1976 Presidential Election

New Hampshire hosted the nation's first primary. Here, President Ford would seek his first votes outside of his Michigan congressional district. He entered the contest trailing Reagan in polls among Republicans and unable to raise his public approval rating above fifty percent. Many shared Stu Spencer's assessment that "if the President lost New Hampshire, it was over with."

Spencer would run Ford's ground game in the Granite State, where he struggled against unforced errors such as Press Secretary Ron Nessen's repeating to the New Hampshire press Ford's private remarks about the state's "icy" ski slopes, interpreted by locals as a "slur" against a key industry. Perhaps more serious was former President Nixon's announcement early in February that he would return to China on the fourth anniversary of his landmark 1972 visit. "He knew it wasn’t helpful to Ford," Spencer later said about Nixon inserting himself again into national headlines.

Still, Spencer, who knew Reagan well, intended to make the former Governor, not the President, the issue in New Hampshire. So, the Ford campaign hammered away at Reagan's plan to shift billions of dollars from the federal budget to the states. "I want to know how much this would cost the people of New Hampshire," Spencer told his researchers. Spencer's goal was to put Reagan on the defensive, "to get him out of rhythm," and it worked.

Also helpful was the Ford family. Susan took to the ski slopes. Mrs. Ford visited nursing homes and hospitals in city after city. The President talked freely with the press and university students. Reagan, confident of victory, left days before the election. The President and his team stayed, campaigning through the weekend and manning phone banks through election day on February 24.

As the vote count was tallied, Reagan led late into the night. Only in the last hours of the counting did Ford move ahead and hang on for a narrow but vital win. "We started out as the underdog, which is really the only thing that saved us in New Hampshire," Richard Cheney remembered. President Ford showed he could come from behind and win the support of a state not named Michigan. His campaign operation remained a work-in-progress, but it had narrowly avoided catastrophe.