Republicans: Lessons from the Lone Ranger

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Battling Nelson did it! Battered, bloodied, beaten, taunted, hooted and laughed at during bitter, frustrating months, Republican Nelson Rockefeller never gave up, never stopped swinging. And last week he flattened five rivals in Oregon’s presidential primary. The count: Rockefeller 92,142, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. 77,334, Barry Goldwater 49,197, Richard Nixon 47,078, Margaret Chase Smith 8,142, William Scranton 4,456.

Rocky’s smashing upset may not appreciably have changed his chances for this year’s Republican nomination. By any reasonable rating, he would still stand behind Goldwater, Nixon, and perhaps Scranton.

But his Oregon triumph was far from meaningless. It gave him increased momentum in his desperate effort to overhaul his only opponent, Goldwater, in California’s June 2 primary. It showed once again that if the Republicans nominate Goldwater they will be picking a proven poor vote getter. It all but kayoed Lodge. The big argument in Lodge’s favor was that he was unbeatable with rank-and-file Republicans. Well, he wasn’t, not by a long shot. Rockefeller’s win also fractured the notion that Nixon can get the nomination simply by making a few phone calls.

The Reason Why. Less specifically, but perhaps more importantly, Rockefeller’s victory infused drama and excitement into what had become a dull, dreary Republican race. It showed that there is still plenty of life in the Grand Old Party. To those Republicans who think there is no chance of beating Democrat Lyndon Johnson this year, Rocky demonstrated that “where there’s life, there’s hope” is more an axiom than a maxim. Above all, Rockefeller’s Oregon win increased what has been called the “scatteration” of strength in the Republican presidential picture. And in so doing, it greatly increased the possibility that the so-called Republican kingmakers—the amalgam of corporation executives, party professionals and publishers—who have so far been mere spectators at ringside, may yet find it necessary to get in and referee the bout.

Oregon’s outcome was obvious from the moment the first votes were counted. Just three minutes after the polls closed, NBC-TV declared Rocky the winner. From there on, it was mostly a matter of pollsters and pundits trying to figure out how they had gone so wrong. One commentator, referring to the supposed political effects of Rocky’s divorce and remarriage, lamely concluded that the results might be related to the fact that Oregon’s divorce rate is among the highest in the nation.

But there was little excuse for such devious reasoning. For once, a political post-mortem could produce a clear, simple explanation. The reason Rocky won was that of the six contestants in Oregon he alone was there—working, fighting, pleading his case, and showing Oregon that he really cared about the state, its primary and its 18 delegates. And where were the other Republican runners?

Where They Were. Henry Cabot Lodge, the odds-on favorite in Oregon, was still in Saigon, presiding over U.S. efforts to win the war there, consulting with visiting Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor, taking time for a dip in the pool at the Saigon Sports Club, and staying as silent as any Buddhist idol about his political plans.

Pennsylvania’s Scranton was making a series of speeches in the East and tending the shop in Harrisburg, still insisting that he will not become a presidential candidate except in answer to a sincere draft. But just in case anyone doubted that he had the stamina and agility it takes, he said he’d been taking the R.C.A.F. conditioning exercises, and demonstrated some high-level nip-ups for a photographer. At week’s end he was off to New York with his family for a tour of the World’s Fair.

Nixon was in New York, watching and waiting. In last week’s Nebraska primary, where Goldwater’s name was the only one on the ballot, Nixon polled a tidy 31.4% write-in vote. Nixon boosters got a psychological lift out of that, but Goldwater drew 49.5% of the vote and five of the six state delegates elected. Later, Nixon called his campaign forces in Oregon to find out how things were going, then took off on a weekend vacation.

Goldwater had himself a bigger week —but it wasn’t in Oregon. Barnum & Bailey had just closed out of Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden when Barry moved in. A brass band blared away, multicolored balloons cascaded down from the rafters, and 100 “Goldwater Girls” pranced along the aisles, handing out literature to 18,000 partisans as they filed to their seats. When Barry appeared in the glare of spotlights, looking tanned and rested after a four-day golfing holiday in West Virginia, the roof went up. During his 45-minute speech, his fans interrupted him no fewer than 104 times to whistle, stomp and cheer. What Goldwater gave them was standard stuff, but he delivered it with more verve and polish than usual.

He warned that the Democratic Administration was hell-bent on turning the individual states into “50 pigeonholes in a new Washington bureau,” promised to work for a balanced budget instead of “digging us deeper into the red,” poked fun at Defense Secretary McNamara’s frequent inspection trips to South Viet Nam (five so far) by calling him “YoYo McNamara.” On civil rights, Goldwater compared the Democratic Administration to “a cheerleader for a frightful game of violence, destruction and disobedience,” drew enthusiastic applause when he cried: “You can’t pass a law that will make me like you or you like me. This is a problem of the heart and the mind, not the problem of the lawyer, the problem of the Senator, the Congressman or the President.” All but unnoticed amid the cheering was the fact that Goldwater offered no solution at all to the U.S.’s civil rights dilemma and apparently had no substantive ideas on the subject.

Next night Goldwater appeared on a half-hour, nationwide taped television program. Seeking to project the image of a responsible, reasonable candidate, he repeated his oft-heard plea to Washington to “mind its own business while we, as individuals, get on with minding our jobs and our businesses.” At week’s end Barry flew off to California for a round of rallies, including a $10-a-head “Cruise with Goldwater” to Catalina Island, 24 miles from Los Angeles.

Sounding the Theme. That left Rocky in Oregon, the only candidate to set foot inside the state since Goldwater scratched it from his list five weeks ago because he figured he couldn’t win. Thundering into the state for a final dervish week, Rocky in four days visited nine cities, made 24 speeches, whirled from airport receptions to luncheons to impromptu speeches on rainswept sidewalks. Constantly Rocky improvised on his slogan: “The only man who cared enough to come to Oregon.”

After grueling days of campaigning the week before, Rocky flew home to spend a fleeting weekend with Wife Happy, who is expecting their first child in a matter of days. But barely 37 hours later, he clambered back aboard his private F-27 prop jet, crawled wearily into an improvised bed as the plane swept westward. At 7:25 a.m. the Fairchild touched down at an air port near Portland. A rejuvenated Rocky emerged, smiling and waving to a crowd of 100 as a band tootled The Sprinter and The Warrior.

Minutes later Rocky was on the road, his infectious grin spreading from ear to ear. His big right hand, callused as a ditchdigger’s from a million or more handshakes, reached here, there and everywhere to pump outstretched Oregonian paws. Rockefeller’s big backslap and his hearty “What a thrill” greeting may have worn out their appeal to some New Yorkers, but they were a fresh political commodity in Oregon.

Rocky took up his familiar stance, thumped away at the Johnson Administration, denounced Goldwater’s views and the “radicals” who would follow him. And everywhere he reminded his listeners of the contenders who had stayed away. Speaking in front of the faded Masonic Lodge Building in Hillsboro, he took his cue from a microphone that suddenly squealed. “That,” cracked Rocky with never a blink, “is more than we hear from the other can didates in this primary.” Chatting with voters in a Volkswagen showroom in Beaverton, he said: “There are six of us in this race. Some are just more visible than others.”

Mirage or Oasis? The approach helped win the support of a clutch of Oregon’s daily newspapers. The powerful Portland Oregonian stayed steadfastly with Lodge. But the rival tabloid Portland Reporter editorialized: “Is Lodge superior to Rockefeller? That is a good question, but it can’t be answered except by another question: Is a mirage superior to an oasis?”

At an Elks Club luncheon meeting in Beaverton, Rocky took out after the Administration, charging that President Johnson had violated the people’s “right to know” by withholding information about the struggle in Viet Nam.* But he got his biggest cheers when he returned to deviling his absent rivals. Ticking off the issues from Cuba to civil rights, he cried, “I think the people of Oregon have a right to know where all of the six Republicans on the Oregon primary ballot stand on these vital issues. My objective in campaigning throughout this state has been to bring these issues before the people of Oregon. I shall continue to do so right up to the eve of this Friday’s primary election.”

Rocky was striking pay dirt, knew it and mined it assiduously. It was at the Raleigh Hills shopping center in Beaverton, as beaming young matrons pushed their perambulators over to listen, that Rocky lumped it all into a catch phrase that stuck, labeled his campaign and marked it for victory. Said he: “I guess I’m the Lone Ranger, the only one left in this campaign.”

Remember His Name. Indeed the Lone Ranger himself, the man those outlaws just couldn’t kill, might have envied Rocky his endurance and fight. Sheer physical stamina kept him going. His voice cracked and hoarsened, but he kept talking. At one point his determination might have led to disaster. Eager to keep a speaking date at a high school in Newport, he took his plane into a dangerous fogbound landing. The pilot of a following DC-3 press plane took one look at the soup below and more prudently turned back.

The pace never slackened. At a Rotary luncheon at Coos Bay, a band of outrageously costumed pirates demanded that Rocky’s forefinger be pricked and his name signed in blood. Gamely Rockefeller submitted. He bought 29 ice cream sandwiches in a dime store for a trail of youngsters who followed him. To questions about his divorce and remarriage he replied: “I think that in life more people have problems in their own lives than others realize. And what we have to have the courage to do is to face those problems honestly inside ourselves.” In a speech at the University of Portland, he asked, “What do the absent advocate? Where do the silent stand?” He clambered to the top of a truck on a rainswept street to tell a knot of curious bystanders: “If you vote Friday, remember my name. It’s Nelson Rockefeller. Thanks, folks.” His tiny audience stood huddled and shivering. But Rocky’s warmth and determination were coming through.

“Caught in a Tide.” At 5:45 on the night of the Oregon voting, Cabot Lodge’s campaign managers huddled privately in their downtown Portland headquarters, confidently put the finishing touches to a victory statement. Less than three hours later, Massachusetts Importer Paul Grindle picked his way through a scramble of TV cables to deliver instead a statement of concession for the ambassador. Said he: “Governor Rockefeller put on a tremendous drive here and displayed tremendous guts, and I suspect that the voters of Oregon have joined in our admiration of a man who fights like this.”

The Lodge people retired to lick their wounds, sighing that “now we know what it is like to be caught in a tide.” Boston Attorney David Goldberg, who had helped engineer Lodge’s March victory in New Hampshire, took another look at the returns and muttered: “Poor Lou.” He meant big-time Pollster Lou Harris, who ordinarily works for Democrats but had taken a big dabble in trying to predict Oregon’s Republican vote. His election-eve guess of 34% to the winner and 28% to the runner-up was close—he just had the names in the wrong order. As it turned out, it was Rockefeller 33%, Lodge 27%.

Like a Locker Room. Rocky himself had already flown home to his estate in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. There he got the news—as did millions of other Americans—sitting up late to watch television with his wife. “We retired with CBS at midnight,” said Rocky.

Next morning the Governor’s Manhattan headquarters was a joyous shambles—like the locker room of the New York Mets after a pennant-clinching ball game. ‘An 11 a.m press conference was delayed while Rocky and his staff prepared a victory statement, a task that apparently they had not believed they would be called upon to perform. At 12:20 p.m. the Governor emerged, threaded his way through the crush of people to the platform. There he read: “I am deeply grateful to the Republicans of Oregon for their vote of confidence.”

But even as he read, Rocky’s mind was leaping ahead from his Oregon success to the coming contest in California. In fact, he had already set the tone for that one. On a flying campaign side trip into California at midweek, Rocky chatted over a ham and pancakes breakfast about his plans for the final two weeks of the race. “I’ve got him by myself now,” said Rocky of his two-man confrontation with Goldwater. “I will attack his extremist stands. It’s going to get rough.”

High Stakes. It could get very rough indeed, for the stakes are high. “If Goldwater wins here,” says California G.O.P. Chairman Caspar Weinberger, who has taken no sides, “he practically has the Republican nomination. And if he loses, he won’t get it.”

All that stands in Goldwater’s way in the California primary is Rockefeller. As in Oregon, the polls show Rocky behind; the Field poll last week called it 43% for Goldwater, 27% for Rockefeller. But Rocky just doesn’t believe in polls that show him losing.

Since some 70% of California’s Republicans are considered “mainstream” moderates, or liberals, with little sympathy for Goldwater’s conservative views, Rockefeller figures his best bet is “to get that 70% stirred up.” To do that, he and California’s Senator Thomas Kuchel have drawn up a list of 25 programs—such as aid to education and civil rights legislation—endorsed by the G.O.P. in its 1960 presidential platform and subsequently supported by a majority of Senate Republicans in 23 out of 25 votes. They noted that Minority Leader Everett, Dirksen supported the platform in 18 of the 22 votes in which he participated, and that Iowa’s Bourke Hickenlooper, chairman of the Senate G.O.P. policy committee, supported it 17 out of 25 times. But Goldwater stood by it only twice in 25 votes. Says Rocky: “If Dirksen and Hickenlooper are conservatives, then Goldwater is a reactionary.”

Second Thought. Coming down to the wire, Rocky plans to spend nine more days on the Golden State stump to Goldwater’s five, concentrating on Barry’s Southern California strongholds. Rockefeller also hopes for a big voter turnout to dilute the strength of Goldwater’s diehard supporters, who are expected to cast ballots come fire or flood. To this end, he has hired the crack Spencer-Roberts public relations firm, not only to produce propaganda and crowds throughout the campaign but also to dig out every available Republican voter on June 2.

Even with a huge turnout, though, Rocky’s best chance of overtaking Barry’s lead might well be in a genuine “stop-Goldwater” coalition. On the eve of the Oregon election, Lodge’s campaign managers were planning to help their own man by appealing to Lodge-leaning moderates to support Rockefeller. But after Lodge’s defeat at Rocky’s hands, they were no longer so sure. “I just don’t know,” mused Paul Grindle. “We’re going to have to do lots of thinking.”

Whatever the Lodgemen decide, Rockefeller could tuck at least one item of unexpected aid away in his California campaign kit. In the wake of the Oregon returns, Otis Chandler’s powerful Los Angeles Times announced that it would throw its support to Rockefeller.

“The Jolly Boys.” Just before Oregon, a Midwestern Republican summed up the G.O.P. presidential situation this way: “Everybody’s waiting for California. A Goldwater loss there would have a tremendous effect. The jolly boys back East would go to work in a rush. But there’s nothing they can do now except wait for a break.”

The “jolly boys” are the supposed Eastern Republican kingmakers. And if there is going to be a break, Oregon just might have been its beginning. Until Oregon, the kingmakers, with very few exceptions, were not doing a blessed thing.

For good reason. Despite his pallor at the polls, Goldwater has such apparent delegate strength that he seemed a near cinch for the nomination. Then again, Lyndon Johnson looks like even more of a shoo-in for November, so many of the kingmakers decided they might as well sit this one out. “On a ten-to-one shot, what’s the use of jumping off the building?” asked one important G.O.P. moneyman.

Many a G.O.P. potentate agreed that it would be ridiculous to risk wrecking the party in a bruising battle with Barry for a nomination that looked more and more like a booby prize. Besides, a lot of the kingmakers think that President Johnson, all things being relative, has done a good job. In the ’30s and ’40s, Republican leaders were passionately convinced that they had to “save the country” from Franklin Roosevelt, but nobody talks about saving the country from Lyndon, except perhaps the A.S.P.C.A. “It’s surprising,” said a Republican leader, “how few enemies Johnson has.”

In their spare moments, of course, the kingmakers looked over the field for an able, available alternative to Goldwater. But they didn’t find much, and that discouraged them. “You don’t have any kingmakers,” said General Lucius Clay, “unless you have someone to make a king out of.” The most likely possibility seemed to be Scranton. And among those who cast hopeful glances in his direction were Leonard Hall, a former G.O.P. National Chairman and one of the party’s most astute politicians; New York Herald Tribune Publisher John Hay Whitney; and Trib President Walter Thayer, a big Nixon fund raiser in 1960. But Scranton so far has refused to be crowned.

At Last, to Work? But Oregon changed a lot of things. The vote there could hardly help shaking prospective convention delegates who lean toward Goldwater but are not absolutely pledged to him. If Goldwater loses to Rocky in California, his strength could melt rapidly down to 200-plus diehard delegates who will stay with him until the last or, if he withdraws, vote pretty much the way he tells them. Last weekend, even while expressing confidence for his future and downplaying the importance of Oregon, Goldwater himself indicated that his own second choice would be Nixon: “Nixon has surprising strength around the country. Remember, a Republican candidate wouldn’t even get out of bed without the South. Rockefeller and Lodge would be pure death in the South, but Nixon and I would have strength there.”

There is no assurance that Nixon would make it even then, and there is an increasing possibility that Republicans will head for their July convention in San Francisco in a state of complete stalemate. Unless, of course, the party’s top movers and shakers finally get to work.

On the Course. The man who could best coalesce an impressive array of wealth, brains and political capital behind a particular candidate is Dwight Eisenhower. “He’s the real kingmaker if he wants to be,” says New York’s Sidney Weinberg, a nominal Democrat whose fund-raising feats for Ike and Nixon have made him a backstage power in the G.O.P. But for the past five months Ike has been soaking up California sunshine at his $175,000 Palm Desert home, got his biggest kick out of breaking 80 in golf a couple of weeks ago (he fired a 40 going out, a 39 coming back). A steady stream of G.O.P. bigwigs came calling, but Ike steadfastly refused to get involved in the campaign. Though he occasionally talked of reassembling his old crowd to back a candidate, he entertained what one Republican leader calls the “visionary hope” that the candidate would be his brother Milton.

Last week, when Ike returned to Pennsylvania aboard his private Pullman car, he talked as though his mind were still on the golf course, telling reporters: “Whoever is nominated, I am going to support. I should not be in the position of trying to dictate to the Republican Party. I, by no means, believe it is proper for me to say, ‘This is the man,’ and expect all the Republicans, just like a herd of sheep, to run that way.”

Oregon and its potential results just may change his mind. In any event, the weekend after the California primary, Ike is due in Cleveland to address a Governors’ conference, will have a chance to talk to many of the 16 G.O.P. Governors (who, incidentally, lean 13 to 3 against Goldwater) and a slew of other party powers about the situation.

A Different Way of Thinking. The dilemma for any G.O.P. candidate in 1964 is much like one that William McKinley faced during the 1892 G.O.P. convention, when the delegates came close to nominating him against his will but finally settled on Benjamin Harrison. After the balloting, Kingmaker Mark Hanna burst into McKinley’s hotel room, visibly upset, and thundered: “My God, William, that was a damned close squeak. You almost got nominated. This is the year we’re going to lose!” Hanna turned out to be right. Democrat Grover Cleveland trounced Harrison, but four years later McKinley came back to win it all.

Yet Nelson Rockefeller doesn’t think like that—and in Oregon he demonstrated that perhaps it is a pretty poor way of thinking.

* Toward week’s end Rockefeller flew to Washington to accept President Johnson’s invitation for a briefing on foreign policy. After a two-hour confidential session at the State Department, Rocky spent ten minutes with the President. But he remained unimpressed. Asked if he still thought Americans were not getting the full story of the war in Viet Nam, he replied: “That’s a fair statement.”