Ronald Reagan enters presidential race: Nov. 20, 1975
On this day in 1975, Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, challenging Gerald Ford, who had moved into the White House in August 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned.
Reagan’s supporters had launched an abortive try for the nomination in 1968. But the GOP delegates, meeting in Miami, decisively swung behind Nixon, rejecting the then-California governor as well as New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
His bid for the 1976 nomination dug deeper roots. Reagan established himself as the favorite candidate of Republican conservatives who viewed Ford as too moderate. Like-minded groups such as the American Conservative Union joined his cause.
John Sears, Reagan’s campaign manager, devised what he thought would be a winning strategy. It called for winning a few early primaries to dent Ford’s momentum. Nevertheless, initially it appeared as though Ford would easily win the GOP nomination.
When the voting began, Ford narrowly defeated Reagan in the New Hampshire primary, but then proceeded to beat Reagan in the Florida and Illinois primaries by comfortable margins. By the time of the North Carolina primary in March 1976, Reagan’s campaign treasury was nearly spent; it was widely believed that yet another defeat would force Reagan to quit the race.
However, assisted by the political organization of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), Reagan upset Ford in North Carolina and then proceeded to win a string of states, including Texas, for which he carried all 24 congressional districts and won all 96 delegates at stake in the state’s first binding primary. Ford bounced back to win in his native Michigan, and from there the two candidates engaged in an increasingly bitter contest for delegates. Reagan won more states. But Ford won more popular votes: 5,529,899 to 4,760,222 for Reagan.
By the time the Republican Convention opened in August 1976 in Kansas City, Missouri, the race remained unsettled. In a last-minute maneuver, Reagan reached out to the party’s moderate wing, announcing that he had chosen Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate. The gamble may have backfired: Ford prevailed — albeit narrowly — on the first ballot, with 1,187 delegate votes to Reagan’s 1,070. In November, Ford went on to lose the 1976 presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.
In 1980, on his third try, Reagan won the Republican nomination and ultimately the presidency. Voters, troubled by raging inflation and by the yearlong confinement of American hostages in Iran, gave him 489 electoral votes against 49 for President Carter.
SOURCE: REAGAN: THE LIFE, BY H. W. BRANDS (2015)