Tack Cornelius: How Reagan won over a lifelong Democrat - Gainesville Times

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Tack Cornelius: How Reagan won over a lifelong Democrat

Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan stands before a cheering Republican National Convention on July 17, 1980, in Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena. Reagan went on to defeat incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter in the fall election and serve two terms as president, overseeing one of the nation’s greatest periods of economic growth from 1982-1989.

AP 519579039067 — Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan stands before a cheering Republican National Convention on July 17, 1980, in Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena. Reagan went on to defeat incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter in the fall election and serve two terms as president, overseeing one of the nation’s greatest periods of economic growth from 1982-1989.

I despised Ronald Reagan long before he ran for president. I despised him still more when he took office. “A dangerous right wing-radical,” President Jimmy Carter had warned us during the 1980 election.