GENE KOPELSON: RIP Thomas C. Reed: Reagan’s First Campaign Manager.

The world of President Ronald Reagan’s colleagues and friends continues to suffer losses with the recent deaths of speechwriter Tony Dolan and national security adviser Richard V. Allen. Those men have received due tributes, but one figure who has not gotten the acknowledgment he deserved was Thomas C. Reed (1934-2024). Tom passed away a little over a year ago, and I knew him well and worked with him. Tom and his critically important roles in the history and life of Ronald Reagan remain largely unknown to the world and even to almost all Reagan historians. Consider this a belated farewell and tribute.

I first met Tom via a phone call in 2012, as I was starting work on exploring Reagan’s first presidential campaign, in 1968. That campaign itself is often forgotten, written off as a last-minute waste of time by almost every other Reagan historian (most people think Reagan’s first presidential campaign was in 1976). Tom quickly assured me that, in fact, those historians were wrong. Tom’s generosity surfaced, as he shared the meticulous notes he had kept of the entire first presidential campaign, which began a scant nine days after he had won the governorship of California in 1966, and ended at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach the summer of 1968.

Read the whole thing.