The Triumph of Nancy Reagan by Karen Tumulty (short books for teens txt) 📕

the fire marshal told Nancy that if there had been an actual blaze, eight-year-old Ron would have had to break through the rusted window screen of his second-floor bedroom with a dresser drawer and climb out. Nancy pronounced it “a tinderbox” and “a firetrap.”

The Reagans were not the first gubernatorial family to complain about the mansion. As far back as 1911, Governor Hiram Johnson had refused to move in until it was rid of an infestation of bats. Ronnie’s predecessor, Pat Brown, wanted a new residence built, but only got as far as having plans drawn up. However, Brown did manage to secure one improvement: a kidney-shaped swimming pool was installed after a newspaper photographer caught Brown crossing the street in his bathrobe to take a dip at the nearby motel.

Following Nancy’s announcement that they were moving, the Reagans rented a spacious Tudor on Forty-Fifth Street in upscale East Sacramento. It was a more normal residential area, full of children with whom young Ron could play. Gina Spadafori, a fifth-grade classmate, recalls the neighborhood kids swam in the pool, and rode their bikes to school with Ron, trailed by a big black Lincoln carrying bodyguards. When the owner of the house decided in 1968 to sell it, a group of Ronnie’s rich backers—among them, Holmes Tuttle, his old agent Taft Schreiber, Alfred Bloomingdale, Henry Salvatori, Earle Jorgensen, and Armand Deutsch—bought it for $150,000. They put another $40,000 into renovations that included a dining room triple the size of the old one, a glassed-in porch, and a new “powder parlor.” Then they leased it back to the Reagans for the same $1,250 a month the first family had previously been paying in rent.

Nancy solicited $125,000 in donations and loans of art and furnishings, including rare antiques. Much of that bounty came from the Group. The Bloomingdales chipped in a $3,500 custom-designed eighteenth-century mahogany dining table that could seat twenty-four. The Jorgensens added a $3,000 set of a dozen Queen Anne–style chairs. This brought accusations of corruption. Assembly speaker Jesse Unruh, who was Ronnie’s Democratic opponent in his 1970 bid for a second term, suggested the Reagans’ new nest was being feathered by “half-hidden millionaires who call the shots in Sacramento.”

It was a sign of her growing confidence in the political sphere that Nancy held her first-ever press conference to respond. Seated on a miniature French provincial chair in front of the fireplace in her living room, she lamented what she said must have been “a misunderstanding” on Unruh’s part, adding: “I feel very proud of my project, which is resulting in some fine antiques being donated to the state of California.” Poised and disarming, she obliterated Unruh’s criticisms one by one. “It’s too early in the political season to determine how well Mr. Unruh will fare against Ronald Reagan, but it’s already apparent he’s no match for Mrs. Reagan,” an editorial in the conservative Oakland Tribune declared. Ronnie ran for reelection that year in a fierce political headwind that battered Republicans across the country: in 1970 they lost eleven governorships. The incumbent beat Unruh that fall, but his margin was barely half what it had been over Brown four years before.

Despite the stresses, the stumbles, and the scrutiny, their new life brought a deeper satisfaction than either of the Reagans had ever known. At one point while Ronnie and Nancy were sitting in their living room, they found themselves in a reflective mood, contemplating the unlikely place to which destiny had brought them. “All of a sudden it came to both of us that what we were doing made everything else we’d done seem ‘dull as dishwater’—that was the expression she used,” Ronnie remembered. “And it was true.… Instead of just talking about problems from the outside—to actually deal with them and to have a hand in solving them—well, one man who was a governor back when I was a performer had said to me about his job that sometimes he went home feeling ten feet tall. We both felt that way about it.”

Ronnie’s second inaugural gala in January 1971 was an even bigger production than his first. Five thousand people packed Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium. Outside were protesters, some of whom carried Vietcong flags. But inside the hall, there were so many stars that it was hard to even count them all. Hollywood legends John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart acted as masters of ceremonies. Comedian Jack Benny joked from the stage: “Even though Ronald Reagan left show business, show business did not leave him, as you can see tonight.” The highlight of the evening was Frank Sinatra, who had produced the gala, singing more than a dozen of his hits. Sinatra had been a stalwart backer of Democrats going back to his energetic campaigning for Franklin D. Roosevelt. But he had completed a personal and political evolution that many thought began with a personal falling-out with the Kennedy family. Sinatra raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Ronnie’s reelection effort. At the inaugural gala, Sinatra dedicated one of his signature hits, “Nancy (With the Laughing Face),” to the beaming first lady in the front row.

If her admirers regarded their governor’s wife as California’s own Jackie Kennedy, there were plenty who viewed Nancy as the second coming of Marie Antoinette. First, there had been her decision to move out of the old Governor’s Mansion. Then she announced a campaign to build a new one on eleven acres their friends had bought for the state on the American River. Furious letters poured into the California first lady’s office. An Escondido woman wrote: “Build your own mansion, the old one was good enough for a Democrat, but—no—not classy enough for a couple of ‘show people,’ millionaires. My husband is 80 yrs. old. I am 72. We live on a measly $142.50 a month.… You don’t need to live in a $170,000 mansion and then beg people to donate expensive furniture for your mansion.” A La Jolla constituent sent a letter accusing Nancy of