Walter Huddleston

Reagan was 73.

McConnell was 42 years old, and he ran a savvy campaign against incumbent Democrat Walter D. Huddleston.

McConnell hired Roger Ailes, who later went on to create Fox News.

Huddleston had a 94% voting record in the Senate.

You'd have to go back 80 years to find the last time a vacancy created in a presidential election year was confirmed.

You'd have to go back to Grover Cleveland.

Back in 1984, Mitch McConnell railed against Walter D. Huddleston's 16 years in the Senate as too much one-party rule.

But now it's McConnell who's been in the Senate for 42 years.

And I think Kentuckians realized, wait a minute, I think more like Hal Rogers or Mitch McConnell.

I think more like Jim Bunny or Rand Paul than I do Kentucky like Wendell Ford, for instance, or Dee Huddleston.

And that really has been the beginning of Republicanism here in the state.

It seems to me, and I've been involved with Kentucky politics either mostly in the public policy arena, also ran for office and served at the local level as magistrate for a term.