Republican Convention 1976

I’ve only attended one political convention, the 1976 Republican Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. I was anything but a Republican, but I was living at the time in Lawrence, Kansas, about 40 miles west of Kansas City, and three years earlier in Colorado Springs I had been a roommate for the summer with Bill Milliken, the son of then-governor of Michigan, William Milliken Sr. (a too-long story with no relevance here). So (another not-so-relevant story) Bill invited me over to Kansas City for the second night of the convention.

That year was one of the last contested political conventions. Gerald Ford, the incumbent president, had come to Kansas City with most of the delegates, but not enough to overcome the upstart conservative Ronald Reagan. There were a number of floor fights and backroom deals before Ford had secured the nomination by the second day. I had a guest pass so wasn’t in the thick of things on the floor and wasn’t really interested anyway. I was seated up in the rafters of the upper deck of Kemper Arena. I do recall being lost outside the arena, looking for an entrance, when the limo carrying Betty Ford pulled up and dropped her and family (sans Gerry) off. Also, after he had lost the nomination (but before the official vote) Reagan appeared that night, along with his wife, Nancy, and sat in the first row of the balcony, bucking an unwritten rule for candidates (which he officially still was) not to show up in the arena until the vote of the delegates (which wouldn’t happen until the next night). He was greeted with wild acclaim, and I can’t help but think that that appearance, along with his concession speech the following night (“shining city on a hill”) helped to set him up for his successful nomination in the 1980 convention.

But none of the politics of the night really interested me. While a few of my several photos are of the convention floor, most are of the TV booths that hung around the rim of the balcony, a Pantheon of the media elite, illuminated shrines to the gods of TV news: Harry Reasoner in the ABC booth, John Chancellor and David Brinkley in the NBC booth, Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil in the PBS booth, and in the CBS booth, the Zeus of announcers, Walter Cronkite.

And the most compelling part of the night happened even before getting to the arena. I drove to the hotel where Governor Milliken had a suite (also the hotel housing Ford and Reagan) to meet up with Bill and the governor’s party. I arrived about 15 minutes before we were to leave. The governor and others were still in their rooms getting ready. I had seen on the TV coverage the night before that one of the questions of the convention was who would give the nominating speech for President Ford on Wednesday night. Back then there were a lot of questions not answered about the convention until just before they happened (including who would be the vice presidential nominee). As I was meandering around the suite, I noticed some papers on a table and saw they were a speech and reading the first few paragraphs realized it was Governor Milliken’s nominating speech for President Ford. I knew something that few others – and no one in the media – knew. If it would have happened today, I would have been on my cellphone in minutes trying to sell my story to the highest bidder. There were no cellphones then, though. When I did get home that night I considered trying to get in touch with Walter Cronkite with my scoop, not for any money but just to talk with Walter Cronkite.

“Is this CBS?”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk with Walter Cronkite.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t do that.”

“But I know who’s going to nominate President Ford tomorrow night.”

“Who?”

“I’ll only tell Uncle Walt.”

Click.

I decided there wasn’t any reason to even try. I never did get to talk with Walter Cronkite. But I did get to attend a national convention, if only as a guest. And I did get to see him, silhouetted in the bright klieg lights of his booth, a god sitting in a shrine floating cloud-like above the chaotic convention floor below. And for that night, I knew something even Walter Cronkite didn’t know.