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Ronald Reagan's Legacy Remembered (40th anniversary of his winning CA governorship)

At the hilltop presidential library where Ronald Reagan is buried and his life is on display, his widow, Nancy Reagan, and political luminaries gathered on Monday to celebrate the beginning.

As CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen reports, 40 years ago Monday, Reagan was elected governor of California.

"When Ronald Reagan was elected governor, he blew everybody's expectations of him losing out of the water," says historian Douglas Brinkley, a CBS News consultant.

Brinkley is writing a book based on Reagan's presidential diaries.

"That this Hollywood actor could ... win the biggest state in the country and use that as the springboard for the conservative movement has become the stuff of political lore," Brinkley says.
Read entire article at CBS Evening News