The Reagan-Bush ticket ultimately won 49 of the 50 states. Rollins's deputy and political director was Lee Atwater. Baker III, who had served as Gerald Ford's manager in 1976. Rollins was personally selected for the job by White House Chief of Staff James A. Rollins worked as national campaign director to Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. In the second term, he rejoined the Reagan Administration for several months in 1985 as Assistant to the President for Political and Governmental Affairs. He recovered and returned to his White House job in December 1982, holding the position until resigning in October 1983 to lead Reagan's re-election campaign.
When Nofziger resigned in November 1981, Rollins was appointed as assistant to the president for political affairs and director of the Office of Political Affairs.Ī week before the 1982 election, on October 25, Rollins suffered two strokes, the result of a deteriorating neck artery that had been injured during his final boxing match in 1967. Reagan administration, 1981-1983 Īfter the landslide GOP victory in November 1980, Rollins was hired to serve as deputy assistant to the president for political affairs under Nofziger. During this period, he was offered but ultimately declined the position of chief of staff to former President Nixon. In early 1979, Rollins returned to Sacramento with his wife Kitty Nellor and became chief of staff for the Assembly Republican Caucus. During that time, he met and married Kitty Nellor Burnes. He continued as deputy assistant secretary for congressional affairs through the end of the Ford administration.įrom 1977 to 1979, he served as dean of the faculty and deputy superintendent at the National Fire Academy in Washington. Rollins moved to Washington in 1973, to serve as principal assistant to Monagan overseeing congressional relations at the U.S. This gave Rollins his first close contact with Governor Ronald Reagan, who chaired Nixon's California campaign, and Lyn Nofziger, who ran the West Coast Nixon political operation. In 1972, Rollins worked for the California campaign to re-elect President Richard Nixon. Johnson as his chief of staff, despite his prior service under the Democrats. Kennedy in early 1968 he worked for Kennedy as a campus coordinator, then later for his primary campaign in Northern California.Īfter the 1968 election and the GOP gaining a majority in the California Assembly, he was hired by Republican Assemblyman Ray E. Unruh introduced Rollins to Senator Robert F. Rollins interned in Sacramento for California's Democratic leader, Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh, in 1967. There he earned his BA in political science with a second major in physical education in 1968. Unable to pass the physical exam required for a sports scholarship because of his continuing back problems, after one semester Rollins transferred to California State University, Chico, where he was hired as boxing coach. Once healthy, in 1962, he began undergraduate studies at Vallejo Junior College, eventually earned his associate degree, and transferred to San Jose State University in 1965. Shortly thereafter, Rollins spent most of a year in the hospital dealing with his back problems.
Graduating from high school in 1961, he tried to enlist in the Marines, but failed the physical. Rollins recalls his record as 164 victories and just 2 defeats. He competed as a boxer from ages 13 to 23, winning several West Coast amateur titles. Joseph's College, a junior seminary in Mountain View, before returning to Vallejo. Rollins grew up in the Federal Terrace housing project, attending St. After the war, his parents returned with him to Vallejo, California, where his father worked as an electrician at the city's Mare Island Navy Yard, primarily building submarines. At the time, his father was stationed with the U.S.
Rollins was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into an Irish Catholic blue-collar household.
0 kommentar(er)
