Hot on the Campaign Trail
The audience is Republican, predominantly white and well-to-do.
The listeners' eyes are fixed intently on the tall, handsome, silver-haired speaker. They examine him carefully, skeptically, expectantly. They search for a clue to the character of this glamorous ex-Governor, ex-Democrat, ex-Cabinet member and crony of many Presidents, who now declares that he can provide the leadership the nation needs. Says he: "In 1980 we must change the course of history."
John Bowden Connally Jr., 62, was speaking to 1,500 party loyalists at a candidates' forum in Chicago, but the mood and curiosity were repeated in 25 cities in ten states last month as he cantered north from his Texas ranch in his quest for the White House. He has paced himself carefully, first courting the faithful of his adopted party and luring many of its leaders into his camp, then hitting the board rooms where his fund-raising ability is legendary. This month he will be on the road for 25 days in 16 states. His extravagant television campaign, which highlights his service as Texas Governor, Navy Secretary and Treasury Secretary, will hit screens wherever there are votes.
Connally still has a long way to go. The Yankelovich, Skelly and White, Inc. poll for TIME shows that he stands fourth among Republicans, well behind Front Runner Ronald Reagan. One of his difficulties is that some Republicans think he still lacks legitimacy and are embarrassed to support him openly. "There are still a lot of myths about me," Connally told TIME Washington Bureau Chief Robert Ajemian. "I've got to clear them up." But his ability to excite crowds and raise money causes many political experts to believe that if he can surmount those "myths," the tall Texan is the most formidable Republican challenger for the presidency. Richard Nixon himself phones occasionally to offer encouragement and to predict the polls will change.
Connally's sure, deep voice exudes confidence, comforting and commanding his Chicago audience like a wise smalltown sheriff. Speaking without a prepared text, he ticks off facts and figures, developing his arguments lucidly and engaging his listeners with a tone of careful sincerity. He is always controlled, raising his voice only for emphasis. Yet he comes across as a vibrant orator, striking an emphatic rhythm like an oldtime Democrat. His Texan images are simple but colorful: the stubborn steer, the weak-kneed politician, the businessman cowering in fear of the Government. Connally has the earthiness of a backland tenant farmer's son and the urbanity of a successful international financier. He is clever enough to be self-deprecating at times, but he radiates such an enormous sense of self-confidence and self-mastery as to seem almost invulnerable. Like it or not, the brand of a unique personality is there.
The U.S. is becoming shamefully vulnerable, he tells his audience.
In the past eight years the national debt has gone up from $400 billion to $800 billion. "Try to get a ton of steel into France and see what happens," he taunts. "If the French steel industry doesn't want it, the government will automatically back them up." America, he says, should not allow other countries to push our economy around or subject us to an unfair trade disadvantage. In a line that echoes throughout his campaign he says: "I'd tell the Japanese that unless they opened up to more American products they'd better be prepared to sit on the docks of Yokohama in their Toyotas watching their Sony sets, because they aren't going to ship them here." And the Soviets, he says, are heading toward a strategic arms superiority. "I assure you, my friends, those Soviet missiles are not aimed at Mexico or Canada, they're aimed right at us." He tells them that Jimmy Carter is an amateur and that Congress must be led, exhorted, punished if need be. He talks of a Government-business partnership to lead the economy and the world.
The crowd roars. Many in the audience see Connally as a powerful, take-charge leader who can get things done.
His is a forceful style that seems attractive to many, including blue-collar workers who might be expected to disagree with him on many issues. There is a widespread sense that the U.S. is no longer in control of its destiny, pushed to and fro by forces that it once dominated. Could a tough President reassert America's role in a world that has become increasingly reluctant to be led by the U.S.? Is forceful leadership enough to re-establish confidence at home and overcome the negative influence of strong, single-issue groups? Republican supporters claim Connally has precisely those abilities.
Says New York Republican National Committeeman Richard Rosenbaum:
"What people seem to like about him is they think he can walk into the Oval Office and turn things around right away."
Says New Hampshire Republican Marshall Cobleigh: "The minute Connally conies into a room, you can feel he's a leader." Adds Gay Suber, a 1976 delegate for Gerald Ford from South Carolina: "He's got something this country sorely needs--strong, dynamic leadership and charisma."
But when the cheering stops, the questions begin. Dynamism begets polarity; what some see as leadership, others feel is Texas-style manipulation and opportunism, even menacing egotism. And there are those "myths," really four stubborn problems that come up again and again. "They all ask the same questions," says Connally's wife Nellie, her pert face wincing slightly. But Connally welcomes the questions, knowing that he must turn the negatives around by meeting them headon. So he has a careful response ready for each of them:
1) The wheeler-dealer image. One of the first questioners in Chicago uses that very term and asks Connally how he answers the charge. "If you mean someone who knows how to deal with Congressmen and Senators," he says, jutting his jaw, "then I plead guilty, I'm a wheeler-dealer. If you're talking about someone who can negotiate with world leaders on an equal basis and not be a tail-end Charlie, then I'm a wheeler-dealer. If you're talking about someone who is smart enough to go into a horse trade with a good, sound horse and not come out with one that's one-eyed and spavined, then I'm that."
2) The turncoat charge. As late as 1970, then Democrat Connally told a group of Texas moneymen that they should not defect and support Republican Senate Candidate George Bush. Said he: "Some of you are inclined to feel at home in the Republican Party. But the trouble is they won't give you a key to the house. If you think you can move in and have any influence with Republicans, you're making a bad mistake." Connally "moved in" less than three years later. Why did he switch parties? He says he had become uncomfortable with high-spending Democratic policies and soaring national debt. He reminds Republicans that Watergate had already started when he joined the G.O.P. Says he: "I joined you in the greatest depths of the fortunes of this party, when the party was down, so I can't be accused of opportunism." He sometimes adds a footnote, that if lifelong Republicanism is a litmus test, then Reagan, who was a Democrat until 1962, must also be disqualified. 3) The White House tapes. When the existence of the White House tapes became public knowledge, Connally's aggressive advice to his friend Nixon was to destroy them quickly. "Call in a group of witnesses, make sure it's in the open, but burn them," he proposed. Nixon declined the advice, and lost his presidency.
The tapes are now being catalogued in a closely guarded Washington archive. Some Republicans fear that release of the tapes (not expected for at least two more years) could severely damage Connally, as could a few well-timed leaks. Although they must contain hours of pivotal talks between the two men, Connally says that there is "not a thing" on the tapes he is ashamed of and that he does not worry about their release.
4) The milk trial. In 1974 Connally was indicted by a Watergate grand jury for accepting $10,000 from milk producers while he was Treasury Secretary in return for urging the President to increase price supports. At the trial, a 1971 White House tape was played in which Connally urged Nixon to support the price rise for political reasons: "They're going to make their associations and alliances this year and they're going to spend a lot of money." Nixon received campaign pledges totaling $2 million from the dairy industry and raised price supports 270 per cwt. But Connally was acquitted of the charge. When the inevitable question aris es, Connally retorts: "I'm the only certified not-guilty candidate running in either party. The jury heard the evidence and said, 'not guilty.' What more do you want?"
Even though he was acquitted, Con nally's actions on behalf of the milk producers are considered by his critics an illustration of his view of corporate interests. Says one Texas politician who has followed Connally closely: "The real danger in the milk fund case is the manipulation of Government policy to fit business interests, encouraging Nixon to raise milk support prices to extract political money." Says former Texas Observer Publisher Ronnie Dugger, a longtime Connally critic: "Corporate interests and Government interests? They're all the same to him." Another Texas political foe asks, "Can you imagine Connally's administration going after some big corporation that was behaving badly?"
Self-Made Millionaire Connally, who as Treasury Secretary led the fight to bail out ailing Lockheed, makes no apologies for his ardent support of milk producers, large oil companies or Big Business in general. "Business creates jobs, and business needs help," he says, ci ing the declining productivity figures of U.S. industry as compared with those of other industrial nations. The U.S., he says, is discouraging trade and capital formation, while other countries are doing the opposite. That is an idea whose time has come, at least among the experts: even many liberal economists now believe that Government regulation should be eased and tax policies changed in order to stimulate investment.
Connally denies that his strong pro-business stance makes him a mere wagon master for corporate America. Says he: "Corporations can be monitored. They can be audited. But right now they're so scared of Government they don't dare stick their heads out. The idea that I would be a toady for Big Business, that I would let myself be exploited, that I would use Government to help corporations, is another of those myths. Hell, if I wanted to help myself, I'd denounce Big Business."
Connally's support of Big Business is not balanced, critics charge, by compassion for the workers and the poor. Symbolic, they say, was his confrontation with farm workers who were on a 64-day, 468-mile march to Austin in the summer of 1966 to seek a $1.25 minimum wage. Governor Connally drove out to them in his limousine to tell them in person that he was absolutely opposed to their demands and would not meet them in his office. Nevertheless, more than 6,000 marchers did converge on Austin on Labor Day, and Connally was out of town. Says San Antonio Congressman Henry Gonzalez: "I don't think he has the temperament to care about little people, not the way Lyndon Johnson did." Former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who testified as a character witness for Connally at his milk trial, wrote in her memoirs that she remembers how she was standing on a platform with him when word came of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death and the Governor said, "Those who live by the sword die by the sword."
Some conservatives, too, have their doubts about Connally's concept of the roles of Government and business. They view him as a corporate statist with proclivities toward Big Government, one who would enhance federal power along with business interests. When Connally met with a group of new-right leaders in a converted garage near the Capitol this summer, they grilled him on this point and also about his support of the Equal Rights Amendment and his refusal to support an antiabortion amendment. Connally answered the questions as bluntly as they were delivered, defending his positions.
Despite the doubts of the ideologists of the new right, most of whom are al ready committed to Reagan or Congress man Philip Crane, Connally's positions are generally conservative. He favors the SALT II treaty only if considerable new money is allocated for cruise missiles and other weapons, advocates a federal tax cut of $50 billion to $100 billion, opposes national health insurance, pushes strongly for nuclear power and the loosening of pollution laws to allow more use of coal, favors deregulation of oil with a provision that profits be plowed back to in crease production, and opposes gun control. His coup in luring right-wing Fund Raiser Richard Viguerie away from the Crane campaign has been important not so much for the money Viguerie might bring in as for the alliance Viguerie has with conservatives.
Some say the reason Connally so enjoys "deep rugs and rich people," as one Connally watcher put it, is that he was born so poor. Not that he tries to hide his hardscrabble heritage; indeed, he revels in recalling his barefoot days behind a plow and reading by a kerosene lamp. He was the fourth of eight children born to John Bowden Connally and Lela Wright.
The senior Connally, a tall and lean man with strongly etched features that he passed on to his son, was a tenant farmer, a butcher, a barber, a bus driver. He finally realized his dream of owning the land he worked by buying, when the younger Connally was in high school, a 1,000-acre ranch outside Floresville, a tiny crossroads town 30 miles southeast of San Antonio.
Connally's father was a strong influence on him. "It was best not to cross him, especially when he was drinking," recalls the son, who stays away from hard liquor, "but he had a great sense of fairness." He once took a horsewhip to a group of boys who had made a practice of beating up his eldest son. "You go home and let your fathers know who did this to you," he said, "because if it happens again, I'll do the same to them." Young Johnnie's goals back then were to be a cowboy, a lawyer and a preacher; one Christmas he asked for a gun, a rope and a Bible.
At the University of Texas he became involved in the Curtain Club, a drama organization. One of the program notes describes the young actor: "His ambition is to be critic-at-large of things-as-they-are." For a production of Ferenc Molnar's Liliom, in which he played opposite Eli Wallach, the prompter was Idanell Brill, who was to become Bluebonnet Belle, Queen of the Texas Relays, University of Texas Sweetheart and later Connally's wife Nellie.
He was becoming more and more interested in politics. The student body was divided between the Greek social fraternity members and the poorer students, who were known as barbs (for barbarians). Connally managed a tough and successful battle to become one of the first barb presidents of the student assembly. He was also a campus salesman for Beech-Nut chewing gum.
He stuffed envelopes for a young politician making his first bid for Congress --Lyndon Johnson. He followed to Washington as one of Johnson's congressional aides. His marriage to Nellie in 1940 was a double bonding, for by asking Johnson to serve as his best man, Connally sealed a Faulknerian love-hate link between the two proud Texas politicians--Johnson the admiring but often jealous mentor, Connally the headstrong protege. Connally would end up working on most of Johnson's subsequent campaigns. But the tempestuous quality of that relationship appeared as early as 1941, when Connally, after arguing over whether to make Johnson's kidney stone problem public, was banished from L.B.J.'s ranch like Absalom from the House of David.
During World War II, Connally served in the South Pacific as group combat information officer with the Navy on the aircraft carriers Essex and Bennington, rising to the rank of Lt. Commander. Retired Admiral David McDonald, former Chief of Naval Operations, was serving with Connally when the Essex was attacked by a kamikaze pilot. Recalls McDonald: "When you see a man operate under the pressure we had, night and day, sometimes 72 hours straight, you get an idea of his character and stamina. That guy had it."
The war over, Connally renewed his association with Johnson, who helped him with ten other men back from the war buy an Austin radio station, named KVET for the veterans who ran it. In 1948 Connally returned the favor by managing the Senate race that earned Johnson the ironic sobriquet "Landslide Lyndon." After the preliminary count showed Johnson trailing, a "corrected vote" was reported in south Texas. The results gave 202 additional votes for Johnson and one more vote for his opponent, enabling Johnson to win by a "landslide" of 87 votes. Once again Connally followed his patron to Washington. Johnson called him "my boy John," but he was also adopted by his mentor's own mentor, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, the master of backstage maneuvering.
Connally, not a man for the shadows, soon hankered after a political career of his own. "But Nellie and I decided," he recalls, "that I shouldn't run for anything until we had financial independence." For what he calls his "moneymaking years," Connally found another successful man to hitch onto, Oil Baron Sid W. Richardson, whose fortune in the '40s was estimated at more than $150 million. In return for acting as his troubleshooter, Connally got help from Richardson to put together some lucrative deals of his own, and Connally took to the business the way a Texas steer takes to Bermuda grass. When Richardson died in 1959, Connally was named a co-executor of the estate. His fee: $750,000. For tax purposes, Connally received the amount spread over a decade, which led to charges that he was secretly accepting $75,000 a year during 1963-69, when he was Texas Governor. Responds Connally: "It was not a secret. The whole thing was brought up at my [Secretary of] Navy confirmation hearings in 1961." The transcript shows that he did indeed inform the committee that fees were still owed to him, but he says that he was not required to tell about the deferred payment plan. There was nothing illegal about this arrangement.
In 1960, while managing Johnson's unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Connally contended that John Kennedy was suffering from Addison's disease, a charge that Kennedy Aide Pierre Salinger described as "far beyond the latitude of fair play, even in the rough-and-tumble of convention politics." Nevertheless, at the urging of Rayburn and Johnson, Connally was made Secretary of the Navy in the new Kennedy Administration. He threw himself into the job, but he soon showed signs of restlessness with day-to-day administration. He quit in 1961 to go back to Texas and run for Governor.
His six years in Austin showed that he was no political clone of Lyndon Johnson. Both fiscally and socially, he was more conservative. Says Hank Brown, who then headed the state AFL-CIO: "I've seen him stand and talk about industrial safety, then nothing happened. He fought the minimum wage, he lowered taxes on banks, he lowered taxes on business, and he raised the sales tax." He both doubled state spending and raised the budget surplus--and he built a political machine that lasted a decade. His administration was untainted by scandal. And though many of his views displeased minority leaders, Congressman Gonzalez notes: "I was never able to get any other Governor to appoint as many blacks and Hispanics to high positions.";
But even his friends admit that he was often an indifferent administrator, bored by the daily routine of office. His political popularity was only assured after he was struck by the gunfire that killed John Kennedy.
Connally's first advice when Johnson became President was that he should set about ridding his Administration of Kennedy loyalists. Said he: "They think you're a hillbilly, a hillbilly from the hill country, and they'll never accept you." When he pressed the advice, Johnson only stared at him coldly. Connally never followed Johnson's tactic of trying to win the love of his enemies. In retrospect he says: "They made his life miserable. He wasted four years trying to win them over."
Connally first publicly broke with his political godfather when he openly opposed Johnson's Public Accommodations Law, which outlawed racial discrimination in hotels, restaurants and other public places. He also refused to spend some of Johnson's pet poverty program funds allocated to Texas. The wires between the White House and the Austin statehouse hummed. Johnson at one point badly needed Connally's support for a project but the Governor would not talk to him; the President phoned a startled Congressman Gonzalez at midnight and asked him to persuade the prodigal protegefor him.
But their feuds were family quarrels; they remained cronies through it all. In October 1967 George Christian called upon Connally in Texas and told him that Johnson had secretly decided not to run for another term. Lady Bird Johnson was the only other person to know. They prepared a draft of a withdrawal announcement for the January 1968 State of the Union message, but Connally thought the timing was inappropriate and Johnson held back. When the announcement came in March, Johnson confided immediately to Connally that he regretted the move, and continued to look for ways to retain his office. On the Tuesday of the week of the Democratic convention, Johnson sent Connally to see Hubert Humphrey. Connally warned the Vice President not to break with Johnson over the Viet Nam War, or he would begin a draft-Johnson movement at the following day's roll call.
Humphrey's eyes rilled with tears. "I never imagined a candidate for President could be talked to like that," says one man who heard Connally on that occasion.
Connally campaigned in Texas for Humphrey in that 1968 campaign, but he first played the other side, helping Nixon raise money from some of his state's oil and gas millionaires. Nixon reciprocated by asking him to be Secretary of Defense and later Secretary of the Treasury. Both offers Connally refused, preferring his lucrative Texas law practice (his income averages nearly $500,000 per year). But in December 1970, when the Treasury post was offered again, Connally accepted. Nixon cared relatively little for economics, and he was in awe of Connally's self-assurance, so he gave the Treasury Secretary a lot of leeway in which to operate. Connally's actions were gruff and abrasive, as if he were playing in a high-stakes poker game, and he often offended foreign finance ministers. But he was able to negotiate a much needed realignment of currencies, devaluing the dollar by 7.9% the year he took office. He also formulated and enforced the Administration's unsuccessful wage and price controls, a policy he now says was mistaken. Not one content to be minding only his own business, he gave Nixon advice on a broad range of issues, stepping on the toes of a few Cabinet colleagues and Nixon advisers. When he left after 15 months, partly in frustration with the President's protective staff, Commerce Secretary Peter Peterson said, "The State Department is having a going-away party; it's now in its 32nd hour." Says New York Financier Felix Rohatyn: "I think he has a rather confrontationist attitude. I don't think that's a viable proposition any more."
Connally headed the Democrats for Nixon in 1972 and returned to Washington during the Watergate crisis for 2% months as a presidential adviser. But it was not until 1973, soon after the death of the Texas politician who first brought him to Washington, that he finally switched parties. One political confidant says Connally joined the Cabinet and later became a Republican because Nixon had promised to help him become President. Muses Connally: "Nixon said a lot of things to me. He told me he'd never make Kissinger Secretary of State. I knew what to believe and what not to."
After departing Washington for his ranch and returning as a partner with his Houston firm, Vinson & Elkins, he joined the boards of six major corporations, where he gained the contacts that have made him the first choice of the country's business managers. Says Dr Pepper Co. Chairman W.W. ("Foots") Clements: "He has a very incisive mind. He understands a problem and solution quickly."
For the 1980 presidential race, Connally's strategy is to make at least a respectable showing in the first few contests. In Iowa, which begins selecting delegates in January, Reagan has much stronger grass-roots support, and George Bush has the backing of many of the state's Republican leaders (a solid 534 prominent activists announced support of him last week). Connally did not even open an office there until last month, and because of the precinct caucus system, a good organization, which Reagan and Bush have, is crucial. His organizational strength has also been unimpressive in New Hampshire, where Reagan is so far ahead that he's practically out of everyone's sight.
In March, however, Connally hopes to leap ahead with big victories in Florida and Illinois, thinking he can there eliminate his conservative challenger from California. "If I can nick Reagan," he says, "he will come down fast."
Reagan is now rated as the front runner in Florida, but Connally will take advantage of his burgeoning bankroll and put a large part of it into that race.
(He has been stumping recently for support in Florida's November party convention, which will conduct a nonbinding "beauty contest," and two weeks ago, he was able to run about even with Reagan in one of the first county gatherings.) In Illinois, party leaders in both houses of the legislature, the state G.O.P. finance committee chairman and most G.O.P. state central committeemen have signed on for the Connally campaign.
Governor James Thompson is being cultivated and allowed to envision himself as a potential Vice President. In April's Wisconsin and Pennsylvania primaries, Connally hopes to take on either Bush or Howard Baker, whichever is still standing.
Connally has proved to be a phenomenal fund raiser, bringing in $2.2 million in the first half of this year, compared with Crane's $1.7 million, Bush's $1.5 million, Reagan's $1.4 million, and Baker's $643,000. His string of lavish money-raising fetes--usually gatherings of a wealthy handful at stately homes from Newport to Easthampton to Orange County, Calif, bring in up to $1,000 per guest, the legal maximum.
But he can also excite rank-and-file donors. Said Cook County Republican Leader Sharon Sharp: ";After you hear Connally, you want to run up and give him a check." Candidate Robert Dole lamented recently to a meeting of his Massachusetts supporters: "When John Connally comes to Boston, he takes out a vacuum cleaner and sucks up all the money."
Connally hopes his forceful style will help him cut across ideological lines and win support from blacks and workers who have opposed him in the past. At a building trades convention in New Jersey this summer, his rousing speech had union members cheering. Labor leaders passed the word to hold back on providing him many more such forums. He campaigned last month in black and ethnic neighborhoods of Providence, and has hired a Chicago firm to devise a strategy to lure black votes.
Connally is a restless man, quick to size up a situation and quick to grow bored with it. He is compulsive and meticulous, prone to polish his shiny shoes with a tissue or to straighten pictures on the wall. Despite an easy and cordial manner, he has a strong sense of privacy, always keeping a certain distance. "I pick my friends carefully," he says, "watching them for a long time before I commit. I'm aloof, I know that. I have very few close friends." Connally's temper is sharp, his sense of loyalty demanding. He has barely spoken to Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen Jr., long a close friend, after Bentsen did not testify as a character witness in the milk trial.
Every good ole Texas boy dreams of having cattle, money and power. As he sits in front of the stately stone main house on his 10,000-acre ranch, Picosa, near his birthplace, with cicadas chirping hi the spotlighted trees and the lush coastal Bermuda grass, the last of these desires seems to be the only one unfulfilled. Near by is a ring for his quarter horses and another ring for showing his cattle. "I think I've got the finest herd of young bulls hi the country," the master breeder proudly boasts of his shiny red Santa Gertrudis cattle. He and Nellie have three children and seven grandchildren.* They are avid antique collectors, and their home, furnished partly from their travels and partly from carefully following estate auctions, contains screens from Bah', Persian carpets, eleven hand-carved doors, a marble dining room floor from a London mansion, plus a wide collection of Southwestern American art.
Squinting his eyes narrow like a trail scout contemplating the next set of hills, ConnaUy considers his ride away from these surroundings to pursue the presidency. Says he: "Very few people know how to handle power, how to keep it from overcoming them. Other people become so obsequious." To him, weak leadership portends anarchy, and he sees that in the Carter Administration. Ted Kennedy, he predicts, will be his opponent, pitting two forceful and persuasive politicians against each other. Neither of them is an ideologue, but they offer a clear difference in philosophy. "For years I've thought we'd run against each other," he says. "I didn't know when or why, but I've just thought it would happen."
In the morality campaign of 1976, a Connally candidacy would have been almost unthinkable. But the pendulum of American political preferences seems always swinging, moving from a fear of an imperial leader to a fear of a weak one, from a desire for a moral President to a desire for a shrewd horse trader. So, as Johnson and Nixon begat Carter, now Carter could just conceivably beget John Connaly, if the horse-trading rancher can satisfy skeptical Americans that his steed is white and he will never come home with a spavined and one-eyed nag. -
*His eldest daughter Kathleen, whom he fondly called Kay-Kay, was killed when her young husband came home one night and found her threatening suicide with a shotgun. When he tried to take it from her, the weapon went off. The death was ruled accidental.
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