GleamBlog

Ronald Reagan, trailing President Gerald Ford in delegates leading up to the 1976 Republican National Convention, decided to make a high-risk move in his quest for the presidential nomination: He picked a liberal running mate.

Yes, that’s right — the man whose name is synonymous with conservatism sought to balance his ticket by choosing Sen. Richard Schweiker, a liberal Republican from Pennsylvania. The Reagan campaign hoped the move would help win delegates from the state, make him more attractive to liberals and moderates at the convention in Kansas City, Mo., and ultimately improve his odds in the general election against Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter.

“I am convinced that this is a ticket behind which all Republicans can unite and one which will lead our party to victory in November,” Reagan said at a July 26, 1976, news conference announcing the selection.

Advertisement

It’s the kind of political calculation that would be almost unfathomable for today’s Republicans, especially presumptive nominee Donald Trump, whose is expected to name one of several conservative loyalists as his running mate ahead of his party’s convention next week.

A half-century ago, Reagan’s gambit backfired spectacularly.

“My reaction is surprise, shock, disappointment and disgust,” James A. Stein, an uncommitted Republican Pennsylvania delegate, said after Reagan announced his pick. “When Ronald Reagan met with the Pennsylvania delegation on July 15, he told me he would not consider a political running mate who was not of his political philosophy. I took him at his word.”

Reagan had consistently said throughout the campaign that he wouldn’t make a “cynical” bid to balance the ticket. In fact, Reagan’s conservative challenge to Ford had prompted the president to dump his own liberal vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, as his ’76 running mate to appease conservatives.

Advertisement

Just two weeks before the Schweiker pick, Time magazine had asked Reagan: “What if President Ford were to pick a liberal Northerner as his running mate?”

“It would be a foolish mistake,” Reagan replied. “Ford would lose the South. And a lot of Republicans might not work for him.”

Time called the Schweiker selection “one of the most astonishing and bizarre turnabouts in a campaign full of surprises” and reported that Ford was among those caught off guard. “I thought someone was pulling my leg,” he said. The magazine quoted an unnamed Ford assistant as saying he felt sorry for Reagan, adding, “There was no way he could catch up. He had to roll the dice.”

“Conservatives were furious,” Ben Bradford, host of the podcast “Landslide,” about the 1976 GOP primary race, said in an interview. Bradford said there was perhaps some logic to making Reagan look more reasonable to general-election voters, had he gotten that far.

Advertisement

“But the other thing is you have to remember that most of the country has no idea who Schweiker is,” he noted.

The Washington Post reported at the time that Schweiker, who had previously backed Ford for president, had one of the most liberal voting records of any senator. “His selection was counted on by Reagan strategists to shore up the former California governor’s lagging campaign in the Northeast,” wrote White House correspondent Lou Cannon, who went on to write biographies of Reagan.

In 1975, Schweiker had received an 89 percent rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action — nearly as high as the score of Carter’s running mate, Walter Mondale — and a 100 percent rating from the AFL-CIO. He received an 8 percent rating from the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action.

Advertisement

And he had told the Los Angeles Times a few months earlier that Reagan would be a disastrous nominee for the party. “There is no question but that if Reagan is nominated, it would narrow our base and restrict our party membership,” he said in February 1976. Many others shared that opinion, viewing Reagan as too conservative to be a mainstream party’s nominee.

In July, Schweiker said he agreed to be Reagan’s running mate because he thought it was the best way to unite the Republican Party. While acknowledging policy differences with Reagan, he said, “We make no apologies. We think it’s the only way to win in November.”

Schweiker also recalled being “stunned and shocked” when campaign strategists said they had recommended him to Reagan as his running mate.

He wasn’t alone.

Carter called Schweiker “a good man, but I’m surprised Governor Reagan this early is choosing a running mate, and I’m a little surprised that Senator Schweiker would be it.”

Advertisement

Ford had the advantage of being the sitting president, but he hadn’t been elected to the presidency or even the vice presidency, the first time that had happened in U.S. history. President Richard M. Nixon had appointed Ford, then the House minority leader, to replace Vice President Spiro Agnew, who resigned in 1973. Less than a year later, Ford became president following Nixon’s resignation during the Watergate scandal.

Neither Reagan nor Ford had a majority of delegates after the primaries, so delegates at the convention were tasked with choosing a nominee.

Reagan’s chief campaign strategist, John P. Sears, said the day after Schweiker’s selection that the campaign thought it best “to take the heat from the conservatives” ahead of the convention rather than get into a running-mate fight with them at the convention.

Advertisement

Reagan telephoned conservatives in key states to assure them that his choice of running mate did not amount to selling out. He “wanted to get that reaction out of the way now because the political reality is that Senator Schweiker can help us beat Carter in the fall,” Sears insisted, adding, “We knew we’d take some heat, but we had to face the reality that the Eastern wing might walk away from a Reagan nomination, making the nomination worthless.”

In the end, Schweiker didn’t wind up persuading delegates to jump to Reagan.

“Reagan’s wild gamble in naming Schweiker was couched in lofty terms of unifying the party for victory in November, but it was a much more naked move than that,” Time reported. “His search for delegates had been stalled, and Ford was making inroads in delegations from Hawaii to Mississippi. … By the end of a tumultuous week, it was clear that the last-gasp Reagan strategy had failed.”

Advertisement

In a final Hail Mary at the convention, the Reagan campaign proposed a rule requiring that presidential candidates name their running mates ahead of the convention roll call, hoping to squeeze Ford into choosing an unpopular No. 2. But delegates rejected the proposal, signaling the end of Reagan’s bid.

Still, Reagan had laid the groundwork for his successful 1980 campaign, and hastened the party’s rightward shift. By 1980, liberal and moderate Republicans were “dwindling,” said Bradford, the “Landslide” host.

One of the Reagan campaign’s aims in picking Schweiker was to knock down the idea that Ford would choose Reagan himself as a running mate. Sears, the Reagan campaign strategist, said the Schweiker pick “creates a few problems for the president. He's been saying he would probably be running with Ronald Reagan no matter how many times our man said he would not accept the job. Ford now is in a position where he must tell everyone who his running mate will be and not hide behind the illusion of Reagan being on his ticket.”

Advertisement

Still, news stories at the time reported that GOP professionals expected Ford to pick Reagan, who firmly pushed back on that narrative. “He doesn’t have to worry,” Reagan said. “I absolutely will never take that job.”

In the end, Ford selected Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas as his running mate. They lost a close election to Carter and Mondale.

Four years later, after Reagan won the New Hampshire primary, Ford dismissed his former rival’s chances, telling the New York Times of “growing sentiment that Governor Reagan cannot win the election.” Ford “cautiously invited the Republican Party to ask him to run again for president,” the Times reported.

But that didn’t happen, and at the 1980 convention, the running-mate dynamics between the two rivals were reversed: Reagan asked Ford to be his No. 2. Their representatives tried to work out a deal that would have given Ford more authority than a typical vice president. But the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement.

Reagan turned instead to George H.W. Bush. Bush was not a liberal but rather represented the establishment wing of the party.

“Reagan basically needed to convince people that he wasn’t a crazy extremist,” Bradford said.

Ford’s prediction for the 1980 election proved to be way off: Reagan beat Carter in a landslide. And to lead his Department of Health and Human Services, Reagan appointed Schweiker.

During his presidency, Reagan enacted significant welfare cuts, but Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) credited Schweiker with minimizing their impact.

“As secretary of health and human services he has too often been a lonely voice of compassion and humanity,” Kennedy said in 1983, when Schweiker resigned his post. “The country may never know how much greater the damage to social programs would have been without Dick Schweiker as secretary.”

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLWqv9OoqbJnYmV%2FdXuPcGZqaV%2BnvK%2Bty51kq52RnK6vedGupaehnpx6rq3TnmSsm5issqq3xKtkraqlor1w