
NBC News Now Projects…
It was about 5:30pm on a cool Tuesday evening, Election Night, 1980. I was managing the reelection campaign of a freshman GOP legislator and we were getting the headquarters ready for what we hoped would be a Victory Celebration (it was) later in the evening. The polls had just closed on the east coast, but California voters still had several hours to cast ballots. Many were headed to polling places from work. I had the television tuned to the local NBC news affiliate, when anchorman Tom Brokaw came on screen
“NBC News has just projected that Ronald Wilson Reagan from the state of California has been elected President of the United States.”
Wow. Reagan was my hero, a man I admired as much for his conservative stand on issues as for his extraordinary skill as a communicator. I also felt a personal connection to him. I was just 24, but many of my parents’ friends had known Reagan personally from his time as governor. And a woman on our campaign staff, 8 years my senior, had been Reagan’s secretary when he ran for president in 1976.
Soon after Brokaw’s announcement,… Read More