Adieu, Big John

$11 million won him nothing

After 13 1/2 months of nonstop campaigning, spending $11 million and winning only one delegate, Ada Mills, 67, from Clarksville, Ark., former Texas Governor John Connally last week withdrew from the Republican presidential race. TIME National Political Correspondent John Stacks traveled with Connally during the last week of the Texan's campaign. His report:

Only a few months ago, John Connally shuttled between his campaign stops and his enormously successful fund-raising events in the splendor of a chartered Learjet. In his final days, Connally was hopping around the South in a Fairchild F27. It was a castoff from George Bush's Iowa days, the nickname "Asterisk One" only recently scratched off the fuselage.

Connally invested his last $350,000 in South Carolina in a go-for-broke effort to stop Ronald Reagan. But when Reagan beat him by a bruising 24 percentage points, Connally could see no alternative to withdrawing.

Could it have been different? Connally was far and away the best orator on the Republican circuit. His experience as Texas Governor, Treasury Secretary and Navy Secretary was unmatched by any of his rivals. But voters rejected him personally. Inside the G.O.P., Connally was too well remembered as an associate of Lyndon Johnson, accused by Republicans of being the biggest spender of them all. He even talked like Johnson. His indictment, trial and acquittal in the milk-fund case that grew out of Watergate remained damaging. His toughness, his slickness, made him seem the wheeler-dealer. And rather than run away from that image, he tried to exploit it. Says Campaign Strategist Henry Edward ("Eddie") Mahe: "That perception was so deep, we couldn't have changed it. We had no choice but to use it."

Mechanical and strategic problems plagued Connally. He ran what he called a "50-state campaign," scattering his funds across the country, refusing to target early states like Iowa and New Hampshire. He wanted to improve his overall standings in the national polls and then block Reagan in the South. His personality was not suited to the amiable living room campaign that Bush waged in Iowa. And he was never fully able to trust his campaign aides. His television ads were hatched by committees and lacked quality and focus. His scheduling came apart because he would not give up control. And when things got tough, he distrusted his aides even more. Says Mahe: "We were all newcomers in his life, and when it got tense, he turned to the people he knew best from Texas." But most important, Reagan was simply too strong for him.

That day after the South Carolina defeat, Connally, his closest advisers, his wife Nellie and his oldest son John B. III flew home. For 5 1/2 hr. in flight they mulled over his chances. With little dissent and little anguish, Connally reached his decision. In Houston, Nellie's arm was around him, patting him gently as he announced, his eyes moistening slightly, that he did not "intend ever to be a candidate again."

He was more graceful in defeat than he had been during the chase. Connally and Nellie drove to Houston's River Oaks Country Club for a late supper. As they entered the dark grill room, the home folks' heads turned in recognition. And suddenly, as a group, they stood at their seats and applauded.

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