How Ford Won and Reagan Lost

At Ronald Reagan's headquarters in Concord's dingy New Hampshire Highway Hotel, confident aides had chilled several bottles of Almaden blanc de blancs champagne for the expected victory party on primary night. The bottles were never opened. Next morning, as the campaign troupe decamped, Ronald Reagan Jr., 17, and other deflated supporters loaded the bubbly aboard the candidate's chartered Boeing 727--just in case there might be reason for popping their corks in Florida, Illinois or the other hard primaries ahead.

Reagan was doubly disappointed because he had blown the lead. After his first foray to the state last November, his polls showed him with a 45%-38% margin over Ford, though 17% were undecided. Following the President's first campaign visit in early February, Reagan fell slightly behind in the polls. Then, in the final weeks of campaigning, the pollsters' findings wavered back and forth. Still, on election eve, Reagan staffers anticipated victory.

The day after the primary all the Governor's men began analyzing what had gone wrong. There is little question that Reagan had outorganized and outdazzled Ford. Reagan had committees in all 236 of New Hampshire's cities and towns, spent close to the legal maximum of $200,000, and made more than 200 stops in 17 days of polished politicking. Friendly crowds applauded his calls for an end to unbalanced federal budgets and for more spending on defense and tougher bargaining with the Soviets. Even his ill-considered proposal to transfer many federal social-welfare programs to state and local governments--he estimated the shift would cut the federal budget by $90 billion--was popular with many voters.

But Reagan made serious mistakes. He spent little time in the cities and towns where much of Ford's strength lay: Keene, Nashua, Durham, Portsmouth and Dover. He erred by campaigning in Illinois the day before the primary; New Hampshire Campaign Manager Hugh Gregg, a former Governor, had advised Reagan that further stumping in New Hampshire was unnecessary. In hindsight, an unhappy Reagan strategist concluded, "That's when we should have been going full bore. The situation was that volatile."

The Ford forces thought so too. Until the polls closed, they went all out to make up for the President's inept organizing early in the race. The situation was saved mainly by Stuart Spencer, the savvy professional campaign organizer from California who is Ford's political director. Spencer, 49, managed Reagan's winning gubernatorial campaign in 1966. The White House recruited him in September to take over authority for the Ford election committee's day-to-day operations from inexperienced Chairman Howard ("Bo") Callaway, who now serves essentially as coordinator of campaign activities.

Spencer spent more than two weeks in New Hampshire. Among other things, he supervised volunteers who phoned about 60,000 Republican households. The volunteers identified some 27,000 voters as not sold on Ford and mailed them literature about him; another 40,000 who supported him got follow-up calls on election day urging them to vote. At Spencer's urging, Ford visited Dover, Keene and Portsmouth the week before the election and sharpened his criticism of Reagan to attract the cities' many moderate Republicans. Ford portrayed him as an extremist and predicted that Reagan, if nominated, would lead the party to defeat in November.

Though many Republicans agreed, the victory margin was uncomfortably close, partly because former President Nixon's visit to China was, in Ford's words, "probably harmful" (see story page 22). The trip reminded many Republicans of their distaste for Ford's pardon of Nixon. Spencer claimed that Nixon's jaunt cost Ford three or four percentage points, though neutral experts thought the trip had far less effect.

After the victory, Ford pros like Callaway and Rogers C.B. Morton huddled with Staff Chief Richard Cheney to assess money allocation for primaries (no changes made) and to review Ford's schedule of travel (spare but steady). Callaway reported that because of the New Hampshire results, volunteer work was already up in Florida (12,000 phone calls in a day compared with 10,000). Ford spent the weekend in Florida trying to increase the momentum of his campaign. His previous visits--totaling four days, a quarter of Reagan's scheduled time in the state--have had great impact. The President has erased most of Reagan's 2-to-1 initial lead in the polls. Moreover, Ford has partly overcome Reagan's organizational advantage, again largely because of the skillful Spencer. Among other things, Spencer dispatched his former California partner, William Roberts, to pull together the Florida campaign committee, which once was a shambles. He virtually took over the operation, recruiting county chairmen, firing up volunteers, and organizing mass mailings of campaign literature to Republicans. Now the contest is rated a tossup.

In Florida and other primary states. Ford doubtless will make more use of his wife, a crowd-pleasing campaigner. She soloed in Florida last week, giving brief speeches in four cities and shaking hundreds of hands. At a rally in Jacksonville, she encountered about two dozen demonstrators protesting her support of abortion. Otherwise her reception was friendly; some voters even wore buttons saying BETTY'S HUSBAND FOR PRESIDENT. Nancy Reagan has been campaigning for her husband since January.

Unlike Ford, Reagan is making changes in his campaign plans. He was considering raising his $500,000 budget for Florida, chiefly to buy more time on television, where the former movie star excels. In addition, he planned to step up his attacks on detente, on Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and proposals that the U.S. eventually turn over control of the Panama Canal to Panama. A loss in Florida would probably kill his campaign. But no matter what the pressure on him, Reagan has no plans to take off the gloves and attack Ford directly.

Goaded by Ford's disclosure three weeks ago of his personal finances, Ronald Reagan last week released a two-page accounting that put his net worth at $1,455,571 (v. Ford's $323,489). Reagan estimated his earnings last year at $282,253, chiefly from speeches, newspaper columns and radio commentaries. The statement listed $200,000 in bonds, divided equally between California school-building securities and San Jose city notes, and $326,560 in stocks, at market value. Among them were investments in two bank holding companies, $132,000 in Continental Illinois Corp. of Chicago and $111,000 in First Union, Inc. of St. Louis, and $42,432 in Salant Corp., a New York-based clothing manufacturer.

Reagan reported that he and Wife Nancy own real estate worth $720,000, including a four-bedroom house in suburban Los Angeles, a 688-acre ranch outside Santa Barbara and 771 acres of undeveloped land in Riverside County, Calif. In valuing his real estate, Reagan found it convenient to use tax assessors' figures, which are well under current market values. For example, while Reagan valued his house at $213,000, he probably could sell it for more than $350,000. Similarly, Reagan set the value of the Riverside land at $417,500, but brokers said that more than 300 acres were prime property worth up to $3,000 an acre. Thus Reagan in fact may be worth $2 million. According to his accounting, he will pay about $120,000 in federal, state and local taxes for 1975, or 43% of his income--about the same proportion as paid by Ford in taxes last year.

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