The Managers' Favorite Candidate

By Marshall Loeb

Executive View

John Hanley, chairman of Monsanto Co., remembers his moment of conversion. Last March, at a Citibank board meeting in Manhattan, he heard a Georgetown University political analyst expound on America's deteriorating position in the world. As Hanley recalls, "I went home to St. Louis and sat down alone in my office and listed all the candidates from both parties who could conceivably run. Never mind if we could elect him, but who would have the best chance of changing the situation? It was clear as a bell to me that it was John Connally. I sent him a check and said, 'John, I'm available. I'm available for weddings and bar mitzvahs and what have you.' Since then I've talked to so many people who have enrolled or are getting ready to enroll in John Connally's army."

Candidate Connally already commands a cadre of high U.S. executives, if not quite an army. This is remarkable because these men are cautious, their companies do much business with the incumbent (and sometimes vindictive) Administration, and they are offering support so very early in the campaign.

Says one of them, PepsiCo Chairman Donald Kendall: "Connally's greatest strength is in the Big Business community." Thomas Ellick, a corporate vice president of California's Fluor Corp., who was a special assistant to Governor Ronald Reagan in 1968-71, finds that "I'm just amazed at the breadth of the people who are coming out of the woodwork for John Connally. If anyone is looking for a replacement for John Wayne as the personification of America, this guy is it."

Lewis Foy, chairman of Bethlehem Steel, tells a story that is echoing around the business grapevine: at a New York City dinner for 26 powerful executives, the host asked each man to write down anonymously his own choice for President. All 26 picked Connally. Whether the incident really happened is less important than that business chiefs believe it could have.

Day after day Connally's campaign chairman, Winton ("Red") Blount, the international construction contractor who was Postmaster General under Richard Nixon, adds more chief executives to the list of Big John's supporters. Some of them: General Foods' James Ferguson, Southern Pacific's Benjamin Biaggini, H&R Block's Henry Bloch, Union Oil's Fred Hartley, Citicorp's Walter Wriston, Quaker Oats' Robert Stuart Jr., FMC Corp.'s Robert Malott, Borg-Warner's James F. Berg, Broyhill Furniture's Paul Broyhill, Textron's Joseph Collinson. Add to them presidents (Boeing Commercial Airplane's E.H. Boullioun, Occidental Petroleum's Joseph Baird) and former chief executives (AT&T's John deButts, Marriott's J. Willard Marriott, Texas Instruments' J. Erik Jonsson, General Foods' C.W. Cook, American Airlines' C.R. Smith).

Plus many more who have not yet come out publicly. The chief of a major New England manufacturing company writes to a friend: "Only one man can save the country, and he is John Connally." The head of a large Southeastern bank remarks: "One guy is rallying all the support in the business community, and he is that tall, wavy-haired fellow from Texas."

Why all the business support? Surely Connally has disabilities. As Nixon's Treasury Secretary, he advocated and enforced the disastrous wage-price controls; but executives contend that businessmen wanted them at the time. He was indicted in the milk-fund scandal; but businessmen accept and repeat Connally's response that he is the only candidate who has been certified innocent by a unanimous jury vote. He is a backslid, turncoat Democrat; so was Reagan, say businessmen, only he switched parties earlier. In short, business people simply want to believe in Connally.

They are drawn to Connally because he is one of their own. Though he has been curiously unprepared before some nonbusiness audiences lately, he looks and talks like a president--of a company, if not of a country. He is the type of powerful, persuasive personality a business chief might like to groom as his own successor. Could anyone envision Jimmy Carter running U.S. Steel?

When asked what they see in Connally, businessmen almost invariably use the word leader. Says Occidental's Baird: "Connally understands business, understands the energy problem, understands the military. He is a strong leader." Roy Ash, the former U.S. budget director who is chairman of Addressograph-Multigraph Corp., puts it this way: "John Connally understands that we must change a lot of our philosophical views on economic matters, that our main need now is increased production rather than increased consumption." Fluor Corp. Chairman J. Robert Fluor is convinced that "he is the only man who on Inauguration Day can walk into the Oval Office and start turning the country around."

It is, of course, a long, long time until nomination day, let alone Inauguration Day. Between now and then, everybody will be closely studying John Connally's record and pronouncements. In the meantime, Connally can count on a lot of fund raising by business chiefs, and on their influence with quite a few peers and pols.

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