurse, skilled in trauma medicine … especially for gunshot wounds.
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Even as campaign costs were skyrocketing, new federal regulations imposed onerous spending limits on candidates. The sweeping reforms after the excesses of the 1972 Nixon campaign had resulted in the creation of the FEC. Reagan's campaign was bumping its head against the spending limit in New Hampshire, which was just under $300,000.
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To stave off the FEC dogs, Reagan was staying at the
Sheraton–Rolling Hills Hotel Andover, just across the state line. Whenever possible, expenditures were being allocated against the Massachusett's FEC limits. Like many well-intentioned reforms, the post-Watergate campaign-finance laws spawned a host of unintended consequences that actually made regulation more difficult. Notably, the number of political action committees (PACs) had quadrupled since Nixon's day, because they provided a handy outlet to exceed proscribed limits.

H
OWARD
B
AKER'S CAMPAIGN LIMPED
into New Hampshire. Oddly, Iowa governor Robert Ray endorsed Baker
after
the caucuses, doing Baker absolutely no good in New Hampshire. Vermont governor Richard Snelling also endorsed Baker, but the support of this moderate-to-liberal Republican would prove of little help in New Hampshire.
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Baker was now seen as a spoiler for Bush, since they were both competing for the same moderate votes.

Phil Crane was going after Reagan in New Hampshire, hoping, as one news report said, to feed “off Reagan's carcass.”
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But Crane had taken only 7 percent in Iowa, and was reduced to saying he'd be happy with a fourth-place finish in New Hampshire.

John Connally was not actively campaigning in New Hampshire and his drive for the White House had gone on life support. His “friends” in corporate America were turning to George Bush, as he looked to be a better bet against Reagan and Carter than Connally.
Dun's Review
surveyed 225 business executives and Bush was their overwhelming choice.
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Connally was forced to borrow $500,000 because his campaign had spent lavishly, including, so far, more than $2.6 million just on the payroll. Over half the campaign staff of 140 was laid off and Big John replaced Eddie Mahe with Charles Keating. Connally may have won the 1980 prize for insensitivity when he referred to his former hardworking but now laid-off staff as “short-term volunteer help.”
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Reagan's organization in New Hampshire was in good hands. Carmen's efforts had been hampered for the past year, as he rarely had a candidate on hand to tell his story to the voters. But now that Reagan had abandoned Sears's plan for limited campaigning in New Hampshire, Carmen would have the Gipper for sixteen full days.

Reagan hit the road hard in New Hampshire on February 5. He spoke at ten events that day, campaigning until almost midnight the day before his sixty-ninth birthday, or as he referred to it, the “thirtieth anniversary of my thirty-ninth birthday.”
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At nearly every stop, Reagan was serenaded with “Happy Birthday.” Mrs. Reagan served him cake at each stop and Reagan, with his sweet tooth, ate with relish. The last cake of the day fortunately had only three candles on it for
Reagan to blow out. He joked that you know you are too old to be president “when your knees buckle and your belt won't.”
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Despite the exhausting schedule, being back out on the stump revived Reagan. “His ready smile and good color made him seem all the more energetic and youthful in the crisp February air,” remembered Peter Hannaford.
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Reagan, Ed Meese later recalled, “campaigned in fire halls … in coffee shops, church basements, wherever they got a few people together.”
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Reagan, the old jock, was working out the kinks, finding his form again.

The hole Reagan had dug himself was deep, though. When
U.S. News & World Report
surveyed 475 members of the Republican National Committee and the state parties, it showed that they favored Bush over Reagan and thought the best nominee for the GOP would be a “philosophical moderate.”
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One Republican state chairman said that Reagan's intellect was “thinner than spit on a slate rock.”
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According to a Newsweek survey, in just ten days Bush's “favorable” rating among Republicans had jumped from 20 percent to an amazing 62 percent nationally.
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In New Hampshire, Bush was getting large crowds and was outspending his opponent.
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Some of Bush's in-state supporters had an atrocious opinion of Reagan. The twenty-six-year-old mayor of Franklin, Stuart Trachy, said bluntly, “Reagan is a loser.”
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Bush was unfazed when asked about the Reagan campaign's claim that the Gipper “would take off the gloves when he got to New Hampshire and put Bush in his place.” He replied, “Hooray! Reagan didn't even know I existed. Four or five weeks ago, I wasn't in the race as far as he was concerned.”
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In a clear sign that Reagan was breaking from John Sears's reins, the Gipper admitted that he had made a mistake in refusing to debate in Iowa, and announced that he would attend all debates in New Hampshire. The old proverb was that “in poker, the losers yell 'deal,'” and the add-on in politics was, “in campaigns, they yell 'debate.'” Reagan was now yelling for a debate because he was losing the GOP nomination to the hard-charging Bush.
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Carmen, meanwhile, continued his efforts to arrange a one-on-one debate between Reagan and Bush—again without ever asking anybody at Reagan Central for permission.
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“I am throwing the gauntlet down for the Bush people,” the aggressive little businessman told the Associated Press. “If they will agree to a two-man debate, we will try to work out the details.”
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Suddenly Bush, who had wanted to get Reagan in a one-on-one debate, appeared to waffle. As the frontrunner he had more to lose in such an environment. Better to hide among the other candidates and sit on a lead.