Sears: reagan's High-Roller

During an airborne poker game aboard a 1968 Nixon campaign flight, the Electra shuddered, then dived--suddenly and steeply. A pot of greenbacks and a few coins went sailing down the aisle; little of it was ever retrieved. It was one of the few times when John Sears did not win at poker. Sears is currently playing for infinitely higher stakes as Ronald Reagan's campaign manager. Thus, when the Californian's presidential hopes took a nosedive last month, Gambler Sears was forced to try to salvage the situation. By persuading Reagan to announce that Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker was his choice as running mate, Sears confused the Republican delegate picture sufficiently to stanch the flow of support to Ford and keep Reagan alive. But the move--by outraging some conservatives--may also have guaranteed Ford's nomination. Whether Sears' greatest gamble was shrewd or foolhardy will not be entirely clear until after the Republican presidential nominee is selected next week.

Whatever happens, the suave, unflappable Sears has emerged as the most intriguing of the 1976 political campaign managers. Smoother and brighter than Ford's Rogers Morton and the departed Bo Callaway, far more seasoned and self-assured than Jimmy Carter's Hamilton Jordan, Sears is more a technician than an ideologue. This perhaps explains the Schweiker ploy: to Sears, Schweiker's potential influence on Northeast delegations was a plus that far outweighed the negatives of his liberal philosophy.

A plumpish, graying Washington lawyer who is fond of Dewar's Scotch and Viceroy cigarettes, Sears, 36, was born in Syracuse, N.Y., schooled at Notre Dame and Georgetown University Law Center. He got his start in politics as a 26-year-old whiz kid preparing for Nixon's 1968 campaign.

As a novice lawyer in Nixon's New York law firm, he had impressed the future President with his political savvy. When he missed forecasting Nixon's final delegate tally by only one vote, Sears became something of a legend. But the men closest to Nixon --John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman--felt their own political wisdom was all the President required.

Sears was phased out of the Nixon Administration during its first year, suspected of leaking to the press. In 1969 he became the object of a Mitchell-authorized telephone wiretap.

After leaving Nixon, he practiced law from an office near the White House and was prospering. Convinced he would not be offered the primary role in Ford's 1976 campaign and doubtful, he says, that the President could win, Sears encouraged Reagan to challenge the incumbent. When the former California Governor finally agreed, Sears took command.

In politics, Sears works long hours, many of them talking and drinking with politicians and reporters late at night. He abhors paper work, reads few memos and writes even fewer.

The deceptively amiable Sears has been far from an unqualified success. His early strategy--to inflict defeats in the first few primaries and knock Ford out of the race by the end of March--flopped. When Ford won in New Hampshire, Florida and Illinois, Reagan had neither the resources nor the time to gear up for the primaries in delegate-rich New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Most of these delegates went to Ford virtually by default, as did Ohio's.

That huge harvest of Ford delegates made the Schweiker gamble Reagan's last hope: unless uncommitted delegates or unenthusiastic Ford delegates in those big states could be won over to Reagan, the challenger could not possibly amass the needed 1,130 votes. Most Republicans agree that if Sears does not emerge from the convention as the goat of the G.O.P., he may well emerge as its genius.

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