Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (42 page)

Reagan kept his eye on the ball in Illinois, telling voters that it was now about the all-important delegate count. At this point, he was ahead of Bush, 167–45. Illinois would hold a “blind” primary, meaning that candidates vying to be delegates to the Republican National Convention were listed on the ballot without any signal as to which candidate they supported. Accompanying that would be a nonbinding “beauty contest” vote for candidates. It was possible for a candidate to win the nonbinding Illinois primary and still lose delegates. To compete for the ninety-two delegates at stake on primary day (another ten delegates would be selected at the state convention), the candidates had to organize “mini-campaigns” around their chosen delegate nominees.
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In order for primary voters to choose Reagan, they had to know who his delegate candidates were. The process put a premium on recruiting local celebrities whom friends and neighbors would recognize on the ballot.

Reagan drew big and enthusiastic crowds in downstate Illinois, his old stomping ground. The region was flat as a frying pan, with endless rows of soybean and corn, and was redneck conservative. The Chicago suburbs were moderate Republican territory.

Totten was running things for Reagan in Illinois, just as he'd done four years earlier. He was one of the few state operatives who were around in 1976 and hadn't been forced out or demoted by John Sears in the 1980 quest. Like Reagan's other men, Totten was a tough conservative whose hard work and loyalty were never in doubt. He was running an effective operation in Springfield, teeming with volunteers and an underpaid and overworked aide, Terry Campo, who was pressed into service one day as Reagan's spokesman because the woman assigned
by the campaign had laryngitis. Campo didn't know a press release from a grape press but he struggled through, even as he was astonished at the unruly behavior of the horde of reporters, all barking questions at him.
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C
ARTER'S ROMP OVER
K
ENNEDY
continued without interruption. The same day that he trounced Kennedy in the Alabama, Georgia, and Florida primaries, he also won big in the Oklahoma, Delaware, and Hawaii caucuses. Only in Alaska's caucus did Kennedy defeat the president.
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Carter also won the caucuses in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Wyoming, held four days later.
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Kennedy's campaign was on the verge of being chloroformed, just in time for him to go back to Cape Cod and get ready for the coming spring sailing season.

The bad news never seemed to stop rolling downhill onto Kennedy. Long withheld evidence of the frantic phone calls he made in the hours after Chappaquiddick was released, and all the old questions arose anew about Kennedy's behavior that night in July 1969. Joan Kennedy stood by her man, even when reporters unchivalarously badgered her about Chappaquiddick. She also said bluntly, “I don't think much of President Carter.”
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The president's mother, “Mizz Lillian,” had caused a bit of a stir earlier when she indelicately said of Kennedy, “I hope nothing happens to him.”
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In desperation, Kennedy's campaign had detailed eighty staffers from the national office to Illinois, and a dozen or so members of his family worked the state as well.
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Illinois would be the site of the first primary held on a neutral battlefield, neither Carter's South nor Teddy's New England. If Kennedy's campaign was to have any chance of rebounding, he would need to perform well in Illinois. Some Kennedyites were still in fighting spirit. Four women, including a Kennedy supporter, got into a fistfight at a Democratic precinct in Puerto Rico.
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From day one his plan had been to re-create the old liberal coalitions that his brothers had built. Illinois was large and diverse, and its biggest city, Chicago, was urban, ethnic, and heavily Catholic. The trouble was that the minorities whom his brothers had attracted thus far had been going for Carter. Meanwhile, the political machine of former Chicago mayor Richard Daley had for the most part collapsed after his death in 1976, so Kennedy could not count on its ability to deliver any votes, alive or dead.

A day before the Illinois primary, Kennedy marched in Chicago's St. Patrick's Day parade alongside the city's immensely unpopular mayor, Jane Byrne, who had endorsed him over Carter. Along the way, the boisterous crowd jeered and shouted obscenities at one of the most famous Irishmen in America. Kennedy flyers, in the shape of shamrocks, littered the wet sidewalks, making the puddles
turn green. Joan Kennedy held close to her husband, a terrified look on her face.
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Kennedy betrayed an assassination concern when some punks set off a string of firecrackers near him. “His hands shot to his head, his knees bent and the color drained from his face—but it all passed in a flash,” one reporter wrote.
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Kennedy was able to secure a commitment from Barbra Streisand to do two fundraising concerts for his campaign, which he hoped would raise $1 million. Streisand had notorious stage fright and hadn't done a political concert since 1972, for George McGovern. Before he bowed out, John Connally had tried to recruit Wayne Newton, but the singer had already signed up with Reagan a year earlier. Newton did Reagan concerts and raised hundreds of thousands for the Gipper. Jimmy Buffett had signed on with Carter and Rockford's Cheap Trick with hometown boy John Anderson. If there was only one thing the various campaigns agreed upon, it was that celebrities were a pain to deal with. Their agents were even more insufferable. “I'm the no. 1 guy in the business,” said music promoter and self-promoter Jerry Weintraub. “I can just pick up the phone and get anybody on the line … Kennedy … Bush … Mondale … the President, anybody.”
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The immodest Weintraub was a friend of the modest George Bush.

J
ESSE
H
ELMS WAS A
Reaganite's Reaganite, although the conservative North Carolina senator and his powerful political organization, the Congressional Club, had yet to publicly back Reagan, largely because they had been steamed at Reagan for keeping on John Sears as campaign manager. But Reagan would not have run at all in 1980 if it hadn't been for Helms and his top political aide, Tom Ellis; they had thrown their support behind Reagan at a crucial time in 1976. Reagan had been defeated in the first five primaries that year and was expected to lose to President Ford in North Carolina as well. Helms and Ellis furiously organized for Reagan in the Tar Heel State, with mailings, literature drops, phone calls, voter registration drives, and advertising. Combined with Reagan's last-gasp campaigning, this activity produced one of the greatest upsets in modern presidential political history. The victory revived the dying Reagan campaign and propelled him though the rest of the primaries and to the convention. Without the “Club,” Reagan, as a political force, would have simply faded away after the 1976 North Carolina primary.

Now, with Sears dismissed, Helms's Congressional Club finally came off the sidelines and announced its support for Reagan. Reagan would benefit not only from the political and fundraising support of the powerful senator but also from Ellis's help. Ellis understood Reagan as did few other pros. One of his critical moves in 1976 was to put on all of North Carolina's television stations a half-hour
address by Reagan. Even with the technical problems of the videotape, Tar Heel voters were drawn to the Reagan persona and message.
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In the early stages of the 1980 campaign, Reagan's advertising team had failed to appreciate this lesson. Before Jeff Bell rejoined the Reagan family, the campaign's television spots had been mostly a disaster. The old spots, produced by a Madison Avenue firm, had Reagan talking about inflation to schoolchildren, telling them it “could cost Joan and Billy here seventy-five thousand dollars to go to college.”
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Bell and the new adman he had brought into the Reagan fold, Elliott Curson, worked on new television spots. The new commercials were simple and to-the-point. They opened with Reagan talking into the camera, saying, “This is a great country, but it's not being run like a great country,” and ended with the slogan “Let's Make America Great Again.”
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The reaction among the elites was decidedly mixed; CBS analyst Jeff Greenfield was one of the few who recognized the power of the commercials, saying, “Reagan ran the least elaborate, least gimmicked-up, most issue-oriented ads of the entire campaign.” Bush's ads, Greenfield said, were the most gimmicky.
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Bush had junked his earlier bio commercials in favor of talking-head ads in which he told voters, “Let's get down to cases.” Carter, meanwhile, ran attack ads that left no doubt whom they were referring to, as the voiceover said, “You'll never find yourself wondering if he's telling you the truth.” Kennedy's commercials were universally panned. One was a close-up of Teddy's hands, signing letters.
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Another one contemplated but never produced was of him and his wife and children walking on the beach, which would have simply raised all the old questions about his marriage.

Curson was a big reason for the success of Reagan's ads. Curson, a long-haired and hip young conservative who lived in Philadelphia, was one of the young breed of new GOP ad makers who “got” Reagan. He eschewed trying to manage the Gipper or put him in a goofy setting, such as walking down the beach with his wife and dog, a coat slung over his shoulder—a style adopted in almost every other candidate's commercials in 1980. (The only candidates who did not do puerile “Man on the Beach” commercials were Reagan and Kennedy.) No balloons, jingles, or trite slogans for Curson. He put Reagan in front of a camera and just let the candidate talk. Curson defended the unslick commercials by saying, “We're trying to win an election, not an Academy Award.”
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In short, Curson and Bell let Reagan be Reagan.

S
HORTLY BEFORE THE
I
LLINOIS
primary, Bob Dole at long last made it official and retired from the presidential field, saying he'd always been a long shot. The Kansan paid homage to Reagan in his remarks, a graceful move.

Since Dole had been a nonfactor in the race for so long, his departure did little to alter the dynamic in the Republican race. Anderson's unexpected success and now front-runner status in Illinois brought him a fundraising windfall and lots of media attention. But with that came increased scrutiny. As one of the last of a dying breed—a liberal Republican—he faced more and more questions about whether he would seek a third-party bid if he was not the GOP nominee. The sanctimonious Anderson, who on Capitol Hill had earned the nickname “St. John the Righteous,”
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drew disparaging remarks from Republicans and Democrats alike. At one press conference Reagan poked fun at Anderson by saying that, unlike the Illinois congressman, “I have not endorsed Senator Kennedy.”
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Kennedy also had some fun at Anderson's expense. At one stop he noted Carter's absence and said that all the other Democrats were there, “including John Anderson.”
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Although many in the media saw in Anderson's candidacy the chance for a new alignment in politics, merging the moderate Republican with the rural farm vote and the urban sophisticates, he could not avoid uncomfortable questions forever. Now the press began pressing him about his flip-flops. He'd once been a supporter of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts and nuclear power, but had switched in 1980.
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Anderson picked up another problem in the form of a new ad man, David Garth, a pushy, loud, and brilliant New Yorker with a flair for self-promotion. Any candidate had to understand that along with Garth's massive talent came an equally massive ego.

As Reagan had been aided in some primaries by crossover conservative Democrats, Anderson had been aided by crossover liberal Democrats. Since voters did not register by party in Illinois, anyone could vote in either the Democratic or the Republican primary. An under-the-radar fight was going on between Kennedy and Anderson for these prized voters, including college students and minorities. Anderson's presence in the race had hurt Bush and Kennedy. And both Reagan and Carter were benefiting as a result.

Bush tried to play his strong suit and restart his flagging campaign. He gave a major foreign-policy address in which he called for “economic warfare” to be used against Iran as a way to dislodge the hostages. Bush ripped into Carter, saying he'd demonstrated “an infinite capacity to be misled.”
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Reagan stuck to his central message about tax cuts, government bureaucracy, and standing up to the ayatollah and the Soviets. In speech after speech, he thundered that “we're going to be so respected that never again will a dictator dare invade an American embassy and hold our people as hostages!”
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Having lost badly to Ford in Illinois in 1976, he spent the entire week before the primary traipsing up and down and across the state. He was giving fewer prepared speeches and
more off-the-cuff remarks, with plenty of time for questions and answers with voters.

Reagan kept his focus on Anderson in Illinois, hitting the congressman's liberal views and pointing up his disdain for his own party. Reagan told reporters, “A party isn't a fraternity; it isn't something you join because you like the school tie.… It is a gathering together of people who basically share the same political philosophy.”
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Anderson returned the volley, accusing Reagan of costing Ford the election four years earlier. “He could have elected Gerry Ford instead of sulking at home.”
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Reagan fired back by suggesting that Anderson was so out of touch with the GOP that he ought to consider leaving it.