Historical Figures Series, The Electoral Path of Ronald Reagan, Part 2: 1968, The Campaign That Never Got Off The Ground

 

 

Hard as it may be to believe in this era of it being a Democratic bulwark, for much of the 20^th century California was essentially a swing state. Harder to believe, much of that period it was reliably in the Republican corner.

Of course back then, Republican had a different definition and that was particular clear of California. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party manage to take the state. In 1916 California showed its electoral importance for the first time in a Presidential election. Charles Evan Hughes looked like the likely winner on election night but after the votes were all counted, Woodrow Wilson ended up winning by a mere 1300 votes. The thirteen electoral votes it carried ended up being the difference in that election as Wilson won with 277 electoral votes to 254 for Hughes.

For the next three straight presidential elections, California was solidly in the Republican column. Indeed in 1924, Democrat John W. Davis finished third in the popular vote in California to Calvin Coolidge and Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette, running on the Progressive ticket. Like most of the country California went into the Democratic ledger in all four of FDR’s victories and as I mentioned in my series on Tom Dewey, not even the presence of Governor Earl Warren was enough to stop it from it going to Harry Truman in 1948. Richard Nixon’s presence on the Republican ticket under Eisenhower no doubt played a large part in its returning to the Republican fold in both of his victories and even when JFK won in 1960, the state had gone to Nixon. The fact that LBJ had managed to carry in his landslide victory of 1964 meant nothing to the Democratic establishment; they knew they’d have to watch it carefully four years later.

For that reason when Ronald Reagan managed to upset Pat Brown in 1966 in his race for Governor, the Democrats took as a sign that problems would be on the horizon two year later in that state. Reagan was not yet being considered as a serious candidate for national office yet, but the fact that he was governor of one of the biggest states in the union meant they couldn’t outright dismiss him.

During the last twenty years California political figures had become considered likely candidates for the Presidency. In fact, when he made a stop there in advance of the California primary in 1956, Theodore White thought that there might be as many four serious contenders for the Republican nomination in years to come from that state: Nixon, Earl Warren, William Knowland, then the minority leader in the Senate and Goodwin Knight, the incumbent governor. The latter three had all won election the last time around by winning both the Republican and Democratic nominations for their office. While Pat Brown had never made much of a national impact, his defeat of Nixon for reelection in 1962 had raised his national profile – and his stunning loss to Reagan had raised his.

Reagan clearly had a desire to try and earn the nomination for President in 1968 but would get off to a late start mainly when the conservative branch of the party wanted to stop Richard Nixon.  I find it hard to believe that even if Reagan had made more of a concerted effort to do so that year, he could have gotten the nomination for what was probably the most obvious of reasons.

Just four years earlier, the conservative wing of the GOP had nominated Barry Goldwater and it had ended in disaster for the party. Most of the conservative wing had retreated into the shadows but Reagan was by far the most obvious face of it, having made one of the most famous campaign speeches for him a month before election day. Considering the Republicans clearly had an opportunity to win the White House just four years after LBJ’s landslide seemed to have completely destroyed the party as force, it is highly unlikely that the old guard would have let Reagan do so.

Still the same forces that had been the architect of the Goldwater campaign, including Clifton White had been determined to make the effort. Reagan had been ambitious to make the fight but in the summer of 1967, a scandal erupted in the governor’s office. His chief of staff, Philip Battaglia was discovered to be openly gay and was having affairs with his junior staff. Nine of them went to Reagan and demanded that Battaglia be fired. At the time Reagan had a decent relationship with the gay community in Hollywood but the national attitude and the California electorate forced him to replace him with William Clark. This decision effected his confidence and made him cautious. It is likely that if Reagan had just said the word at any point in 1967, Reagan could have taken the Southern bloc of delegates and deadlocked the convention. But he tarried along the way and by the time he made his move before the convention, Nixon’s men had snatched them all up.

Reagan’s name was written in on many of the primaries  but he did not make an official try until the Nebraska primary on May 14^th. He obtained 21 percent of the vote but Nixon still won in a landslide. Two weeks later, he managed to get roughly the same amount in Oregon while Nixon again destroyed the competition. Nixon stayed out of the California primary and Reagan took the entire delegate slate unopposed. Reagan would also win the North Carolina primary, the only Southern state on the ballot without even campaigning.

The liberal wing of the party was headed by Nelson Rockefeller who was even now more out of step with the party. While he managed to defeat Nixon in Massachusetts by a small margin, any chance Rockefeller had for the nomination would only be possible if a stop-Nixon movement developed at the convention. It would come down to a decision by the governors in the Southern states who were inclined to support either Nixon or Reagan, and whether there were enough Eastern states that could support Rockefeller.

Reagan’s conventions effort were geared towards ripping away the southern delegations from Nixon, South Carolina which was commanded by Strom Thurmond (in Nixon’s camp) and Texas, led by John Tower while Rockefeller would do the same for the East. The problem was twofold. Reagan and Rockefeller both wanted to stop Nixon, but neither was willing to let the other be the force of stopping it. And second, with the memory of the chaos in the 1964 Republican convention fresh in everyone’s mind, no one truly wanted there to be a fight on the floor. No one truly loved Richard Nixon, but it was not worth destroying a golden opportunity to win the White House, particularly in a year with so much chaos in the country.

For all that, the final tally on the first ballot was less imposing than it appeared. Nixon won the nomination with 692 votes to Reagan’s 182 and Rockefeller’s 277. However, Nixon had needed 667 to win the nomination – and only received 25 more than that. There had been room for all sorts of possibilities. If the Reagan people had managed to get Florida and its 34 delegates away from Nixon on the first ballot, Nixon would have been short. Similarly Rockefeller’s decision to take to long to announce had changed Spiro Agnew, then the Governor of Maryland who had been a staunch Rockefeller advocate for a year, to eventually give his states eighteen delegates to Nixon. Arkansas, which was governed by Winthrop Rockefeller, Nelson’s brother, could have gone for either man and Reagan’s decision to tarry had cost him the South that would be his base. Reagan no doubt could have been the victor on a second or third ballot.

However, I feel very strongly that even had Reagan managed to start his campaign early, win over the South, managed to prove himself to the Old Guard and get the nomination – all of them big variables – he would not have prevailed in a general election against Hubert Humphrey.

The first and most obvious problem would have been that of George Wallace. As we shall see Reagan’s base was in the south and much of the Reagan vote would be the kind of voter Wallace appealed to. It is likely the two would have divided the South even more than usual. However, at that point Reagan did not have a general appeal within the North and Eastern states and it is far more likely that the votes that ended up going to Nixon in 1968 would have gone to Humphrey instead.

There are other questions in place. Unlike Nixon who refused to debate Humphrey, it is likely that Reagan might very well have accepted Humphrey’s challenge to debates. It is unclear, however, if this would have helped him or hurt him. Reagan was a skilled orator and debater but at that point in his career he was far less polished, particularly in comparison to Hubert Humphrey, who few questioned was one of the greatest campaigners and orators of his era. Humphrey would not have underestimated Reagan and would have been more than prepared for him. Considering that he had a gift for humor and language, Humphrey very likely would have outshone him.

Just as important was the likelihood that Wallace would have been invited to participate. Much as few people would have wanted to give Wallace a podium, his polling numbers were high enough that it would have been foolish not to. And unlike Jimmy Carter, who would famously refuse to debate John Anderson in 1980, Humphrey would no doubt have been more willing to share the stage with Wallace.

If that happened, who could say what the end results would have been? Few could accuse Wallace of not being as gifted at his oratory as Humphrey or Reagan. Could he have risen in national prominence by such a debate? Or would have potential voters listened to both Reagan and Wallace, found there wasn’t much difference, and gone for Humphrey instead? It is  impossible to say for sure.

But perhaps the most important issue of the campaign would definitely have hurt Reagan: the Vietnam War. Reagan was notoriously a hawk and while much of his rise to prominence had been due to his ‘law and order’ agenda, his particular wing of the party believed more in escalation in Vietnam than a negotiated peace. (Reagan would famously oppose the Nixonian policy of détente and berate the eventual defeat in the years to come.) It is hard to picture a world where this particular campaign attitude would have helped him in a general election, even if he had been willing to moderate. For all of Nixon’s false promises in having ‘a secret plan’ to win the war, I’m relatively certain given the national mood Reagan’s attitude of open escalation would have helped him.

Which brings us to the final wrinkle. As I mentioned in the Humphrey article, in the days before the campaign LBJ looked like he was about to bring a negotiated peace in time before Paris pulled out – due to the machinations of the Nixon campaign. At that time Reagan did not have the international connections to do such a thing and (if I’m being honest) he did not have the kind of personality to allow that to be done in his name. It is likely that this would have probably led to a Humphrey victory. (On a side note if Reagan had actually gotten the nomination in 1968, the end of the Vietnam War might have been something we could have thanked his candidacy for.)

So I think if Reagan had somehow gotten the nomination for President in 1968, he would likely have gone down defeat. Probably not as badly as Barry Goldwater four years earlier (it would probably have been as close at the actual 1968 election) but his political future very well could have ended right there. And just as certainly the conservative movement in the GOP might well have been finally crushed. It would have been one thing to lose to LBJ in a landslide, but if the circumstances had been lined up for a Republican win and the conservative movement had somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory anyone even associated with the Reagan and Goldwater campaigns would have been drummed out of the party. Given the state of our politics today, it might not have been the worst thing for the GOP.

But Nixon had managed to win a narrow victory. Reagan no doubt was going to have to bide his time. In the next article in this series, I will look at the era between Nixon’s 1972 electoral landslide, how Reagan’s hopes for the White House no doubt could have been crushed for good had Watergate never happened and how he finally decided to take on Gerald Ford in the critical 1976 Republican primary.