Thirty years ago this week George H. W. Bush ended his grueling two-year pursuit of the presidency at a news conference in Houston.
In a carefully prepared 750-word statement on May 26, 1980, Bush said that he was abandoning his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, not only in light of the current delegate count, which unofficially gave former California governor Ronald Reagan 1,004 delegates — only 998 were needed for nomination — but also because of the difficulty of “financing successful campaigns in the remaining primary and caucus states.”
During his early morning news conference at the Marriott Hotel, the former congressman and ex-CIA director said that he would ask the 266 delegates pledged to him to support Reagan at the Republican national convention in Detroit later that summer.
Though Rep. Philip M. Crane of Illinois had been the first to jump into what eventually became a crowded race for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, Bush — promising a “new candor” in American politics — had already been campaigning for more than a year when he officially tossed his hat into the ring at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on May 1, 1979.
In addition to stunning Reagan in the Iowa caucus the following January, about a month before being shellacked by the former California governor in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary, Bush also won the Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, District of Columbia and Michigan primaries that year. He also captured the February 17 primary in Puerto Rico — a contest in which Reagan didn’t compete.
In exiting the race, the 55-year-old Bush expressed disappointment that his strong showing in the Michigan primary a week earlier — a contest in which he trounced the former California governor by a margin of 341,998 to 189,184 — hadn’t produced the kind of cash infusion that his campaign desperately needed to compete effectively in the remaining primary states, particularly in the delegate-rich states of California, New Jersey and Ohio.
Bush’s overwhelming victory in the May 20 Michigan primary had been his first major success against the front-running Reagan since the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.
Embarrassingly, Bush’s campaign had overestimated about $300,000 in contributions during the last week of April and the first week of May — an error that wasn’t discovered until shortly before the Michigan primary.
The amazing thing is that Bush stayed in the race as long as he did. His instinct, he said, was to keep fighting. “The reason I’ve continued to campaign, despite the odds, is that I sincerely believed there was a chance of winning.”
Ronald Reagan, who was campaigning in Victorville, California, when Bush announced that he was pulling out of the race, welcomed his former rival’s support. “He was a superior campaigner,” said Reagan graciously. “I’m most grateful for his expression of support for my candidacy and his pledge to work for unity in the party.”
While Bush’s withdrawal effectively removed the last obstacle to his own nomination, Reagan told reporters that it hadn’t really sunk in yet. “Maybe someplace along the line later today I’ll go home by myself and let out a loud yell,” he quipped.
John B. Anderson of Illinois, who had dropped out of the Republican hunt a month earlier to mount an independent campaign for the White House, also had kind words for Bush. “He fought a very gallant race,” said the white-haired congressman. “I hope some Bush supporters will be joining us.”
When queried by reporters, Bush insisted that he had no interest in the vice presidency.
Bush’s departure from the race left perennial candidate Harold E. Stassen, the windmill-tilting 73-year-old former governor of Minnesota who entered about twenty primaries that spring, as Reagan’s only active challenger in the remaining primaries.
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