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The 1976 Republican presidential primaries were the selection process by which voters of the Republican Party chose its nominee for President of the United States in the 1976 U.S. presidential election. Incumbent President Gerald Ford was selected as the nominee through a series of primary elections and caucuses culminating in the 1976 Republican National Convention held from August 16 to August 19, 1976 in Kansas City, Missouri. The 1976 primary was the first Republican primary to hold primaries in every state, the Democrats held the first nationwide primary in 1972. ==Primary race== Ford, the incumbent President, faced a very strong primary challenge from Ronald Reagan. The former California Governor was popular among the GOP's conservative wing. The race for the nomination was the last one by the Republicans not to have been decided by the start of the party convention. Ford had been appointed to the vice-presidency after the resignation of Spiro Agnew in 1973 and then elevated to the presidency by the resignation of Richard Nixon in August 1974. His policy goals were often frustrated by Congress, which was heavily Democratic after the 1974 mid-term election. Liberal Democrats were especially infuriated by President Ford's decision to pardon Nixon for any criminal acts he committed or might have committed as part of the Watergate Scandal. Because Ford had not won a national election as President or Vice-President, he was seen by many politicians as being unusually vulnerable for an incumbent President, and as not having a strong nationwide base of support. Reagan and the conservative wing of the Republican Party faulted Ford for failing to do more to assist South Vietnam (which finally collapsed in April 1975 with the fall of Saigon) and for his signing of the Helsinki Accords, which they took as implicit U.S. acceptance of Soviet domination over Eastern Europe. Conservatives were also infuriated by Ford's negotiations with Panama to hand over the Panama Canal. Reagan began to criticize Ford openly starting in the summer of 1975, and formally launched his campaign in the autumn. Initially, it appeared as though Ford would easily win the GOP nomination; defying expectations, Ford narrowly defeated Reagan in the New Hampshire primary, and then proceeded to beat Reagan in the Florida and Illinois primaries by comfortable margins. By the time of the North Carolina primary in March 1976, Reagan's campaign was nearly out of money, and it was widely believed that another defeat would force Reagan to quit the race. However, assisted by the powerful political organization of U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, Reagan upset Ford in North Carolina and then proceeded to win a string of impressive victories, including Texas, where he carried all twenty-four congressional districts and won all ninety-six delegates at stake in the state's first binding primary. Four other delegates chosen at the Texas state convention went to Reagan and shut out U.S. Senator from Texas John G. Tower, who had been named to manage the Ford campaign on the convention floor. Ford bounced back to win in his native Michigan, and from there the two candidates engaged in an increasingly bitter nip-and-tuck contest for delegates. By the time the Republican Convention opened in August 1976 the race for the nomination was still too close to call. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Republican Party presidential primaries, 1976」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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