It’s election season so I thought it fitting to revisit past presidential campaign stops in the Miami Valley. From now until November the DDN blog will highlight visits by Presidents FDR through HW Bush. The first of the series in Richard Nixon. Many remember Nixon from his turbulent stint as president from 1969-1974. However he was on the national political stage much earlier than that. Nixon served as Eisenhower’s vice-president and he ran for president against Kennedy in the United States presidential election of 1960 (one of the closest and most notable elections in US history).
The collection contains images of Nixon’s visits from the 1950s up to the 70s. The collection also contains a transcript of the Watergate Tapes. One of the more interesting find is a signed letter Nixon wrote to the editor of the Journal Herald, Charles Alexander, in 1972 thanking him for the paper’s endorsement. It really speaks not only to the importance of newspapers in American politics but the influence of Dayton papers.