Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [304]
Meanwhile, no detail was too small for Nancy to notice. When French Smith told her about an article in the Republican National Committee’s March newsletter about Ford addressing a group of party fund-raisers, she asked him to send it to her. She then passed it along to Meese with a cover note saying, “Before your meeting with Bill Brock—Bill Smith sent this—
no mention of RR in this at all—you wouldn’t even know he was run-Reagan vs. Carter: 1977–1980
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ning.”94 Brock, the RNC chairman, had been installed by Ford, and some of Reagan’s advisers, particularly Paul Laxalt, who was close to Nancy, thought he should be replaced.
That month Reagan took Vermont, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, and most of New York, leaving Bush only Massachusetts, the state he was born in, and Connecticut, the state where he went to school. Howard Baker dropped out of the race, Gerald Ford got cold feet about a last-minute entry, and Henry Kissinger, who had been pushing Ford the hardest, announced that he would have no problem supporting Reagan against Carter. In April, Reagan won Wisconsin and Kansas, but Bush scored an upset in Pennsylvania and prevailed in Maine, the state where he summered. On May 3, however, Bush lost his home state of Texas, and Reagan then went on to sweep North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Maryland, and Nebraska. Bush had one more important win, in Michigan, on May 20, but Reagan’s victory in Oregon that same day left him only six delegates short of the 998 required for nomination, and California, the biggest prize and a sure thing for its golden boy, was still to come. On May 26, George Bush announced that he was giving up and would ask his 202 delegates to vote for Reagan at the convention. When a reporter asked Reagan how he felt, he replied, “I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet. Maybe someplace along the line later today I’ll go home by myself and let out a loud yell.”95
The only remaining question was who Reagan’s running mate would be.
The two leading contenders were his strongest primary opponents, George Bush and Howard Baker, who as moderates would balance the ticket ideologically. However, Reagan told confidants that he would not feel personally comfortable with Bush, and Nancy was still smarting from his voodoo economics line. The Reagans liked Howard Baker—in 1976 he and his wife, Joy, had invited them to stay at their home in Tennessee even though he was Ford’s state campaign chairman—but the Republican right wing was still fuming at Baker for voting for the Panama Canal Treaty. Then there was Paul Laxalt, whom Nancy favored, but who as a fellow conservative from a small Western state would do little to broaden Reagan’s appeal. On July 1, five more individuals were asked by Bill Casey to submit financial and health information for screening—Jack Kemp, Bill Simon, Donald Rumsfeld, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, and Representative Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan. A few days later, after it was decided that a woman should be considered, former ambassador Anne Armstrong was added to the list. But, 4 8 8
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House amazingly, the name that drew the highest numbers in the polls was former president Gerald Ford.
Two days after Reagan clinched the nomination, at the end of May, Ford had publicly endorsed him, though he categorically ruled out becoming his running mate.96 On June 5, Ford invited Reagan to his house near Palm Springs. At the end of their ninety-minute meeting, Ford reiterated that he had taken himself out of consideration because he and Reagan were both residents of California, and the Constitution prohibits electors from voting for both a presidential and a vice presidential candidate from their own state. Still, the idea of a Reagan-Ford “dream ticket” hung in the air right up to the convention, kept aloft by