Wright was part of the 100-member Reagan delegation to the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City , Missouri . When delegates nominated incumbent President Gerald Ford , Wright said , " There is no way I am going to support Jimmy Carter . But Ford is going to be a drag on our local candidates . Naturally , it 's going to take so much time to work for them , we 're not going to have much time to work for Ford . " Barbara Staff , the Texas Reagan co-chairman from Dallas , said , " You may just see a big apathetic heartbreak take over . I would say at this point most people here are not going to work for Ford . " In 1980 , Wright chaired the Texas finance committee for the successful Reagan presidential campaign even though two other Houston-based candidates were also in the running : George H. W. Bush , the eventual vice president , and John B. Connally , Jr. , the governor of Texas from 1963 to 1969 , who had switched to the Republican Party in 1973 after the death of his mentor , Lyndon Johnson . In 1982 , Wright joined Howard Phillips , a former Nixon administration official who founded the Conservative Caucus in an unsuccessful effort to convince Reagan to dismiss Houston attorney James A. Baker , III from of presidential chief of staff . Wright claimed that Baker , a former Democrat and a political intimate of Bush , was undercutting conservative initiatives in the administration . Not only did Reagan reject the Wright-Phillips request , but in 1985 , he named Baker as United States Secretary of the Treasury , at Baker 's request in a job-swap with then Secretary Donald T. Regan , a former Merrill Lynch officer who became chief of staff . Reagan also rebuked Wright for waging a " campaign of sabotage " against Baker
1976 Republican National Convention
1976 Republican National Convention
Clymer Wright