Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [296]
On March 7, in Washington, Paul Laxalt announced the formation of Reagan’s exploratory committee, with himself as chairman and John Sears as executive vice chairman and chief strategist.49 “Sears was firmly in control,” a let-down Nofziger wrote. “He named Jim Lake press secretary and put his other crony, Charlie Black, in charge of the field operation. Both were well qualified. Deaver, as usual, was the majordomo, taking care of the Reagans, worrying about logistics, and serving as the deputy campaign manager and general manipulator of people and things. Ed Meese was the overall issues man while Marty Anderson was again in charge of domestic issues and Richard Allen headed up foreign affairs. . . . As for me, Sears, in another stroke of genius, decided that I should be the fund-raiser, the one position where he was confident I would fail.”50
Nofziger had done everything he could to prevent Sears’s return, including traveling to Houston in the spring of 1978 to persuade James Baker to join the Reagan team. Baker said he had already made a commitment to support his good friend George Bush if he decided to run.51
Meanwhile Mike Deaver, with Nancy’s approval, had sent out feelers to Sears about taking an advisory role in the campaign. When Sears hinted that he might go to work for Senator Howard Baker unless he was put in charge, Deaver, who had been angling to run the campaign himself, caved in. Nancy invited Sears to Rancho del Cielo, where the wily Washington lawyer convinced Reagan that he couldn’t win with any other campaign Reagan vs. Carter: 1977–1980
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manager.52 Nofziger told me that Reagan’s decision was all the more dis-heartening because “he had made a commitment that he would not bring Sears back in.”53
Deaver later explained, “It was at my insistence that John Sears was brought back to head the 1980 primary campaign, over the objections of Paul Laxalt and other Reagan intimates. I still believed that we needed the Eastern access that Sears could provide. I had a healthy respect for his tactical skills, and his calm, almost laid-back manner. A cherubic-looking guy, Sears was no ideologue. He was . . . a brain for hire who wanted to play on a winning team. And those were terms I understood.”54
In announcing Reagan’s campaign committee, Sears played up the presence of four of Ford’s cabinet members, including Bill Simon and Caspar Weinberger, who had been secretary of health, education, and welfare.
Buried among the 365 names on the twenty-three-page list of committee members that Jim Lake handed out to the press were the Kitchen Cabinet veterans who had always run these things—Tuttle, Dart, Mills, Hume, French Smith. Henry Salvatori was missing altogether. This was in keeping with Sears’s strategy of toning down Reagan’s wealthy, conservative image and highlighting his appeal to the average American. It was also typical of Sears’s control-freak personality.
Sidelining the Kitchen Cabinet, however, created an immediate problem: money. Without Tuttle and Dart pounding on boardroom doors, much of the corporate cash that would have been Reagan’s went to Connally, a conservative and former Democrat who had bravely switched parties at the height of Watergate. By late April the campaign was having a hard time meeting its payroll. Sears blamed Nofziger for not raising enough money; Nofizger blamed Sears for spending too much. Enter Charles and Mary Jane Wick, who were personally close to the Reagans but not part of the Kitchen Cabinet clique. Charlie Wick was actually a registered Independent, though he agreed with Reagan’s basic philosophy and considered him “a man of