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Ties go back a generation Chuck Neff Tells of Ties To President Reagan

by David Grimes - The Quill

STRONGHURST - Chuck Neff kept his television tuned Monday to coverage about Ronald Reagan, two days after the former president died. As pundits reminisced, the Henderson County Republican chairman recalled his own personal experiences with the man at the center of political events in the 1970s and 1980s and who was credited with ushering in a new era of conservatism to the GOP.

Neff's father, the late Clarence Neff, was Republican state representative in west-central Illinois from 1962 until his retirement following the 1984 election. Together the Neffs have logged 48 years in Henderson County as precinct committee chairmen.

Neff's recollection of the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City - when Reagan came close to wresting the party's nomination for president from incumbent Gerald Ford - are particularly vivid.

The elder Neff was a convention delegate and the family traveled to Missouri with him for the hoopla.

"No one really knew until the last second if it would be Reagan or Ford," Neff said. "It literally came down to counting the votes."

While Ford, the sitting president, got the nod by a slim, 1,187-1,070 margin, he couldn't match Reagan's popularity.

Ronald Reagan received the loudest and longest standing ovation.

"He was the sentimental favorite," Neff said. "He commanded the biggest and longest ovation - nearly two hours - in political convention history."

But while Reagan provided a fresh face for Republicans just as Jimmy Carter did for Democrats, Reagan's near miss in Kansas City may have been a blessing in disguise.

"I think it may have worked to his advantage to lose (the party nomination)," Neff said. "I don't think the country was ready to accept him in 1976."

But the next four years would prime the country for Reagan's leadership.

"He was in a good position to challenge Carter," Neff said. "People were tired of four years of long gas lines, the Panama Canal Treaty and the Iranian hostage situation. Voters preferred the image of a positive, optimistic, strong America."

By 1980, Ronald Reagan personified that image and embodied what Americans were looking for in a president to lead them toward achieving that goal.

As a high school senior, Neff attended a campaign rally for the Iowa caucuses when Reagan appeared at Palmer School of Chiropractic in Davenport.

A Newsweek photographer captured a light moment when Neff offered Reagan an ABC - Anybody But Carter - button.

But a lapel button would not be enough for Reagan to win the Iowa caucuses. He and the likes of Howard Baker, John Anderson - who would go on to run for the presidency as an Independent - and Bob Dole would succumb to George H.W. Bush.

Reagan did go on to defeat Bush in the New Hampshire primary, however, and didn't look back. He won the GOP nomination with 1,939 of 1,994 delegate votes at the convention in Detroit.

Leading up to the convention, Reagan autographed a program for Chuck Neff at a Lincoln Day Dinner in Knox County, Ill. Neff seized the opportunity to press Reagan about his daughter's campaign activities against the senior Neff.

Maureen Reagan had been barnstorming the country championing abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment and was in Macomb, Ill., earlier in the year campaigning against Clarence Neff.

"She's a free spirit," Neff remembered Reagan saying of his daughter after extending an apology to the elder Neff.

At the national convention, Chuck Neff was one of four high school and college students from Illinois appointed as pages. He remembered that while no official statement had been issued, George H.W. Bush was expected to be named as Reagan's running mate on the November ticket.

"But there were still backroom discussions going on with the Ford camp," Neff said.

Feeling unappreciated and slighted, Bush retired to the Ponchetrain Hotel with a personal entourage to drown their disappointment at the bar.

But there was a fly in the ointment. The Ford camp was making demands that Reagan's people were unwilling to acquiesce.

As the evening progressed, Reagan turned to Bush, his strongest challenger in the primaries, as his running mate.

Bush and his entourage had to hurry back to the convention to accept.

Neff's respect for the 40th president is enhanced by his belief that Reagan and Neff's father, Clarence, shared much in common during their years of service in public office.

"Ronald Reagan's closest political confidant was his wife, Nancy. My father's closest political confidant was my mother, Elaine," Neff said.

"My parents' relationship was much the same as that of the Reagans. Both President Reagan and my father were born and raised in west-central Illinois and maintained strong roots here. They were only two years apart in age."

Neff showed a portrait of Neff and Reagan that local artist Marjorie Barber painted in the 1980s.

"There were similarities," he said.

-photo by Carla DePoyster/The Hawk Eye (courtesy The Hawk Eye/Burlington, IA)

Chuck Neff looks down Monday at a scrapbook picture of him and Ronald Reagan from Newsweek magazine.

Neff, of Stronghurst, has been involved with the Republican party for many years, beginning when he was a teenager and a leader of Illinois Youth for Reagan.

Neff is now Henderson County Republican Party chairman.