The Long March

Ronnie all the way

It was as consummate a moment of triumph for her as for Ronald Reagan. If she and thousands like her had not worked so hard for so long, he would not have been up there on the podium, accepting the nomination of their party. Laughing with delight at one moment, eyes brimming with tears the next, Diana Evans, 52, an iffervescent housewife and mother of three from Salem, Ore., watched her dreams come true last week in Joe Louis Arena. Said she: "We're going to win. We're going to win. You better believe it."

Evans has been on the long march with Ronald Reagan almost from the beginning. She had never thought much about him--cannot even recall seeing one of his movies--until 1964 when he went on national TV to raise money for Barry Goldwater's slumping presidential campaign. Reagan spoke of the U.S. as the "only island of freedom that is left in the whole world" and accused liberals of advocating "appeasement" of Russia. Evans became an instant true believer.

When local Reagan organizers asked her in 1968 to help with the California Governor's campaign, she offered to recruit volunteers in Portland's Multnomah County. She was on her phone so much, running up monthly $200 phone bills, that her banker husband bought her a shoulder resting device and an extra long cord so that she could cook while she talked. Says she: "My children never went hungry. Of course, I left a lot of notes for them when they came home saying, 'Here's your lunch.' " Her reward: Reagan won a respectable 20% of the vote in the state.

In 1976, after moving to Salem, she became state-wide county coordinator. Soon she was flying across the state with the candidate. Not only did she help win him 48% of the primary vote in the state, but she got to go to the G.O.P. Convention in Kansas City as part of the Oregon delegation: 14 members for Reagan, 16 for Ford.

It was not a congenial group. Says Evans: "A lot of people did not feel that Ronald Reagan should be challenging a sitting President." Among them were her children, who were a bit embarrassed by their mother's conservatism.

She was so green at Kansas City that not until the end of the week did she learn that her own delegation had a hospitality suite. She had other things to worry about: her instinct that Reagan was sure to lose. "I just couldn't tell my people," she recalls. "We had worked so hard and fought so hard, and their spirits were up."

After President Ford won, some of the Reagan supporters in the Oregon delegation said they would not go back the next night for the acceptance speech. "I didn't agree with that," says Evans. "I'm not a good hater." Yet when she was souvenir shopping to pass the time, she spotted her regional political director. Says she: "I went over to him and broke down and cried. It just happened." On the plane ride home, some of the Reagan people put on Ford buttons as a gesture of party unity, but, says Evans, "I just couldn't do it."

For this campaign, Evans was promoted: she was made chairman of Reagan's campaign in Oregon. Headquarters became an office in Salem rather than the Evans kitchen. With her children grown, she had only her husband Warren to worry about, and there were lengthy discussions about what the grinding schedule might do to their marriage. Nothing serious, as it turned out. Says he genially: "When we agreed she should take the job, I knew it was back to Hungry Man frozen dinners." Reagan won 18 out of 29 delegates and defeated Bush 54% to 35% in the preferential vote.

Diana Evans estimates that she has spent $8,000 of her own money working for Reagan over the years, to say nothing of the strings of exhausting, ten-hour workdays during the campaigns. When she arrived in Detroit, she learned she was to get a special bonus for her labors: the privilege of making a 30-second statement seconding Reagan's nomination. The candidate's staffers sent over a draft of what she might say, but she carefully rewrote it. A speech therapy major at Stanford University, she practiced the speech in front of her husband. She dashed out to get her blond hair done for $11 and on the big night refused to wear the white baseball cap assigned to state leaders for fear of mussing her curls.

When her turn came, the Ford drama was unfolding, and the networks passed her by, but a local TV station showed her performance back home. She was superb. In a clear, confident voice, Evans declared: "I am proud that Governor Reagan demonstrated in our neighboring state of California both in word and deed his commitment to women's rights. Ronald Reagan offers a new beginning. It is with pride and joy that I second his nomination." Then she nearly collapsed in the arms of her husband.

Diana Evans' crusade is still not over. In the fall, there will be more phoning, canvassing, campaigning, although what her exact role will be was still unknown at week's end. Now that her man has the nomination, she has one final dream: "I want to dance at the Inaugural Ball." qed

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