Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America (46 page)

Winning primaries had certainly been just the tonic Reagan's fundraising operation needed. New reports showed that he had taken in $4.3 million in February, besting Carter by almost $2 million. Bush had raised an impressive $2.8 million in February, but his fundraising tailed off badly in March.
⁷⁰

Politicos were now focused on the all-important Wisconsin primary. With its progressive tradition and allowance for crossover voting, no one was sure how it would play out. Kennedy was competing for liberals from both parties. So was Anderson. Reagan was competing for conservatives from both parties, struggling with Carter for the votes of conservative Democrats. Bush was counting on the newly resurgent Kennedy to pull liberal votes away from Anderson and drain his support in the state.

Ronald Reagan had not dispatched George Bush from the race but he was still turning his attention toward Jimmy Carter. His standard stump speech had become a bill of particulars against the president. He scored Carter, for example, on his statement several years earlier that America was “now free of that inordinate fear of Communism.”
⁷¹
Reagan also offered solutions for what ailed America. He was honing his revolutionary economic message, complete with tax cuts for American taxpayers, cuts in federal spending and regulations, a reduction in inflation and interest rates—and prosperity for all.

Carter and Reagan were as different as night and day, and their respective approaches to economics were no exception. Reagan wanted the government out of the economy and Carter wanted it in. Reagan spoke of limitless horizons and Carter talked about limited futures. Carter said there was little a president could do to rescue the American economy. Reagan said take the yoke of government off the people and they will save the economy themselves. Carter wanted people to trust him. Reagan told Americans, “Don't trust me, trust yourself.” Unfortunately
for Carter, he was slowly becoming the Herbert Hoover of 1980 and Reagan was being cast as his political hero, FDR.

In 1932 the incumbent, Hoover, said that little could be done to stave off the Great Depression, while Roosevelt, the challenger, said that everything must be done to alleviate the plight of the American people. Under Reagan's emerging leadership, the GOP was becoming the party of hope. The role reversal of the candidates and the parties was astonishing.

Reagan was on the verge of making the GOP the party of the future.

“
Reagan has the same image as these people have of themselves.
”

R
onald Reagan headed for Milwaukee's South Side, where he gave a rousing speech in Serb Hall. Speaking at this ethnic Mecca had been a rite of passage for Democratic presidential candidates over many years but verboten for nearly all Republicans. That is, until Reagan. The joint was packed to the gills, the cold beer was only fifty cents, and the crowd was rockin' with Ronnie.

This section of Milwaukee was 100 percent Democratic, 100 percent Catholic, yet Reagan wowed 'em that night. It was on the eve of the Wisconsin primary, and although the phrase “Reagan Democrat” had not yet been coined, everybody was coming to understand the Gipper's appeal with these flag-waving Americans. A young Democrat, Robert Ponasik, stood on a chair furiously waving a handmade sign that proclaimed, “Cross Over for Reagan.”
¹
Of the reaction to Reagan in Serb Hall, Lynn Sherr of ABC reported, “In judging from the way they showed up at a long-time Democratic meeting hall … a large number of blue-collar voters could go for Reagan.”
²

The white pages of the Milwaukee phone book were jammed with listings of people whose last names looked as if they'd gone through a Mixmaster. These were immigrants and first- and second-generation Serbs, Poles, Czechs, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, and others who had escaped Stalin or Hitler and consequently were intensely anti-Communist and antisocialist. They were not the least bit interested in being dependent upon government. These Slavic-Americans were fiercely self-reliant and deeply patriotic. They loved America and many had already proven it in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Serb Hall was adorned with the names of ethnic Serbs who had fought and died for America.

There were no “fortunate sons” in these neighborhoods, and even if given the chance to avoid the military draft by joining the National Guard or gaining a college deferment, they would have scoffed. They had to go and fight or else their fathers would have knocked them through a wall.

These ethnics were Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, and as a matter of course intensely pro-life. They settled in the big and small cities of America: Youngstown and Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo and Cortland, New York; and Milwaukee, where there was work and where the local political machines were reliably Democratic. The scions of the Republican Party didn't want these people with funny last names traipsing around their country clubs and private estates. Heavens to Betsy! These people drank cheap beer and ate kielbasa! Millions of Slavs who by their outlook if not their culture could or should have been Republicans were not, largely because the snobby Republicans didn't want them.

So they became Democrats, voting for Adlai Stevenson, LBJ, and in 1968, “Happy Warrior” Hubert Humphrey, whom they especially adored. In many of those Slavic Catholic homes, in a place of honor over the mantel were photos of their two heroes: John F. Kennedy and the pope. Many even supported George McGovern over the commie-bashing Richard Nixon in 1972.

In the 1960s and even earlier, the shrinking Republican Party in some northeastern and midwestern states had changed course and begun to open their primaries to Democrats and independents, hoping that doing so would make the practice of voting Republican more comfortable for the outsiders. Democrats responded in kind, allowing Republicans to vote in their primaries. In 1976, almost all the states Reagan won over Ford were with the help of Democrats crossing over to vote for him. No one really took notice of the phenomenon at the time, except some Ford supporters who complained vehemently that these people shouldn't be allowed in the front door of the GOP. A political party with only 18 percent support—falling apart at the seams—was complaining about people who wanted to come in to vote for Reagan.

Reagan spoke to these urban, ethnic Democrats in a way that no other politician had since JFK. He talked about community, responsibility, privacy, patriotism, the evils of Communism, and their children's future. Although Reagan was Protestant, his father had been Roman Catholic and he had inculcated in his young son a parish perspective. As an adult campaigner, the Gipper still preferred the pronouns “us” and “we” over “me” and “I,” and these voters loved him for it. He made them feel good about themselves and, by extension, America. “Reagan has a personal following all his own,” noted
Time
magazine.
³

One member of that following was Muriel Coleman, who was organizing Wisconsin for Reagan. She'd been working in the Reagan scheduling office in Los
Angeles, but was detailed to her native Wisconsin. She was one of many young conservatives who had walked their own separate path to Reagan. In 1967, an old beau had been killed in South Vietnam. At his military burial, she vowed to make it her life's goal to fight Communism however she could. She found her means to do so in conservative organizations and in Reagan's 1976 and 1980 campaigns. Coleman adored Reagan. When her father died, she got a handwritten letter from her hero. Later in Madison, as they were going to the airport in the back of a car, Coleman gave Reagan a thank-you note and suggested he read it on the plane. Reagan replied, “Well, can't I read it now?” Taken aback, she told him of course. Reagan read it and then reached for her hand. Their eyes brimmed with tears as they both thought about fathers.
⁴

Later in the year, Coleman became an elector to the Electoral College. In 1981, she saw Reagan at the White House and told him she'd had the pleasure of voting for him three times in 1980, without once breaking the law. Reagan laughed with delight.
⁵
Working with Coleman was Mike Grebe, a low-key but effective attorney in Milwaukee, and Joni Jackson, another longtime conservative activist in the Badger State. At one rally, the great ballplayer Sal Bando of the Brewers introduced Reagan.
⁶

Restless Democrats in Wisconsin and elsewhere were ripe for Reagan's picking. By 1980 the fundamentals of America's economy and society had radically changed. Well-paying manufacturing jobs that allowed unskilled and semiskilled workers to enter the middle class had mostly dried up. Union membership was dwindling and the upheavals of the 1960s had left many traditional blue-collar Democrats alienated from society and from their party's intellectual elite. These reflexive Democrats in the heartland who had simply inherited their Democratic affiliation were tired of the party taking them for granted. Reagan, a product of the Great Depression himself, resonated with these voters on a profound, emotional level. In politics, timing is everything. A confluence of political and cultural factors ensured that, in this electoral season of discontent, Reagan's time had come.

The
Washington Post
assembled a focus group of voters in Albany, New York, to watch the television commercials of all the candidates. When the group viewed George Bush's commercials and heard the tagline, “A president we won't have to train,” they broke out in laughter.
⁷
As for Reagan, the
Post
discovered an astonishing fact: the Gipper's commercials were more popular with Democrats than they were with Republicans. “Reagan's support among conservative, blue-collar Democrats has been one of the most underreported phenomena of the 1980 presidential race,” the
Post
noted.
⁸
Reagan was pro–organized labor. He had proudly proclaimed in his autobiography,
Where's the Rest of Me?
, that he was a “rabid union man.”
⁹

Journalists were truly amazed at how lifetime urban Democrats were going bonkers for Reagan, and they began to speculate that Reagan was no Goldwater. He could not only keep his base of motivated Republicans, he could invade Jimmy Carter's base of traditional Democrats as well. Reagan's Milwaukee coordinator, Louis Collison, grasped the phenomenon immediately: “Reagan has the same image as these people have of themselves.”
¹⁰

Democrats at the grassroots were frustrated with the economy and the world situation. They believed that their party had become a tool of special interests. Reagan was “offering them a new home,” as Jack Germond and Jules Witcover wrote.
¹¹
This remarkable turn of events was noted in the White House. Carter's men recognized how well Reagan had done with Democratic crossover voters in Illinois, and suddenly they weren't so sure that they would knock the stuffing out of him. “To dismiss Ronald Reagan as a right-wing nut would be a very serious error—for us or anybody else,” one Carter aide admitted.
¹²
At the end of March, Carter and Reagan were in a national dead heat, 45–44 percent, according to Gallup.
¹³
Reagan was getting a lot of Democrats, because there weren't that many Republicans around, certainly not almost half the country.

For three years, Jimmy Carter had been waiting to catch Br'er Reagan. It looked as if Carter the fox had indeed caught what he wanted: the Reagan rabbit. Only now, would he throw Reagan into the briar patch, just where Reagan wanted to be?

B
EFORE
C
ARTER COULD FOCUS
on halting Reagan's momentum, he needed to stop the newly resurgent Ted Kennedy. The president stepped up his efforts in Wisconsin. More than 350,000 Democrats received get-out-the-vote phone calls from the Carter campaign, and Carter's son Chip, his wife Rosalynn, and Vice President Walter Mondale all campaigned aggressively there.
¹⁴
Dozens of “vacationing” White House aides descended upon the state to stave off Kennedy, and new federal sewer construction grants were suddenly announced for Wisconsin.

Pat Caddell conceded that his polling showed the race closing there and Carter, in an interview for the
Milwaukee Journal
, savaged Kennedy just one day before the primary, accusing him of “cowardice and demagoguery.”
¹⁵
Carter knew he was in trouble when Mondale reported back that while he was speaking at a high school in La Crosse, the kids laughed and mocked him when he mentioned the president by name.
¹⁶

In the Milwaukee Journal poll, Kennedy had been behind Carter by a demoralizing margin of 61–11 percent—until New York and Connecticut, that is.
¹⁷
Kennedy was forced to concede that he could not beat Carter in the upcoming Kansas primary, so he focused on Wisconsin and other states. He should have looked more closely at the Sunflower State. Farmers were increasingly angry with Carter, and defense cutbacks had resulted in unemployment in big airplane manufacturing plants in Wichita.

Kennedy had Pat Lucey on his side in Wisconsin. Lucey had been lieutenant governor in the 1960s and a popular governor in the 1970s. He was one of the most charming and gracious men in politics, with friends on both sides. Lucey had engineered John Kennedy's upset over Hubert Humphrey in Wisconsin in 1960, aided by his sidekick, the shadowy Paul Corbin. He hoped to do it again for Jack's youngest brother. The United Auto Workers had endorsed Carter, but that was it—none of the usual phone calls, organization, and graveyard voting that labor often did to help favored candidates.
¹⁸

Kennedy decided to play the “Badger Game” in the Badger State. Originally, four days of campaigning had been planned, but it was then announced that this had been scaled back to one day. He was hoping to lower his expectations in Wisconsin, but he also realized that John Anderson might suck a lot of liberal Democrats into the GOP primary. Kennedy reasoned that if he performed poorly, he had an excuse, and if he beat expectations, then he would win the psychological day.