Talk Elections

The year is 1978. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the former two-term governor of California, beloved star of stage and screen, and former presidential candidate has died of a fatal case of pneumonia. With Mr. Reagan's passing, the race for the Republican nomination in 1980 has been blown wide open.

The candidates:

George H.W. Bush is running as a conservative problem solver. His campaign materials bill him as "the most qualified man to ever run for president".

Howard Baker is running a conciliatory campaign, stressing national unity over ideology, and reaching out to disaffected Democrats and moderates. Baker's experience in the Senate is the key selling point of his campaign.

John Connally is promising strong leadership in an uncertain era. The former Democrat claims that his experience as Governor of Texas, Secretary of the Navy under President Kennedy, and Secretary of the Treasury under Nixon makes him the best man for the job.

Frank Borman has no governmental experience but he's a national figure, famous for commanding the Apollo 8 mission. Currently, Borman serves as CEO of Eastern Air Lines. Borman is running as a 'Reagan Conservative'.

John Anderson is running an idiosyncratic campaign centred around reducing inflation. Anderson has made headlines, not all positive, by calling for a 50-cent-per-gallon energy conservation tax on all motor vehicles in order to cut consumption and reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

Gerald Ford is not actively seeking the nomination but a 'Draft Gerry' movement has begun among some Republicans.

Two days.

Anderson!

The guy who will bring us together again.

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Voting for Howard Baker, but really anybody but Bush or Connally.

Borman.

Ayn Rand endorsed Ford over Reagan, so I'll take her word on this one.

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I voted for the guy who was shot by a Communist.

Connally, is the least worst.

Ford or Conally. But lean Ford.

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With one day of voting remaining, John Anderson is the unlikely frontrunner with Howard Baker nipping at his heels. The possibility of a brokered convention looms. Gerald Ford is waiting in the wings.

Baker

Baker/Ford! Honesty is not above competence.

At the outset of the 1980 primary season, polls and punditry predicted a tight Baker-Bush-Connally race. The state of the race was turned on its head, however, when relative unknown Frank Borman decisively won the Iowa caucuses. Conservatives had rallied to Borman as the inheritor of the Goldwater-Reagan legacy. Baker and Bush came in second and third respectively, while John Connally finished a humiliating fourth. The Texan subsequently left the race and endorsed Bush.

Howard Baker's strength in the South and Northeast made him the odds-on favourite to win the nomination. The Senate minority leader won big in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary but he was beaten in Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut by the insurgent John Anderson, who had cobbled together a formidable coalition of liberal Republicans.

Anderson swept the Midwest, Borman carried the plains states (and his native state of Indiana), George Bush eked out wins in South Carolina and Texas, and Baker won a diverse number of Southern, Western, and northeastern states. Each candidate insisted that they had a legitimate claim to the nomination. It would soon be May and the field had not winnowed.

Finally, at the behest of his party, former President Ford reluctantly entered the race. Ford would win every contest from Michigan onward, going into the convention with enough delegates to make a strong case for his nomination. Ford was nominated on the third ballot, after Senator Baker released his delegates and endorsed the former president. In return, Baker was rewarded with the VP slot.

Not all are happy, however. John Anderson has teased an independent run and the conservative wing of the party is upset with Ford's selection of Baker for VP.

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The amount of high profile, pro-choice options is kind of interesting: Ford, Bush, Baker, Anderson...