Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [276]
percent of Republicans as opposed to 41 percent for President Ford, Laxalt maintained that was a strong position for a noncandidate against an incumbent.58 Ford had officially declared he was running in a July 8 speech from the Oval Office; two days later forty-four prominent California Republicans, including several longtime Reagan associates, came out for the President. The defectors included state party chairman Paul Haerle, who had been Reagan’s appointments secretary in Sacramento and did not get along with Nancy, and computer tycoon David Packard, who had been at the first strategy meeting in Pacific Palisades in May 1974, but who now signed on as Ford’s national finance chairman. The most surprising name on the list was Henry Salvatori.
“I felt this way very strongly,” Salvatori later explained, “that an incumbent President should not be opposed by a member of his own party. At no time has such a man won. If he wins the nomination, he loses the election. I 4 4 2
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House thought of it strictly as a practical situation. I felt for Reagan. Through no fault of his own, lightning struck, and he had to face an incumbent President when he shouldn’t have. If Nixon hadn’t gotten involved in Watergate, Reagan would have marched right in. I understood how a lot of people felt.
It was hard for them and it was hard for Reagan to say, ‘Let’s wait for next time.’ I was hoping he wouldn’t run for his own ultimate good. I asked him before I committed to Ford if he was going to run and he hadn’t decided. I don’t think he would have run if he hadn’t felt a responsibility to various people around the country who liked him so much and urged him to run.
It proved me wrong, but I really thought that if one or two guys like me would go for Ford that maybe he wouldn’t run. I really believed that.”59
Salvatori tried to talk Tuttle into seeing things his way, but as far as Tuttle was concerned whatever Ronnie wanted Ronnie got. This split in the Kitchen Cabinet was some time in coming, and it would never quite be repaired. At the root of it was an antagonism between Salvatori and Justin Dart that went all the way back to 1964, when they were on opposite sides of the Goldwater-Rockefeller divide. Both men tended toward the pugnacious and arrogant, and both were fond of publicizing their wealth and power. Salvatori, whose influence in Reagan’s first term had nearly equaled Tuttle’s, resented the sudden rise of Dart in the second term. The change in the federal campaign finance law after Watergate, limiting individual donations to $1,000 to any one candidate and $25,000 to any party in each campaign cycle, further strengthened Dart’s position as an ace fund-raiser against the big-check writer Salvatori.
Nancy also played a significant role in this shifting dynamic. Although she and Punky Dart hadn’t hit it off at first—and Punky would never become a lady-in-waiting like Betsy, Marion, and Betty Wilson—Nancy had come to appreciate her discretion and independence. The fact that Punky had refused to join the Blue Ribbon 400, while Grace Salvatori remained Buff Chandler’s right arm despite being publicly humiliated by her, no doubt contributed to Nancy’s growing affection for Dart’s wife. The elegant champagne receptions the Darts gave for the POWs had also made points with the Governor’s wife. Moreover, Nancy had developed her own relationship with Justin Dart; she frequently called him about fund-raising and personnel matters, just as she had been doing with Alfred Bloomingdale for years.
Though such subtle social shifts may seem inconsequential, the decline of the archconservative Salvatori and the rise of the more corporate-minded Reagan vs. Ford: 1975–1976
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Dart, especially when seen in the light of Nancy’s increasing closeness to the Gosdens, the Cowleses, Kay Graham, and other establishment types, represented a small step in the long process of moving her husband toward the center. In any event, Nancy would never fully forgive Henry Salvatori for his 1976 defection. The