Campaign trail

With less than two months left before the presidential election, both candidates are hitting the campaign trail with renewed intensity. At present, there don’t appear to be any further stops from either candidate in Kentucky. This may not seem unusual in the age of mass media which allows candidates to focus on target areas of the country and still get their message across to the rest of us, but in the past candidates did sometimes make stops at the University of Kentucky or Lexington.

Dwight D. Eisenhower campaigned at UK twice, in 1953 and 1956. On October 1, 1956, Eisenhower addressed issues of concern to Kentuckians at Memorial Coliseum during his re-election bid. Click here to read what he had to say.

This photo from October 8, 1960 of John F. Kennedy’s campaign stop at UK captures a scene eerily reminiscent of the later footage from Dallas minutes before his assassination. Kennedy was on campus to generate support for his presidential bid that year (and pay homage to Kentucky politician Henry Clay). Click here to read his speech from that day.

Then (California) governor, Ronald Reagan, made a brief stop in Lexington during his unsuccessful 1976 bid for the Republican nomination against Gerald Ford. The contents of his campaign literature from that year can be found here.

-- JC

All photos from University of Kentucky Special Collections and Digital Programs.