- HIS LASTING IMPACT
- AN EDITORIAL
Posted on 06/06/2004 3:01:49 AM PDT by billorites
For seven years, it was a one-sided love affair.
In 1967, some Granite State Republicans began trying to woo Ronald Wilson Reagan into a run for the Presidency. Eventually, they succeeded. And the rest is history.
Indeed, in 1980, the New Hampshire GOP put Reagan on the road to the White House. During his terms in office, local party faithful GOP proudly called New Hampshire “Reagan Country” — a phrase coined by former Gov. John H. Sununu.
While New Hampshire certainly has changed in the past 20 years, Republicans still believe vestiges of “Reagan Country” remain.
But at first, Reagan shunned his Granite State admirers. In June 1967, Russell Carter, a former state senator, formed the state’s first Reagan for President club.
By September of that year, Manchester advertising executive John L. MacDonald had formed a “New Hampshire Draft Reagan Committee.”
The following month, Reagan, concerned that the Presidential talk would harm his own plan to be reelected governor of California, told the group through aide Lyn Nofziger to knock it off. He was backing fellow Californian Richard Nixon for President.
They did back off, but when the 1968 Presidential primary votes were counted, non-candidate Reagan still received 362 votes.
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State GOP Chairman Robert E. Whalen described it as “the biggest and best” fundraiser in state history, adding excitedly, “He even outdrew (Spiro) Agnew!”
Reagan had clearly hit a chord with Granite State Republicans.
At that meeting, future governor Meldrim Thomson and Reagan met for the first time, recalls Thomson’s son and former chief of staff, Peter Thomson.
Mel Thomson was about to run for the second time against sitting Republican Gov. Walter Peterson.
Reagan was already the nation’s leading conservative elected official, but, Peter Thomson said, “Even then, he invoked the 11th commandment.
Private support
“He told my father at a private meeting, ‘I sure hope you are the winner, but I’ve got to be careful because of the 11th commandment: Thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican.’ But my father did get elected and they became very close friends.”
Peter Thomson recalled that the two would “have fun” as two of only three or four conservative Republican governors among the 17-member GOP delegation in those days. In 1972 in Arizona, the two enjoyed giving New York’s liberal governor Nelson Rockefeller fits, “and my father committed to Ronald Reagan for President then, for whenever he ran.”
Thomson said his father knew Reagan would be a candidate in 1976 and so, why wait to back him?
“They both had the same unyielding conservative philosophy. Neither would waffle, while others who called themselves conservatives often did.”
Reagan returned to New Hampshire in January 1974, for another party fundraiser — and more.
With President Nixon under fire for the Watergate scandal, Reagan again urged hundreds of Republicans to observe the “11th commandment.”
During that visit, Reagan began planning his first run for the White House. A small cadre of people met at the New Hampshire Highway Hotel, a Concord political landmark razed long ago to make room for the Fort Eddy Plaza shopping malls.
On the inside were Reagan, Peter Thomson and his father, Thomson legal counsel Chuck Douglas and a few key Reagan aides.
Nixon appeared headed for disaster, but even if he somehow survived, a new President would be elected in 1976. So Reagan eyed the White House, Thomson reaffirmed his support and stuck with it even when Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon as President in August 1974.
Peter Thomson and Douglas agreed that it was at that meeting that the Reagan Revolution — for New Hampshire and the nation — was born.
The campaign geared up throughout 1974 and into 1975. In those days, candidates weren’t in New Hampshire as early and often as in recent years.
“But he didn’t need to be here as much,” said Peter Thomson. “He had the sitting Republican governor who was sled-length out for him. And of course, he had (Union Leader Publisher) Bill Loeb, who was a tremendous force in the state at that time.”
Loeb pounded the Manchester Union Leader editorial drum for Reagan early and often.
“William Loeb didn’t think Reagan was the perfect candidate,” recalled Joseph McQuaid, who has been President and Publisher of the Union Leader Corporation since shortly after Nackey S. Loeb’s death in January 2000.
“But Loeb thought he had the charisma that was needed to get elected and he thought the nation was in great need of a conservative President. So he worked very hard for Reagan, starting back in 1976 and never really stopping.”
Thinking ahead
Even with Thomson and Loeb in his corner, Reagan needed to broaden his support toward the ideological middle. Or at least that was the thinking of Reagan strategist John Sears.
And so, in August 1975, Sears went to see former New Hampshire Gov. Hugh Gregg, owner of a more moderate ideology. Eventually, at Sears’ urging, Gregg, instead of Thomson, was named Reagan’s state campaign chairman — probably because Sears feared that Thomson, a spontaneous firebrand, might get Reagan into trouble.
Gregg says in his 1990 book, “The Candidates: See How They Run,” that “while Ford and Reagan perhaps shared a similar political philosophy, I came to believe that the latter was more electable. He had exceptional charisma and the advantage of not being tarnished in any way by the Watergate scandal.”
Gregg and Thomson began building a town-by-town organization.
When Reagan formally announced his candidacy in November 1975, all was in readiness and the campaign began in earnest.
But Gerald Ford was the sitting President and, as Peter Thomson recalled, “a sympathetic figure among Republicans” as a innocent victim of Watergate.
In the end, when the votes were counted, Ford drew 55,156 to Reagan’s 53,569.
It was the first time that Ford had won an election as President. The Reagan forces tried to spin their close loss into a win, but most Republicans across the nation didn’t buy it.
Reagan challenged Ford all the way to the Kansas City convention where, as many Republicans of the era recall, he received much louder ovations than the victorious incumbent.
As the roll call of the states was taken, Meldrim and Peter Thomson sat in an executive box with Reagan’s wife Nancy and his close friend Sen. Paul Laxalt of Nevada. It was almost as if Reagan’s campaign for the Presidency never really ended.
Just kept going
And when Jimmy Carter defeated Ford in the 1976 general election, the 1980 campaign began — at least as far as William Loeb and the Reagan New Hampshire machine was concerned.
Loeb criticized Carter almost daily, and the Democrat provided plenty of ammunition — gasoline lines, his infamous “malaise” statement, Soviet aggression in Afghanistan and, of course, the hostage crisis in Iran.
All the while, Reagan bided his time, while Gerald P. Carmen of Manchester began organizing the local campaign that would change a nation.
Meanwhile, Gregg abandoned Reagan for George Bush. In his book, he eats crow like a good sport:
“Though I blanch to admit it now, it was my sincere opinion that Reagan’s name, after 10 years pursuing the Presidency, had become ‘shopworn’ and perhaps the country was ready for a fresh face on the Republican ballot.” Gregg was also concerned about Reagan’s age.
“How wrong I was!” Gregg wrote.
Thomson’s 1978 loss to Democrat Hugh Gallen was a setback, but Reagan, with Loeb’s help, quickly recovered and was the clear front-runner throughout most of the New Hampshire campaign.
He appeared headed for an easy victory in the New Hampshire primary. But then came a big bump in the road: the Iowa caucus.
Reagan had campaigned there only three days and had skipped a debate. Strategist Sears was accused of being — and making the candidate feel — overconfident.
Luckily for Reagan, there was more than a month between the Jan. 21 caucus and the Feb. 24 New Hampshire primary, not the mere eight days of the past few cycles.
‘Personal touch’ campaign
Gregg wrote, “At Loeb’s urging, the Reagan strategy was promptly revamped to return his ‘personal touch’ here on a sustained basis, to ride the bus every day and to work people-to-people stops as he had done for us four years earlier.”
And on the Saturday night before the primary came the turning point — a debate at Nashua High School.
After the Federal Election Commission nixed the sponsor Nashua Telegraph’s plan to hold a front-runners-only debate between Reagan and Bush, the Reagan campaign decided to foot the $3,500 bill.
Reagan, now the sponsor, felt it was unfair to exclude the other candidates. And he also realized there was a political coup in the making.
Reagan walked into the jammed auditorium with second-tier candidates Howard Baker, John Anderson, Philip Crane and Bob Dole in tow.
He began to announce to the crowd why they had accompanied him, and Telegraph editor Jon Breen repeatedly told sound expert Bob Molloy to shut off Reagan’s microphone.
Famous line
That prompted the famous Reagan retort: “I’m paying for this microphone, Mr. Green.” Reagan mispronounced Breen’s name, but no matter.
Bush sat stone-faced and silent. He should have spoken up for the other candidates, but instead he made himself appear to be aloof and exclusionary.
Gregg wrote Bush “felt obligated to his host, The Telegraph,” and remained pledged to his agreement to a one-on-one debate. Bush lost the primary, and his inaction on the stage that night may have been the reason.
Proper etiquette? Perhaps.
Political suicide? Definitely.
The New Hampshire Sunday News reported, “The debate itself was anticlimactic.”
Loeb editorialized:
“Bush showed himself for what he really is, a spoiled little rich kid who has been wet-nursed to success and, now, packaged by David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, thinks he is entitled to the White House as his latest toy.”
Reagan crushed Bush on primary day, 50 percent to 23 percent.
Reagan country affirmed
New Hampshire was, indeed, Reagan country.
But he did not return to New Hampshire until his final visit, on Sept. 18, 1985.
Mel Thomson was there. William Loeb had died in 1981, but his widow, Publisher Nackey S. Loeb, attended.
So did an estimated 18,000 other Granite Staters who jammed the State House lawn to hear Reagan call for tax reform and recall his days of campaigning in New Hampshire.
The day was bright, sunny, not too hot. Gov. Sununu, later to become Bush’s White House chief of staff, had a 38-foot-long flag draped in front of the historic granite capitol.
The crowd cheered. The Union Leader proclaimed: “Welcome HOME, Mr. President.”
In an editorial entitled, “Where It All Began,” then editorial page director James J. Finnegan wrote:
“The ‘it’ that began here, we submit, was not only the road to the White House for Ronald Reagan, candidate, but also the road to historical legendry for Ronald Reagan, President. Long after the debates raging over today’s issues are forgotten, this man’s remarkable personal qualities, first sensed by the people of New Hampshire, will be remembered and honored.”
Great insight into that formational period. I came into the loop a bit late to have known about this stuff. Thus the revolution was born.
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