page_title: Ronald Reagan
section_title: Governor of California, 1967-75
hierarchical_section_title: Ronald Reagan / Governor of California, 1967-75
caption_attribution_description: English: Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan at Victory Celebration for 1966 Governor's Election at The Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles California, 11/8/1966
context_page_description: Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American actor and politician. He was the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. Reagan was the 9th and 13th President of the Screen Actors Guild, from 1947 to 1952 and again from 1959 to 1960. Reagan was a movie, television and radio actor before he began his career in politics.
  Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois. Reagan had a successful career in Hollywood. He was in fifty-three movies. He married actress Jane Wyman in 1940. The couple divorced in 1949. They had three children. Reagan then married Nancy Davis in 1952. They had two children. Their marriage lasted until Reagan's death in 2004.
  Before winning his presidental election in 1980, Reagan ran for president two times in 1968 and in 1976. At 73 years old when re-elected in 1984, he is the oldest person elected president of the United States. He is known as the "Great Communicator" because he was a good public speaker. Reagan was also known as the "Teflon president" because any criticism or scandals against him never stuck or affected his popularity.
context_section_description: After giving a speech of Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in 1964, he was persuaded to run for governor. Reagan ran as a Republican against the then governor, Pat Brown during the 1966 gubernatorial election. Reagan won the election with 3,742,913 (57.55%) of the vote while Brown won 2,749,174 (42.27%) of the vote. Reagan was inaugurated on January 2, 1967.
  During his years as Governor, Reagan stopped hiring government workers. He did this to slow the growth of California's workforce. Reagan also approved tax increases to balance the state budget. Reagan worked with the Democratic Party majority in the state legislature to help create a major reform of the welfare system in 1971. The reform helped give money to the poor and increase the pay of the rich. During his term as governor, Reagan served as the President of the Republican Governors Association from 1968 to 1969. In 1967, Reagan signed an act that did not allow the public carrying loaded guns. In 1968, a petition to force Reagan into a recall election failed.
  Reagan ran briefly for president in 1968. He was not nominated by the Republican Party at the 1968 Republican National Convention as Richard Nixon was nominated.
  On May 15, 1969, during the People's Park protests at the University of California, Berkeley, Reagan sent the California Highway Patrol and other officers to fight off the protests, in an event that became known as "Bloody Thursday".  Reagan then called out 2,200 state National Guard troops to occupy the city of Berkeley for two weeks in order to crack down on the protesters.
  Reagan ran for re-election in the 1970 gubernatorial election against assemblyman Jesse M. Unruh. Reagan won 3,439,174 (52.83%) of the vote while Unruh won 2,938,607 (45.14%) of the vote.
  During his final term as governor, he played a major role in California's educational system. He raised student loans. This caused a massive protest between Reagan and the college students. Reagan would soon be criticized of his views of the educational system. In 2019, a 1971 audio recording of a conversation between Reagan and President Nixon was released in which Reagan called Africans diplomats at the United Nations "monkeys".
  Reagan left office on January 6, 1975 when Jerry Brown, Pat Brown's son, succeeded Reagan as governor.
caption: Governor-elect Reagan with wife Nancy celebrating his election to governor in Los Angeles in 1968
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4720", "Image ImageLength": "5928", "Image BitsPerSample": "16", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image ImageDescription": "11/8/1966 Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan at Victory celebration for 1966 Governor's election at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles California", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image XResolution": "400", "Image YResolution": "400", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2017:07:03 13:56:37", "Image ExifOffset": "392", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "530", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8741", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3185", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4000"}