Diary Entry - 11/04/1981
Key Facts
President Reagan travels to Marine Base Quantico, VA to go horseback riding.
President Reagan attends a Cabinet Council meeting to discuss the Voting Rights Bill.
The second planned flight of the space shuttle Columbia is canceled with thirty-one seconds left in the countdown.
Two meetings with Legislators—1st meeting with bi-partisan leaders of committees on Farm Bill; 2nd with Repub. Committee members House & Sen. The House bill is way over our budget limit—the Sen. bill a little over but acceptable. Next a Cabinet meeting re the Voting rights Bill. The bill overwhelmingly passed by the House is a bad bill but we see only 1 way to avoid that—simply ask Cong. to continue the present bill. It too has a fault with regard to how states, counties or municipalities can bail out when they’ve righted whatever wrongs there might have been. But the reality is we must go forward with a Voting Rights Bill. We’ve lost the Gov’s race in Va. although we won almost all the legislative seats that were up for election. In N.J. our cand. for Gov. has gone from a 24,000 vote lead to a 70 vote deficit as the Dem. machine continues to find?? votes. They were caught once trying to count 2 ballot boxes twice. T’was even thus in N.J. We’re hoping we can get evidence that will lead to a Justice dept. investigation. Bright spot of day Paul Laxalt & I went riding in Quantico.
