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Stuart Spencer, 1927 – 2025
President Reagan during a trip via Air Force One to Alabama with Stu Spencer. Series: Reagan White House Photographs. (cropped) 10/15/1984 Stuart K. Spencer, the California political strategist who guided Ronald Reagan’s ascent from Hollywood to the governor’s mansion, and ultimately to the presidency, has died at age 97. Spencer ran Reagan’s successful 1966 gubernatorial campaign in California, and his presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984. Reagan’s blowout win in 1984 saw him collect 525 electoral votes – the second largest Electoral College victory in U.S. history.
As part of Open California’s Oral History Project, author and journalist Lou Cannon conducted a two part video interview with Spencer in his Palm Desert Home in 2018. Spencer detailed Reagan’s strengths and weaknesses as a candidate – and as governor and president – and the important role played by Nancy Reagan.
The Oral History, and full transcript, here.
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