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At 64, Reagan is remarkably youthful, though his age might be a minor campaign issue (Ford is 62), and some associates question whether he has the endurance to campaign full tilt for months on end (see box page 20). But the famous Reagan grin remains boyish. The voice is strong, the delivery is sincere, fluid and as effortlessly polished as the apples habitually ordered for his hotel suites. The aura of glamour and the ability to command attention never fail. When he spoke recently at Islip, L.I., says Suffolk County Republican Chairman Ed Schwenk, "we had a tremendous turnout, and after the speech people hung around just watching him. It was a bigger reaction than Nixon or Agnew ever got here."
First the veteran stage and stump performer warms up an audience by slipping into a slight brogue to tell some Pat and Mike stories. Then he brings home his message: lower taxes, less government and a return to old-fashioned self-reliance—what Reagan calls "a program of creative federalism for America's third century." The rhetoric is often bombastic. Sample: "Today the Gordian knot is in Washington. But this is a republic, and we have no king to cut it, only we the people, and our sword has been beaten into ballot boxes."
His chief asset is the diehard backing of a solid core of dedicated conservative loyalists. Whereas Ford's support in the party is often called broad but shallow, Reagan's is narrow but deep. His strategy is to mobilize his supporters in two early primary states where his appeal is strong: New Hampshire (Feb. 24) and Florida (March 9). He hopes that an impressive showing in either state will create enough momentum to carry him to victory in some of the other early primaries: Illinois (March 16), North Carolina (March 23) and New York and Wisconsin (both on April 6). At that point, explains Campaign Director John Sears, "we would expect to start cutting heavily into Ford's support. We think that a lot of those people would be persuaded to vote for Reagan in the later primaries." Among them: Michigan (May 18) and Oregon (May 25).
In New Hampshire, the Reagan team by January 1974 had won the expectable support of conservative Governor Meldrim Thomson and far-right Newspaper Publisher William Loeb, so it then signed on a moderate, former Governor Hugh Gregg, as campaign manager. Political analysts believe that about 40% of the state's Republicans, most of them conservatives, now back Reagan. Even so, the plodding Ford organization has yet to show any sense of urgency: Congressman James Cleveland will not return until this week from a five-week vacation trip to the Far East to assume his duties as Ford's campaign chairman.
In Florida, Ford's campaign, headed by Congressman Lou Frey, is somewhat better organized than Reagan's. Still, Reagan stands a good chance in the primary; his workers, led by former State G.O.P. Chairman Luther E. Thomas, a wealthy auto dealer from Panama City, talk of winning 65% of the vote.