'76 A Window Into Ugliness Of A Gop Contested Convention

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle: Politics
Thu, 04/28/2016 - 3:27am

(AP) — Clarke Reed and Billy Mounger still sound like they want to spit when they talk about each other — 40 years after the contested Republican National Convention where the Mississippi delegation split between President Gerald Ford and smooth-talking Ronald Reagan. During a separate interview at his office in the Delta city of Greenville, the 87-year-old Reed, who earned his fortune with a company that makes devices to scare birds away from crops and airports, is asked if he and Mounger had a permanent split because of the '76 presidential race. The state didn't have a Republican presidential primary then; instead, delegates and alternates were chosen based on their involvement in party activities, and they were not pledged to any particular candidate. Each state's delegates are decided by primaries or caucuses, but if no candidate wins enough delegates before the convention, the wheeling and dealing for support begins. The 1976 primary race between Ford and Reagan marked the last time a party nomination was undecided going into a national convention. Reed, tall and white-haired with a patrician bearing, and Mounger, a West Point graduate with the square-jawed stubbornness of a bulldog, have been in the upper echelons of Mississippi Republican politics since the 1960s. Reagan had been a conservative favorite since he made a televised speech to support Republican Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in 1964. Barbour recalled Reagan met twice with the delegation — once with his proposed running mate, Pennsylvania Sen.

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