Letter from Washington

Although Ford backers now believe a flrst-baI-lot victory is only a few votes away, morale at the President Ford Committee has never been lower. The fierce infighting within the Committee and between the Committee and the White House has become the talk of Washington, and Ford loyalists believe it has seriously crippled their campaign. At the center of the controversy are Rogers Morton, the campaign director, and Stuart Spencer, his deputy. Spencer is highly popular among Committee staffers, many of whom he recruited. At the White House, however, he is viewed as a political mercenary, more concerned with his own reputation than with the President’s cause. Morton, part of the old-boy Washington Republican Establishment, is still highly thought of at the White House. But at the Committee he is considered an inept organizer and ineffectual strategist, and it is an open secret that Spencer would like to see him removed.

Last week, when rumors swept Washington that Morton was on his way out, the consensus was that they had been planted by the Committee’s communications director, Peter Kaye, a Spencer protégé whom Morton is attempting to replace. Kaye is also believed to be the source of unattributed derogatory remarks recently surfacing in the press which malign such Committee newcomers as James DeFrancis (the former special assistant to Senator Robert Griffin) who deserves much of the credit for Ford’s convincing Michigan primary victory. The feuding, which has now broken into the open, has become a source of increasing embarrassment, and the betting is that immediately after the Convention, if Ford is nominated, the President Ford Committee will be totally revamped. Morton will be given a slot that will be largely ceremonial. Spencer and his proteges will leave, and the nuts and bolts campaign operation will be overseen by Clif White and William Timmons, a highly respected Republican professional who served as Richard Nixon’s liaison man with Congress. Also playing key campaign roles will be James DeFrancis and his former boss, Robert Griffin.

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Presidential Election

Although Ford backers now believe a flrst-baI-lot victory is only a few votes away, morale at the President Ford Committee has never been lower. The fierce infighting within the Committee and between the Committee and the White House has become the talk of Washington, and Ford loyalists believe it has seriously crippled their campaign. At the center of the controversy are Rogers Morton, the campaign director, and Stuart Spencer, his deputy. Spencer is highly popular among Committee staffers, many of whom he recruited. At the White House, however, he is viewed as a political mercenary, more concerned with his own reputation than with the President’s cause. Morton, part of the old-boy Washington Republican Establishment, is still highly thought of at the White House. But at the Committee he is considered an inept organizer and ineffectual strategist, and it is an open secret that Spencer would like to see him removed.

Last week, when rumors swept Washington that Morton was on his way out, the consensus was that they had been planted by the Committee’s communications director, Peter Kaye, a Spencer protégé whom Morton is attempting to replace. Kaye is also believed to be the source of unattributed derogatory remarks recently surfacing in the press which malign such Committee newcomers as James DeFrancis (the former special assistant to Senator Robert Griffin) who deserves much of the credit for Ford’s convincing Michigan primary victory. The feuding, which has now broken into the open, has become a source of increasing embarrassment, and the betting is that immediately after the Convention, if Ford is nominated, the President Ford Committee will be totally revamped. Morton will be given a slot that will be largely ceremonial. Spencer and his proteges will leave, and the nuts and bolts campaign operation will be overseen by Clif White and William Timmons, a highly respected Republican professional who served as Richard Nixon’s liaison man with Congress. Also playing key campaign roles will be James DeFrancis and his former boss, Robert Griffin.