The next days of campaigning in New Hampshire were difficult for Dole. The crowds were not big or loud. Dole knew they had out-of-state supporters traveling with them, packing the crowds, but looking out rally after rally he saw the same people. They were always in the same place. He even knew some names. There was Arnold, there was so-and-so, like they were part of the Dole group. “Where are the new people?” Dole wondered. It was disheartening.
The day of the New Hampshire vote, Tuesday, February 20, Dole and Elizabeth made their rounds of the polling places. Elizabeth felt he wasn’t going to win. A cold rain started.
“A lot of people probably aren’t going to get there,” Dole said to her. The rain would keep them away. “A lot of our voters aren’t going to go because it’s pouring rain. If I were on my way home from work I think I’d go on home maybe, you know, thinking he’s got it and don’t worry about it.”
He started asking his aides for weather forecasts.
In room 702 of the Holiday Inn in Manchester, Pat Buchanan was sitting on the bed, his head down and on the phone to his 27th radio show that day.
“Someone who is an out-of-the-closet homosexual and publicly declares himself to be so,” Buchanan said into the phone, “and flaunts that lifestyle is someone clearly who has a political agenda. An agenda that is at odds with my agenda. And so someone like that really would not be in my cabinet.”
Buchanan had his jacket off. He was wearing a fresh shirt and a new Brooks Brothers tie.
“They’re afraid of me,” he said. “Ha! Ha! I can win.” He said that the exit polls showed a very close race. “A dead heat. That’s why it’s imperative every conservative traditionalist and populist realize this thing could be decided by 20 votes. Come on out to those polls! Get on out there! Bring a friend!”
An aide reported to Buchanan that he was at 26 percent, Dole 25.
Between phone calls, I asked Buchanan what he thought the old man would have made of this? What would Nixon have said?
“He would have loved it!” Buchanan said, joy flooding his face. An aide handed him the phone for the 28th radio interview.
“How are you doing?” Buchanan said in the receiver. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Listen, I do hear this thing is dead even….”
About 6 P.M. Dole and Elizabeth went out to one last event, a small rally. Riding back in a Dodge minivan, Dole, as always, sat in the front seat because he could get in and out easier with his weak arm. Elizabeth and Nelson Warfield were in the back. The miserable, cold rain continued, not even New Hampshire’s famous snow. Warfield called to get the latest exit poll numbers. Buchanan was narrowly ahead with 26 percent. Dole was second with 25 percent, and Lamar Alexander third with 22 percent but moving up fast, crowding Dole. Warfield reported the numbers to Dole.
Silence. No Republican had ever lost New Hampshire and then gone on to win the party nomination. Never.
Again from the back seat Warfield called on his cellular phone to get the most recent numbers. Buchanan still ahead and edging up a little. Dole second. Alexander third but moving up slightly, only some 900 votes behind Dole. He could overtake Dole.
“Looks like we could be third,” Warfield said.
“If we’re third, we’re finished,” Dole said.
The shadows from the streetlights played through the van windows on their faces as they passed through the wet streets in silence. Elizabeth was thinking hard, preparing.
About four blocks before they reached the hotel, Elizabeth leaned forward to her husband.
“Bob,” she said gently, “after all you’ve done for your party, and your lifetime of public service, if the voters want to turn their backs on you, it doesn’t matter.” She said she was very, very proud of him. It was awesome running the Senate and running for president. He had done so much, done enough. “You’re head and shoulders above them all.”
Dole didn’t even turn around from the front seat.
They arrived at the Holiday Inn and went up to Dole’s 11th-floor suite where some of the New Hampshire elected officials were insisting that Dole was going to pull it out. They knew New Hampshire and didn’t care what the exit polls said, he would win. Others were phoning individual precincts to get the numbers, trying to find victory.
Dole went to a back room with Mari Will.
“You know if I finish third,” he said, “I will drop out.”
“I think so, Senator,” she said. She was going to suggest it. One of her fears, shared by Elizabeth, was that his whole reputation was at stake. He could not continue on when it was futile.
Dole went into the other room and sat down. It was bleak. Was it worth carrying on?
About 8:20 P.M., CBS called the New Hampshire race, declaring Buchanan the winner. Dole was soon holding a solid second, with Alexander falling back. Dole was not watching television but his staff was, having snuck off to other rooms on the 11th floor.
Mari Will entered Dole’s suite.
“You’re going to be second,” she told him.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“It’s on TV,” she said, trying to pull him out of his gloom, “there’s much more current estimates on TV. Let’s put it on.” They switched on the television.
Dole was indeed holding second place. He went across the hall to see Elizabeth.
“Keep in mind if we finish second we’re still in it,” Dole said.
New Hampshire had been so hard. Elizabeth had had a feeling of foreboding about the outcome for a long time.
“I beat Buchanan in Iowa,” Dole said. “He beat me in New Hampshire. I can sort of live with that. We’ve traded.” And in the process he seemed to be blowing up the other candidates—Gramm, perhaps Forbes and Alexander.
Will and Warfield found Reed. They all agreed Dole should go downstairs to make his statement at once while he was still second. He could drop back to third. Will and Dole worked up some remarks, and Dole took the elevator down to the ballroom of the Holiday Inn where the crowd was too enthusiastic.
Dole calmed them with a final plea, “Hold it,” then read his remarks. “You’re looking at the nominee of the Republican Party right now,” he declared, insisting bravely he eventually would win the nomination. The campaign now was a “battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” but he began to stumble and his pacing was all wrong, making it seem as if he was looking at the words for the first time. He tripped on a reference to the party of Lincoln, but read on, staring down at the text, pausing and hesitating. “In the next month we will decide if we are the party of fear or of hope,” he said, “if we are a party that keeps people out or brings people in. And if we are angry about the present or optimistic about the future.”
Tom Brokaw said on NBC, “This state has broken his heart now three times.” Dole looked it.
At his victory party, an ecstatic Buchanan led his supporters singing “God Bless America.” Fists and thumbs in the air, he said, “All the forces of the old order are going to rally against us. The establishment is coming together. You can hear them now. The fax machines and the phones are buzzing in Washington, D.C.” He intended to take back the party, he said. “Do not wait for orders from headquarters. Mount up and ride to the sound of the guns!”
By the end of the night, Buchanan had beat Dole 28 percent to 27 percent, or by just over 2,000 votes. Alexander received 23 percent, and Forbes a meager 12 percent.
Elizabeth was upset, and she approached Reed. Why had Reed failed in helping to make Bob a better speaker? she asked. Why had he not put more effort and emphasis into it?
Reed said it wasn’t easy. The senator had his ways.
But why was he getting his remarks at the last minute? Even at times on the way to the podium? “I don’t think you need a different speech every time,” Elizabeth said. Bob had such a strong speaking voice, one of the greatest speaking voices, full of passion and energy. In a one-on-one television interview, he was warm, humorous and established great rapport. She wanted to see that translated to his performance behind the microphone.
Reed knew she really wanted her husband to win. Elizabeth was extremely disciplined, more than anyone else in the campaign perhaps. She put in endless hours, making multiple stops at multiple cities day after day on the campaign trail, speaking and appearing for him. She often did more than Dole did. Obviously, the defeats in 1980 and 1988 had been awful for them. Traumatic would be’ an understatement, Reed thought. But Dole was not going to change, so why were they wasting their time?
About 1 A.M. Reed returned to his room and flipped on CNN. A rerun of Dole’s remarks was on. Reed had been in the back of the ballroom talking to reporters, trying to say the defeat was a result of the Forbes negative advertising, and had not seen Dole’s speech earlier. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing on TV. Dole stared down and then looked up, clearly reading what should have come from the heart, not the cards. Will was an eloquent writer, but that was not the way Dole talked. He couldn’t talk it if he didn’t practice it.
The next morning Reed went to see Dole early, realizing this was the moment the campaign could implode.
“Senator,” Reed said, “I watched on C-SPAN or CNN last night. We can’t read speeches anymore. You’ve got to get up there, let it all hang out on why you want to be president, and here are my eight points.” Reed had taken what Dole had read the night before and put the points on an index card. “Let’s go through this.” One point was “heart and soul of the Republican Party.” That was all he would need as a memory aid. “Say what you want but say these eight things.”
“You’re right,” Dole said. His eyes said he really meant it. He felt he never needed long text, but once they gave it to him there was no way to leaf through 20 pages to look for the key talking points. He didn’t need to be perfect. He thought Eisenhower and Truman hadn’t been the greatest speakers but they had been pretty good presidents. He was delighted to be unleashed from the bonds of a prepared text.
Afterwards, Reed talked to Elizabeth. She was still upset and still focused on the speaking.
“Do something about this,” she said.
“You just missed my talk with him,” Reed replied. “I hear you loud and clear.” Reed said he had seen the speech late on television. He agreed, they had to do better to help him. It was a turning point, Reed hoped.
Reed had lists of what needed to be done—on a given day, that week, over the next three months. On the long-range list he put “Candidate Development.” Dole would have to go to school, get into a routine of learning how to speak better and also how to deliver a prepared text on important occasions. Until then he would have to work off talking points.
Reed decided to travel with Dole for several days in advance of the next primaries. He couldn’t send Dole off on his own or there would be no telling what might happen. If he were there he could help Dole develop his eight points, and they could change them at every stop. One point was “serious business,” Dole’s explanation of why selecting a president mattered, and how he would change the country. Another was the “contrast with Buchanan” on trade and jobs. Another was “contrast with Clinton” on taxes and welfare reform.
Reed wanted to demonstrate there was life in the Dole campaign. The day after New Hampshire, they put out 13 separate press releases. One announced the Dole organization in Oregon, another the 39th Florida state legislator to back Dole and another the endorsement of a famed race car driver.
Dole’s New Hampshire loss was the lead TV news and made banner headlines in most newspapers. Brutal divisive fights in the upcoming Republican primaries were forecast. Dole was dented and nearly out, many said. Journalists started a drumbeat. What are you going to do? What changes are you going to make? How are you going to change your message? Change Dole? Change strategy? Change staff?
Warfield could find no market for their spin blaming the loss on negative advertising.
Privately, Dole almost felt better finishing second in New Hampshire than he did winning Iowa. He also thought he would still win the nomination, but he had decided to keep that conclusion to himself.
At the White House, most of Clinton’s advisers were elated. Buchanan the extremist was the perfect foil for Clinton, and at minimum would set off a bloodletting in the Republican Party that would continue all year.
It was Clinton who disagreed. “Hey,” Clinton said, “this isn’t all good news. Because if Dole handles it right, he establishes his bona fides more as a moderate and beats back the extremists. Shows strength.” Clinton said he thought Dole would win the nomination.
At a later evening meeting in the White House residence, Morris presented a detailed analysis of what would happen in the coming Republican primaries. In a rare show of uncertainty, he acknowledged that his scenario was speculative. Stepping through the primaries, he showed how Steve Forbes could resurface and win New York, a state that Morris knew well. Dole, however, could still recover, but he couldn’t win the nomination before the California primary at the end of March. He added that Dole’s probable success meant it was still important to obtain a budget deal, and he believed if Clinton-Gore and the Democratic Committee didn’t launch new advertising with a massive buy by March 1, they could be in an impossible situation with all the focus and attention on the Republicans. In the ongoing competition for voter attention, Clinton had to have a forceful presence, and in the heat of the Republican primary battle, the only way would be paid advertising.
Clinton approved the media buys. Within ten days they would be on the air in 40 percent of the country.
The Delaware primary was four days off, Saturday, February 24. Dole wondered if he should campaign in Delaware, even though he had pledged he would not.
Delaware’s effort to crowd in was sacrilege as far as New Hampshire was concerned. New Hampshire treated their first in the nation primary as almost a God-given right. Reed, Lacy and everyone else in the campaign said it was important to honor that pledge and leave it to the Dole campaign people in Delaware. The campaign’s tracking poll of two days earlier showed he was ahead of Forbes. Dole finally agreed, but it made no sense to him. He had lots of friends in Delaware. “Well, New Hampshire’s over,” Dole said. “Why would it be breaking my faith now?”
The night before the Delaware primary, on the campaign plane, Dole reviewed the advertisements running in advance of the upcoming primaries in North and South Dakota. They had nothing about agriculture, his natural constituency, the key issue. Why? No one had a good answer and Dole was furious. Why wasn’t someone who knew something about the Dakotas writing their ads? He wanted an agriculture ad right now.
About 9:30 P.M. Reed reached Lacy at home. Dole was being impossible, a bear. Can we do this?
Lacy said it could only be a radio spot and it would cost a fortune.
“Trust me,” Reed said, “you don’t want to…let’s not worry about it, let’s just get it done.”
Lacy spent the next hour dialing and beeping the campaign advertising world. Someone was found. A script was thrown together and Dole recorded it over the phone. Lacy noted it was after midnight before they finished the goofy little radio spot on agriculture.
The next morning, Saturday, February 24, Reed told Dole that he was going to make some significant personnel changes.
Dole didn’t ask who or when.
Reed left the campaign plane to fly back to Washington. For the first time he thought they could lose this whole thing. He didn’t want to lose because of incompetence.
His plane stopped in Houston and he called in for the Delaware exit polls. Dole was running third, behind both Forbes and Buchanan. Reed was flabbergasted.
Warfield, alone with Dole, was getting the same exit polls.
Dole soaked in the results at first and then he started to talk about the campaign polling. Why was it always wrong? Finally Dole moved into second, but he still lost to Forbes 33 percent to 27 percent.
Late Saturday night, Dole was in a fury again, and he phoned Reed.
“What happened?” Dole asked sarcastically. “Thought we were going to do better than this. Do we even have a strategy for these states?”
Reed said he was going to take personal charge, take it into his hands.
Dole said he wanted action.
“Some changes,” Reed promised, “and it’s going to be swift and they’re going to be big.”
Who?
“I’m going to move Lacy out of his role,” Reed said. Bill Lacy, Reed’s personal godfather, and the godfather of the 1996 Dole campaign. Lacy was in charge of advertising and polling. Both were screwed up.
Fine, Dole said.
“I’m going to change pollsters too,” Reed explained.
Dole was not upset at that prospect.
Warfield often sent in carefully interpreted dispatches from the field. From Dole’s demeanor, body language, growls and eyes, it was possible to glean the larger meaning. Warfield called Reed. “You’ve a very short window,” Warfield said, “in which, if you do not act, you will become part of the problem, and you too are at risk.”
“I hear you,” Reed replied.
Warfield said now that Dole had sanctioned action, he expected action. It was compulsory if Reed wanted to survive.
Reed told himself that all good teams make changes at halftime, whether it was football, basketball or politics. They had become a bureaucratic campaign overwhelmed by inertia. Worse, they weren’t winning. An operation succeeds or fails, and they were on the verge of failing. Reed couldn’t just stand back for fear of hurting somebody’s feelings. They could not blow it for Dole, who had put his entire life into this.
On Sunday morning Reed checked in with Dole to review the plan of action.
“Do it,” Dole said. “I want changes.”
That Sunday afternoon, Lacy was in Annapolis driving to lunch with his wife when his car phone rang.
“We have a real problem,” Reed said. He had a lump in the back of his neck, he was so tense. This was the hardest thing he ever had to do. “Dole’s completely lost confidence in you. It’s a problem.”
Lacy was stunned. They agreed to meet at the headquarters in Washington. Lacy told his wife. “Nobody’s ever said anything to me before today.” He was in a daze over lunch.
At the office later that afternoon, Reed tried to be matter-of-fact with Lacy, but the lump was still in the back of his neck. Reed recounted how Dole had called him at home on Saturday night in a rage about Delaware and the inaccuracy of the polling.
Lacy pointed out that Bill Mclnturff, the pollster, had always warned that Dole was the functional incumbent, which meant he would get the percentage of the vote that showed up in the tracking poll. The big question mark was the undecided voters. Functional incumbents rarely received the vote of undecideds because they were known and had already been rejected. The question was, who else would receive the undecided support? In Delaware, the tracking showed Dole at 27, which was precisely what he had received in the final vote. Because the undecideds had gone to Forbes, he had leapt over Dole and received 33 percent.
Reed said that Dole had told him to make some changes and he wanted a new strategist. Period. Reed said he was acting on a direct order from Dole.
“I understand,” Lacy replied; “if that’s what Dole wants, I will go.”
“You don’t have to go,” Reed said. “I don’t think you should go. You can still be deputy chairman.” Lacy could still collect his monthly consultant’s fee and do other things for the campaign. But the new strategist would control polling and advertising.
“Look,” Lacy said, “I’m not the least bit interested in staying under these circumstances.” He said he would resign. “I think this is a terrible mistake, and I’d like to talk to Dole about it.”
Okay, Reed said, Dole would be back in town on Tuesday. “I’ll arrange for you to go see him.”
“Let’s get together tomorrow and talk about how we’re going to manage the press on this,” Lacy said. “I think you would do very well to do it on a primary day.” His departure would get lost in the news of the primary, it would not affect the primary vote and it would not look like Dole panicked, Lacy said.
Reed said he agreed, and Lacy went back home.
“Beep the King,” Reed told Warfield. He instructed Warfield to provide the story of the shake-up to John King of the Associated Press. Reed and Warfield expected that Lacy would try to get his own spin out to his press friends or even try to get to Dole. This was the campaign shake-up, chaos-in-the-campaign story that Dole had long feared. Removing the chief strategist and pollster could be a story that would spin out of control. They had to get their own interpretation on it.
Warfield felt Lacy had been a problem for months. Too often Dole would ask Warfield, Why is this wrong? Why can’t we get better research? Well, Warfield had said, Bill Lacy’s research department doesn’t come up with it. Why is this messed up? Well, Warfield had answered, this was cleared by Bill.
Reed called Don Sipple, the former Wilson media consultant, whom Reed had kept waiting in the wings. He explained the changes.
“Will you take this on?” Reed asked. Sipple would be the new chief strategist to oversee the whole campaign message, the planning, advertising and polling.
“You know I will,” Sipple replied.
Dole was on his campaign plane heading for Atlanta when John King’s news story hit the wire about the campaign shake-up. Warfield went to brief Dole. He added that there was another news story about how Dole’s campaign had compiled a 280-page vulnerability study on Dole as part of the plan to protect themselves from attack and to show they were on the ball. Mary Anne Carter, head of campaign research for Lacy, had prepared the report. She and Lacy had proudly put this information about the self-investigation out to the press, including a description of how she had divided the project into 26 “mini-vulnerability studies.”
“She’s gone,” Dole ordered, “get rid of her.”
Lacy was at home asleep when the phone started ringing. It was his mother. He was an only child, and she was particularly distraught. The television was saying her son, who had devoted years to Dole, was being demoted. Lacy explained and calmed her down. He realized suddenly he had been hopelessly naive. He had intentionally let Reed handle virtually all the contact with Dole in phone calls and meetings over the last year. It was easier for Dole to have one contact point with the campaign, and Lacy knew that Dole didn’t want a lot of people in his face. By taking himself out of the loop, Lacy realized, he had isolated himself from his candidate. He had never really had a personal relationship with Dole over the years, but the absence of any relationship at all had no doubt hurt. Lacy did not believe that Dole had said to get rid of him. Obviously Reed had decided to assert total control. Reed had not been in control of the advertising and the polling, and he had just now seized it. Lacy’s father had recently bought a $20 million candy business in Kansas, and Lacy was planning to join the business after the election. Now he would just be there a little sooner. Lacy decided to keep quiet publicly. He still believed in Dole, still believed Dole was the right person to be president.
Sipple sat down with Stuart Stevens, who was doing the media advertising.
“This is how it’s going to work,” Sipple explained. “First thing we do, we’re going to get rid of all this muck we’ve got on the air, and you and I are going to conceive of a good positive spot. We need to have Dole talking.” Sipple felt that Dole had lost stature in the previous advertising by attacking others, and presenting himself as just one of the other candidates who wanted to be president—the old man in the pack of nine or ten at candidate forums. Advertising was about impressions and symbols. The campaign advertising had been too literal as it picked at what Forbes may or may not have said about crime, or attacked Buchanan as extreme. Their ads seemed to rest on the premise that one line in an ad would win over some group or block of special interest voters.
Sipple wanted ads that would recapture Dole’s stature as the senior Republican. They had to move quickly, using old footage of Dole talking about his values, what he wanted to do with welfare reform and taxes. All positive. The ad closed with the line, “Tested in war, proven in peace, Bob Dole embodies the strength of America. A man every American will be proud to call president.”
There was not enough time to get Sipple’s new ad on the air for the upcoming primaries on Tuesday in Arizona and the Dakotas. Reed was worried about those states. Polls showed Dole ahead of Forbes and Buchanan by several points in Arizona, but he was thought to have been ahead in New Hampshire and Delaware also. He was ahead by much more in the Dakotas, but suddenly everything seemed shaky. “If we lose South Dakota, we’re fucked,” Reed said.
On Monday, February 26, at 3 P.M., Senator Pete Domenici, the head of the Senate Budget Committee and one of Dole’s closest friends in the Senate, called a meeting with nine other senators in his office—all Republicans who were supporting Dole. This wasn’t the fax machines and phones buzzing that Buchanan had predicted. This was a gathering of the Republican establishment, in a panic.
Domenici said that he had spoken with Dole, who wanted their immediate help. It was time to rally around their leader. This was a big moment for Dole, for them, for the party and for the country. Domenici didn’t have to pose the question on everyone’s mind: What would happen to them and what would happen to the party if Buchanan or Forbes won the nomination? Two men who had never held elective office with views not a single sitting Republican senator could support?
Senator Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who had traveled with Dole in the first primary state, said that Dole needed a traveling companion. “You give him suggestions,” Gregg said, “he takes them. He doesn’t fight you. He’s very approachable, but he just needs somebody traveling with him at all times.”
Yeah, said Senator D’Amato, who was alarmed. “You gotta have somebody with him and make sure he stays on message,” he said, “and when he says those stupid things, somebody that can say, ‘Bob, you’ve done something wrong. That’s stupid! Cut that out!’ I can tell him and I have told him that.”
Some senators said that D’Amato should then be the one to travel with Dole.
No way! No way! D’Amato shouted in his nasal voice. “I’m not going to be the one,” said D’Amato, the chairman of the Whitewater committee, “and I’ll tell you why not.” He made the obvious point. “Whenever I show up, the press always wants to talk to me about Whitewater and that’s a distraction, and I should stay off the campaign.” Dole had to keep his distance from the investigation, not be seen as one of Clinton’s inquisitors.
Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican who was running for reelection, said he would cancel all his fund-raisers and accompany Dole. “There’s nothing more important that I have to do,” Stevens said.
Bob Bennett, the Utah Republican, remarked that he wasn’t running this year and volunteered to travel with Dole.
The next morning around 11 A.M., Domenici, D’Amato and Bennett went to see Dole.
Dole was eating a bowl of soup, and he said he had to leave to get on his plane to campaign.
“You don’t either have to leave,” D’Amato said. “Stay right there! You can miss your plane. I’m telling ya this is too important. And Bob, you got to stay on message. You gotta hit Clinton.” Dole started to balk. “It’s more important than what you’re doing,” D’Amato insisted.
“Well,” Dole responded, “I don’t know about that.”
The others told Dole that he was in trouble, and he needed someone with him at all times who had been a candidate, who knew the pitfalls and rhythms. They were not trying to take over the campaign or trying to replace anybody.
“I need help,” Dole acknowledged. “I’m there on the campaign plane. I don’t have any idea what’s going on in the world. I’m just going from place to place.” He described what it was like starting at 7 A.M. and getting back to his room at 8:30 P.M. Even though the media was all around, he barely saw a newscast.
The outside world was not the problem, they said. It was message and presentation.
“Yeah,” Dole said, “I’m in trouble, but I’ve stopped reading the speeches. I have eight points.”
“Well, Leader,” Bennett said, taking a deep breath, “you know we think somebody ought to travel with you at all times. And I think I got elected.”
Dole agreed at once. When could Bennett leave? They agreed to start on Friday.
After the meeting, Dole left for the airport. He reached Bill Lacy by phone.
“I’m very sorry that this had to be done,” Dole said, “but changes had to be made.” He said he wanted the two of them to remain friends, particularly after November. The friendship was what was really important. “This is just an election,” Dole said.
“Of course,” Lacy replied. He was beginning to feel that he had failed Dole miserably, not in the advertising or the polling but in communication. The facts had not been getting to Dole. “You need to understand, Senator, the following points,” Lacy said. One was about the pollsters. “Somebody’s been deceiving you,” Lacy blurted out. “Somebody’s misleading you about things. I don’t know who it is, and I don’t have any evidence except if they had told you what the pollsters had actually said, you would not have been surprised by New Hampshire or Delaware.” As the functional incumbent, the percentages in the overnight tracking turned out to be what Dole received. That’s what Bill Mclnturff had always said. Dole just didn’t get any of the undecided vote. “Their numbers are right on.” The new lead pollster, Tony Fabrizio, was the one who said Dole would win Iowa 35 percent to Buchanan’s 14 percent.
Dole just made vague sounds in reply, but he didn’t understand.
Second, Lacy said, the campaign had horrendous money problems, much, much worse than Dole thought. “You really need to get somebody in there that you have complete faith in who can get a handle on the money situation,” Lacy said. “It’s far worse than you know.”
Dole mentioned a newspaper story about Lamar Alexander, who had not raised the maximum amount of money allowed. So Alexander was possibly in a position to raise the millions that would be needed for an advertising blitz. “Do you think there’s any credibility to that?” Dole asked.
“Well, Senator,” Lacy replied, “I mean, factually it’s correct, but I don’t think he can raise the money.” Lacy didn’t see how Alexander could convert his third-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, and his fourth in Delaware into a bandwagon that would convince contributors.
Dole was unresponsive. Lacy felt that none of what he had said was registering, but then again new bombs could be falling or about to fall at 810—the campaign headquarters at 810 First Street Northeast.
“Just remember,” Lacy said, “if you win Arizona, you’re going to win South Carolina and you’re going to be the nominee, and it was a strategy that the group that I led put together.”
“I want you to come by and see me,” Dole said in a very friendly way, “and talk about this.” After the call, Dole thought maybe it had been unfair. Lacy was quiet, thoughtful, not seeking: media attention, seemed to have no agenda beyond helping Dole.
Dole reported to Reed that it had been a very friendly chat. Lacy was not going to blow up in public. “He says you’re spending too much money, though,” Dole added. The subject of campaign expenditures was one Dole had raised with Reed repeatedly. “I don’t want to start a fight here,” Dole said, raising the money question again.
Reed acknowledged. He thought that at least Lacy had showed some balls, trying to blow the whistle. Reed nonetheless was relieved that no big public struggle with Lacy was on the horizon. The real struggle would be that night as the results from the three primaries, Arizona and the two Dakotas, came in.
Having lost two of the last three primaries, much was on the line. Dole went to his Watergate apartment that night. Elizabeth was campaigning for him out of town. The first Arizona exit polls showed him in third place, behind Forbes and Buchanan. Dole tuned in to ABC’s Nightline. He rarely stayed up that late.
“It is still far too early to be drafting a funeral oration for Bob Dole’s presidential ambitions,” Ted Koppel said. “But the candidate is not looking well, politically speaking,” Koppel added. “Yes, he won in North and South Dakota tonight, but that was not the prize of this primary election day. The prize was Arizona, with its 39 delegates, winner take all. Bob Dole did not win Arizona; he came in third.”
“Devastating,” ABC political correspondent Jeff Greenfield pronounced. “Dole has finished third tonight, he’s fired top staff members, he faces a potentially serious money crunch, and he still hasn’t explained why he should be president.”
Forbes was the victor, but the second-place Buchanan had the momentum. “We’ve all been so wrong about the Buchanan candidacy,” Koppel said, “and there is now the smell of genuine electric excitement about it.”
Watching, Dole was very disturbed. “My God, it’s worse than I thought,” Dole said to himself. He felt roasted, toasted and buried. After Nightline ended at midnight, Dole watched CNN’s Headline News with the latest returns scrolling across the bottom of the screen. He was still in third place at 2 A.M. when he finally fell asleep.
In the morning, Dole woke up to learn that the exit polls had been wrong. Forbes won with 33 percent, but Dole took second with 30 percent and Buchanan was third with 27 percent.