PRESIDENT FORD COMMITTEE RECORDS
Delegate Office Files
The Delegate Office coordinated efforts
to solicit support for President Ford among uncommitted delegates selected to
attend the Republican National Convention.
Since the race for the Republican nomination between Ford and Ronald
Reagan remained close at the end of the primary season, this effort proved
crucial in providing the President with enough votes to receive the nomination.
President Ford's long‑time
friend and congressional campaign manager John R. "Jack" Stiles, who
had served as the field coordinator for the 1960 Nixon presidential campaign,
initially headed this effort. Stiles,
working as part of the PFC Political Office headed by Stuart Spencer, completed
some work in this area prior to his death in an automobile crash in April 1976.
Undersecretary of Commerce James A.
Baker assumed the newly created position of PFC Deputy Chairman for Delegate
Operations soon after Stiles' death and continued to coordinate this work
through the convention. In August 1976,
President Ford promoted him to Chairman of the PFC.
Baker's headquarters staff included
Jackie Fernald, Pete Roussel,
and Pete McPherson. He also recruited
eleven regional chairmen, mostly state Republican chairmen or long‑time
party workers. The regional assignments
were:
Region States Chairman
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
In addition to the regional
chairmen, Baker made use of PFC staff (especially Political Office regional
coordinators), members of Congress, and party officials as sources of
information. Where it seemed useful he
requested telephone calls to delegates from the President, First Lady, Cabinet
members, and members of Congress. Baker also called some delegates himself and
solicited their support.
The Delegate Office files provide
useful compilations of delegates totals at various points in the campaign,
background information on individual delegates, assessments of their convention
voting intentions, and reports on telephone calls made to them. They cover the period from May to August
1976, but contain little reflecting the work of Baker or his staff at the
Republican National Convention or even from the last week before the convention
opened.
The most significant materials are
memoranda and correspondence received from various politicians and Republican
officials assessing the status of delegations or individual delegates. These
assessment were often given confidentially and are quite candid about what
tools might be used to sway specific delegates.
Frequently the files contain
reports on telephone calls on behalf of the President. Included are records of calls made to
delegates by such individuals as Secretary of Commerce Elliot Richardson,
Secretary of the Treasury William Simon, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, Secretary of the Interior Thomas Kleppe,
Baker sent biographical forms to
each convention delegate and requested that they fill them out. While most delegates returned the biographical
forms, for most states several delegates did not. In addition, the PFC obtained
copies of Republican Women's Task Force questionnaires completed by female
delegates.
Related Material
(August 1990):
The White House Central Files
Subject File includes material on convention delegates in categories PL/Ford
and PL 1‑1 (Delegates). An important file on earlier aspects of the
delegate hunt is the records of the PFC Political Office.
The files of White House Chief of
Staff Richard Cheney contain material on delegations visiting the White House
and presidential telephone calls to delegates.
His assistants Foster Chanock, James Field,
and James Reichley also have small amounts of
material on delegates in their files, as do Michael Raoul‑Duval
and Rogers Morton. The Maria Downs Files
contain information on the receptions and luncheons for delegations visiting
the White House.
J1‑J2 Delegate Office: Subject File, 1976. (0.8 linear feet)
Memoranda,
reports, logs, and newspaper clippings.
The materials concern efforts to solicit support for President Ford
among uncommitted delegates to the Republican National Convention. Although the James Baker memoranda and some
of the status reports are significant, the series also contains such routine
materials as newspaper clippings and blank forms.
Arranged alphabetically by subject.
J3‑J14 Delegate Office: State File, 1976. (5.2 linear feet)
Correspondence between the White House or PFC
and individual delegates; reports from Cabinet members, Senators, and others
making calls to delegates on behalf of the President; memoranda and status
reports from PFC field staff or local Republicans; biographical forms filled
out by delegates; and caucus team briefing materials prepared for use at state
caucuses at the convention. The
materials concern efforts to solicit support for President Ford among
uncommitted delegates to the Republican National Convention. The Ford Library received this material in
several different sequences, all arranged by state, and combined them into one
series. Although there are files on each
state delegation, the largest and most significant files concern states with
uncommitted delegates. The files on
states which held primaries and bound delegates to follow the results are
smaller and less valuable. In a late
shipment received from the Ford office in
Arranged
alphabetically by state, except for the accretion received in 1991 which can be
found at the end of the series.
J1 Delegate Office: Subject File
Baker, James ‑
Memoranda
Convention
Convention
Committees ‑ Membership Reports
Delegate
Biographical Sketches ‑ Status Reports
Delegate Book
Sign‑Out Sheets
Delegate Calls
and Letters
Delegate Counts
Delegate
Operation Status
Delegate/Alternate
Matchups
Delegates/Alternates
Who Were Delegates at Previous Conventions
Forms for Weekly
Status Reports (1)‑(5)
J2 Delegate Office: Subject File
Lists of
Delegates Sent Out
Miscellaneous
News Clippings ‑
Campaign Issues
News Clippings ‑
Carter Campaign (1)‑(2)
News Clippings ‑
Ford/Reagan Delegate Contest (1)‑(2)
Republican
National Committee Meeting,
Schweiker, Richard ‑
Selection by Reagan
Stiles, Jack ‑
Western States Delegate Notebook
J3 Delegate Office: State File
J4 Delegate Office: State File
J5 Delegate Office: State File
J6 Delegate Office: State File
J7 Delegate Office: State File
J8 Delegate Office: State File
J9 Delegate Office: State File
J10 Delegate Office: State File
J11 Delegate Office: State File
J12 Delegate Office: State File
J13 Delegate Office: State File
J14 Delegate Office: State File
J15 Delegate Office: State File (December 1991 Accretion)