Reagan vs. Bush

Human Events, Dec 27, 2004 by Gizzi, John

"The National Republican Congressional Committee had helped me in 1976, and I also had the support of HUMAN EVENTS," beamed Reese, now 75, when I reached him at his Odessa home. "It was easy for them to convince me to run again in 1978, particularly since Mahon had decided to retire."

The 31-year-old Bush had announced his intention to run before Reese. Raised in Midland until his family moved to Houston while he was a teenager, Bush had gone on to Yale and Harvard Business School, worked in Republican Senate campaigns in Florida and Alabama, and then relocated to Midland after his Air National Guard stint was completed in the early 1970s. New to the oil business in Midland, Bush was nonetheless from the county with the largest GOP base in the 19th District and Reese was not.

"At the Petroleum Club in Midland," James Moore and Wayne Slater wrote in their biography of Karl Rove, "everybody was for young George." More significantly, his father's voluminous Christmas card list helped to get money flowing into George W.'s campaign: "Mrs. Douglas MacArthur, former CBS President Frank Shakespeare, former Ambassador to the Court of St. James Anne Armstrong, Donald Rumseld, auto executives from Detroit, oil tycoons from Houston, the whole blue-chip list was digging into its pockets and dumping money into a West Texas district," wrote Moore and Slater.

With attractive wife Laura stumping hard for her husband and the campaign managed by younger brother Neil, Bush began breathing down the neck of presumed front-runner Reese. Moreover, the elder Bush dispatched his political operative Karl Rove to advise his son's campaign. As Reese recalled, "I realized that it was going to take a lot of work to overcome the money and the prestige that could be marshaled against me."

Reese contacted Lyn Nofziger, head of Reagan's political action committee, Citizens for the Republic. "I had heard good things about Jim," Nofziger told me, "so I sent him $1,000 [from CFTR]. This apparently created a stir in Texas because shortly thereafter, Bill Clements [who was running for governor of Texas] and his wife Rita came to see Reagan at his home in Pacific Palisades. Reagan asked me to be there. At one point, Clements [a Bush family friend and finance chairman of the elder Bush's first Senate race in 1964] brought up the donation to Reese and told Reagan, 'You should give another $1,000 to George W. Bush.' I said, 'Mr. Clements, we don't do business that way.' Nothing more was said about it."

Reagan himself came to Abilene, Tex., to deliver a speech in the spring of 1978 and Reese met him there. Reese recalled, "I met with Reagan and two supporters, Mike Deaver [who traveled with Reagan during speaking dates] and Ernie Angelo [Texas Republican National Committeeman and co-chairman of Reagan's 1976 state campaign, but also a friend of the elder Bush from Midland]. When I asked for his help, the two of them warned that, for all kinds of reasons, he should not become involved in a contested primary."

Reagan politely listened to all three of the others in the room. "Then he asked me what he could do to help," Reese said. "I told him that I needed his public endorsement. He agreed."

A short time later, Reagan was in Amarillo. Reese met him there and they filmed a 30-second spot, with the Calif ornian's hand on his shoulder.

Reese carried 16 of the 17 counties in the primary, but Bush's strong showing in Midland County gave him a lead of 47% to 42%, with the remainder going to retired U.S. Air Force officer Joe Hickox. In the run-off, Reese again topped the race in 16 counties, but Bush snatched the nomination once the absentee ballots from Midland came in.

The easy winner of the Democratic nomination was state Sen. Kent Hance, also a conservative. "Democrats have trouble realizing this, but when they nominate a conservative in Texas, he will always beat a Republican," said Hance, who lost a primary bid for the Senate in 1984 to liberal Lloyd Doggett (now a U.S. House member himself) and subsequently became a Republican.

Would Reese have beaten Hance 'had he overcome Bush? "I don't know," Hance told me, "but I'm sure my margin would not have been 54 to 46."

Perhaps the most poignant post-mortem on the '78 race came from Karl Rove, who told reporters that the young Bush had "a bright future in politics, but it's not out here."