what happened to that guy...seemed decent once,
Nothing. He was an actor :>)
And nothing, actually. Guys like Weinberger and Sancho Nofzinger were with him from the git...
His kitchen cabinet...
The founder of the Kitchen Cabinet was wealthy Los Angeles Ford dealer Holmes P. Tuttle (d. 1989), an Eisenhower Republican “who Reagan owed more than anyone,” according to Michael Deaver.
Reagan named the following individuals as being those who initially persuaded him to run for Governor of California: “Holmes Tuttle, Henry Salvatori, Justin Dart, Leonard Firestone, Cy Rubel, and a handful of others who became known collectively as my ‘Kitchen Cabinet.’” (Reagan, 156)
Tuttle, Salvatori, and Rubel established “The Friends of Ronald Reagan” to raise funds and prepare Reagan for the governorship. J. Neil Reagan, the candidate’s brother (a vice president of McCann-Erickson, the advertising agency), was brought aboard to handle marketing.
The Cabinet hired California consulting firm Spencer-Roberts & Associates to oversee the campaign. Stuart Spencer remained a trusted advisor thereafter. Donald Regan observed of him: “Spencer is a ruthless pragmatist, and although he has never held any official role in the Administration, he is one of the few people who is licensed to speak his mind to the President and his wife on all subjects and has the audacity to do so. The Reagans have formed the habit, over many years, of listening very carefully to what he says.” (Regan, 57)
Spencer-Roberts subcontracted with Behavior Sciences Corporation, staffed by behavioral psychologists, to tutor Reagan and shape his public image. The corporation provided “an ongoing crash course in California issues, position papers arguing both sides of every question, constant company on the trail, and frank analyses of his faults, such as a tendency to ‘overanswer’ reporters and blow up when goaded. [Reagan lost his temper while speaking before a Negro businessmen’s group and stormed out of the meeting; Henry Salvatori was so infuriated by this that he threatened to drop his support over the incident. The Gentile members of the Kitchen Cabinet, like Reagan himself, were, to a man, pro-colored philo-Semites.] One or another of the corporation’s officers was with Reagan every day to coach him. . . . Their counsel was necessary because he had ‘zero’ knowledge of what went on in Sacramento. . . . His mind turned to national and ideological subjects, rather than” arcane local issues. (Morris, 342)
Behavioral psychologist Stanley Plog observed: “When we first met him, he knew practically nothing about California. He was clipping articles from newspapers himself. He did not have a secretary. He was organizing all of his speeches. He had no background information of his own.” (Kelley, 140)
“Dr. Plog found Reagan to be a conscientious crammer, open-minded on policy suggestions that were new to him but inflexible on those he had formulated himself. ‘I have worked in a variety of campaigns, and Reagan, unquestionably, has the most integrated political philosophy that I’ve seen in anyone. . . . Everything, for him, flows from the Constitution.’” (Morris, 342)
“As funny as it might seem now,” Reagan commented, “when I gave in to the appeals to run for governor, I had never given much thought to the possibility I might win. All the emphasis had been on deciding whether to run and bringing the party back together.” After the election, “I had less than two months to prepare for putting my ideas about government into practice. . . . I knew I had to do some quick homework about my new job before arriving in Sacramento. . . . Friends [i.e., Spencer-Roberts or the Kitchen Cabinet] arranged for a veteran Republican legislator who’d spent years in Sacramento to brief me on the fine points of state government. I knew the basics regarding how laws were enacted in the capitol, but during a period of several days at our home, he told me about political life in Sacramento. We went over the rules and procedures and key players in the legislature, he outlined the budgetary processes and the statutory powers of the governor, and told me some of the things that would be expected of me as governor.” (Reagan, 155-156)
“‘The amazing thing,’ said Henry Salvatori (interviewed September 18 and October 30, 1990 [by Kitty Kelley]), ‘is that right after Ronnie won the election [in 1966], he asked us to choose his cabinet. He did not have one man or woman that he had met during his campaign that he said, “Hey, I think you ought to come aboard.” So we [kitchen cabinet] had to make all his appointments for Sacramento. . . . We did the same thing when he became President, too.’” (Kelley, 547)
It is difficult to get a fix on just how formal Kitchen Cabinet membership was. Different sources mention different people as members, and some joined later than others. Later-joining members included corporate attorney and Reagan personal lawyer William French Smith (U.S. Attorney General under Reagan) and beer magnate Joseph Coors (Adolph Coors Co.). Coors was a major donor to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. Council for World Freedom, and Citizens for America, among other conservative organizations.
Michael Deaver mentions a late-night meeting in Reagan’s hotel room during the 1976 Republican Convention that began when three Kitchen Cabinet members roused Reagan from sleep and remained with him till dawn. The three were Holmes Tuttle, Justin Dart, and William French Smith, “dressed in identical blue blazers and gray flannel slacks.” (Deaver, 71-72)
Here are the primary individuals mentioned in various sources as belonging to the Kitchen Cabinet. Corporate/occupational affiliations are given in parentheses; ideological organizations to which individuals philanthropically contributed significant sums or otherwise supported are enumerated within square brackets.
Italian-born Henry Salvatori (1901-1997) (Western Geophysical). [The Claremont Institute; financial assistance to William F. Buckley to enable the startup of National Review in the 1950s; the Henry Salvatori Foundation (“established to help preserve and revitalize America's founding principles”); “the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which among its many other activities oversees The Salvatori Center for American Founding Studies at Boston University”; Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World at Claremont-McKenna College; the Heritage Foundation; longtime friend and supporter of Harry V. Jaffa, professor emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and Distinguished Fellow at the Claremont Institute.]
The Claremont Institute’s Larry P. Arnn has written an extensive (unpublished) biography of Salvatori. More: James L. Doti, “Henry Salvatori—A Man of Integrity,” The Freeman (October 1995).
A. C. “Cy” Rubel (Union Oil of California). [American Security Council.]
Danish-American Earle M. Jorgensen (1898-1999) (Earle M. Jorgensen Company, independent steel distributor with plants and offices throughout the U.S.). Jorgensen’s AP obituary, August 12, 1999.
Justin Dart, Sr. (Walgreens, Rexall Drugs, Dart Industries). Dart is discussed briefly in this article about his obnoxious crippled son, Justin Dart, Jr., a Reagan appointee who later supported Bill Clinton. Dart Sr. once said, “Talking to politicians is fine, but with a little money they hear you better.” Dart’s first wife, Ruth Walgreen, was the daughter of Charles Walgreen, the Swedish-American founder of Walgreens. Charles Walgreen owned an estate, Hazelwood, constructed in 1928 on the Rock River outside Dixon, Illinois, Reagan’s hometown. (Walgreen’s wife Myrtle was a Dixon native.) When Reagan visited Dixon with Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons, he was a guest at Hazelwood. Biographer Anne Edwards wrote that nothing before had made him "feel such a grand success."
Leonard K. Firestone (1907-1996) (Firestone Tire and Rubber; Nixon's U.S. ambassador to Belgium). [World Affairs Council of Los Angeles.] Son of tire mogul Harvey Firestone. (The Firestone family.)
Note: There is a discrepancy here. As mentioned, Reagan in 1990 listed Firestone among the earliest members of his Kitchen Cabinet, and the Reagans were frequent guests of the Firestones when they visited Palm Springs during Reagan’s years as Governor. However, other sources state that Firestone was active in the Left wing of the Republican Party, supported Nelson Rockefeller over Barry Goldwater in 1964, and opposed Reagan’s Republican primary bid in 1966 as “extremist.”
Irish-American Patrick J. Frawley, Jr. (1923-1998 ) (Paper Mate—manufacturer of the first commercially successful ball point pen; Schick Safety Razor Co.; Technicolor, Inc.). [Christian Anti-Communist Crusade—headed by Fred Schwartz, a half Jew; American Security Council; Twin Circles (conservative Catholic) magazine; National Catholic Register.]
William A. Wilson (1914- ) (Reagan's Roman Catholic Ambassador to the Vatican; Web Wilson Oil Tools, Inc.; Earle M. Jorgensen Company). [Campaign for America; National Association of Christians and Jews; University of California Board of Regents.] Wilson’s wife, Betty, was heiress to the Pennzoil fortune.
Powerful Jewish members of the Kitchen Cabinet included:
Alfred S. Bloomingdale, whose wife, Betsy Bloomingdale, was Nancy Reagan’s mentor and close friend.
Taft Schreiber of MCA.
Armand S. Deutsch (1913- ), independent movie producer, grandson of Julius Rosenwald and heir to the Sears Roebuck retailing fortune. As a boy in Chicago in 1924, Deutsch was reportedly the initial, intended victim of Jewish homosexual thrill killers Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, who ended up killing another Jewish child, Bobby Franks, instead—beating him with an iron chisel, disrobing him, disfiguring his face and genitals with hydrochloric acid, and finally concealing his body inside a drainpipe. Loeb’s father was a Sears Roebuck vice president; Bobby Franks was Loeb’s distant cousin.
Los Angeles businessman Ted Cummings.
nationalvanguard.org
and...
When the entrepreneur became committed to an individual like Ronald Reagan or an institution like the Heritage Foundation, he did all he could -- and not just financially -- to help them further the conservative ideas they shared.
Joe Coors was one of the very first people from outside California to join Reagan's "kitchen cabinet" during the 1980 presidential campaign. It was only natural therefore that President-elect Reagan turned to Joe for recommendations for his Cabinet, but that was not all. I can attest that after the inauguration, Joe volunteered to personally assist in the vetting of sub-cabinet appointments.
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