ABSTRACT
The campaign for the nomination was over. Nixon left the Republican National Convention to John Mitchell and holed up in Gurney’s Inn on Montauk, Long Island, to write his acceptance speech with Ray Price. At the convention in Miami, I was a little glum: not only was I not at Montauk, but not even permitted access to the candidate’s inner circle sanctum in Miami—Bob Haldeman, for some reason, had decided I was not “in”—and on top of that, the Governor of Florida, Claude Kirk, whom I was close to, had just bolted from Nixon to Rockefeller and would soon switch again to Reagan. (Alexander Lankler, an ally of Rockefeller’s and later Republican state chairman of Maryland, came up to me after the convention and said, “Don’t feel so bad—I was supposed to deliver Agnew for Rockefeller.”)
