SACRAMENTO — Stu Spencer had certain guideposts he followed as California’s premier political consultant for several decades.
Those guideposts helped elect actor Ronald Reagan California governor and, later, president, and also aided New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, President Ford, Gov. Pete Wilson and hundreds of lesser known Republican politicians in California and across the country.
The earthy Californian with a habitual sense of humor loved the game of politics, equating the competition to sports, which he also loved. He and his early partner, Bill Roberts, pioneered the use of targeted mail and TV ads aimed at specific voter groups. But after election battles ended, he enjoyed the company of Democrats as well as Republicans, regaling friends and adversaries with war stories that were met with streams of laughter.
Spencer died Jan. 12 at his home in Palm Desert. He was 97.
One of his strengths was the courage to speak truth to power. And one guidepost was a determination to be a straight shooter with clients.
A classic example was in 1976, when White House aides pulled Spencer into the Oval Office to tell Ford what no one else had the guts to say: “Mr. President, forgive me… but you’re a s— campaigner.”
Polls showed that, when Ford ventured out on the campaign trail, he lost support. So Spencer, the president’s chief strategist, kept him hidden in the Rose Garden for a few weeks during the early fall.
Ford lost anyway to Democrat Jimmy Carter.
Another example was in 1983, when President Reagan called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” in a speech. First Lady Nancy Reagan was upset, thinking her husband was being too nasty. She asked Spencer to urge the president to tone it down.
Nancy opened the intervention by asking, “Stu, what do you think?” the consultant once recalled to me. “I said, ‘He’s right. It is an evil empire. But…’ Before I could explain the ‘but,’ Reagan cut me off. He said, ‘That’s enough. What’s for dessert, Mommy?’ ”
The president softened his Soviet rhetoric.
But another Spencer guidepost was to encourage candidates to be themselves. Speak from the heart.
Marty Wilson is a former top advisor to Gov. Wilson (no relation), who worked with Spencer for a while and later opened his own consulting shop. He recalls bringing former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina to meet the guru when she was preparing to run for the U.S. Senate in 2010. Fiorina wanted to know what position she should take on abortion.
“What do you believe?” Spencer asked, according to Wilson. “I don’t care whether it’s pro-life or pro-choice. I don’t know a trimester from a semester. But have a position and stick with it. Be yourself.”
Fiorina ran as an anti-abortion candidate, winning the Republican nomination but losing the general election to incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
In 1966, Spencer didn’t need to encourage Reagan to be himself when he first ran for governor. It came naturally. And consequently the political rookie got a jump on what became an important issue for voters: campus unrest.
Reagan kept pounding on student turmoil at UC Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. In a Fresno speech, he particularly “took on the Cal hippies,” Spencer recalled in an oral history while being interviewed by Reagan biographer Lou Cannon. “He really went after them.
“We got back to the [motel] room and I asked, ‘Why are you talking about that? It’s a blip in the polls.’ He looks me right in the eye and he says, ‘It won’t be when I get through.’ He was right.”
Reagan picked up on the issue because audiences kept asking him about it during question-and-answer sessions.
He was elected in a landslide over Democratic Gov. Pat Brown.
One other guidepost was that Spencer wanted candidates — particularly Reagan — to be available to the news media.
“We were scared to death that in the transformation from actor to politician, he would just get crucified as a guy who did everything from script,” Spencer told me. “We wanted all you people to realize he had some brains, had some ideas.”
Most afternoons during the 1966 campaign, Reagan would hold a sit-down news conference. And, as governor, he regularly held one each week. Unfortunately, he seldom held them as president, reducing public access.
Another guidepost: When a campaign falters, change the discussion. That’s what led to Reagan choosing Sandra Day O’Connor to be the first female Supreme Court justice.
During the 1980 race, Reagan was being “harassed” by women’s rights and pro-environment protesters, speechwriter Ken Khachigian says.
“Stu came up with this idea for Reagan to promise to put a woman on the Supreme Court. People think it’s normal now. But back then it was a huge idea. It was just Stu’s political instinct that you could change the whole dialogue. Overnight, the demonstrations went away.”
Reagan beat Carter in an electoral vote landslide.
Spencer was years ahead of other Republicans in admonishing the GOP to be more welcoming to Latinos. The party was committing “political suicide,” he complained to me in 1997. This was three years after Wilson and the GOP strongly backed Proposition 187 to deny public services to immigrants living here illegally. Voters passed the measure overwhelmingly but a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional.
“We are dramatically losing market share of the fastest growing segment of the electorate,” Spencer told me. “Our party has a sad — and politically self-defeating — history of alienating immigrant groups.”
But few listened. His prophecy came true. And only in the last couple of elections have Latinos started to turn back to the GOP.
Spencer never voted for Donald Trump.
“He said Trump was a pretty despicable human being and a felon — ‘I’m not voting for a felon,’ ” says his daughter Karen Spencer, a retired political consultant.
The lifelong Republican voted for Democrat Kamala Harris last year and Joe Biden in 2020. In 2016, he didn’t vote for either major candidate.
“It just drove him up the wall watching the party accept Trump. It absolutely sickened him,” says Barbara Spencer, his widow. “He’d say, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with these people.’ ”
One answer: There aren’t any Reagans left in the party. And few, if any, Spencers.
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