WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump won a decisive victory in Florida's primary Tuesday night, forcing home-state Sen. Marco Rubio to abandon the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The brash billionaire also picked up North Carolina and Illinois, but faltered in Ohio.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich notched his first and only victory of the primary season by carrying his home state, but he has the fewest delegates of anyone still in the running and had virtually no electoral path to the nomination.
The past few days, with the passing of Nancy Reagan, I was contacted by the local and national media to share some reflections on the extraordinary lives of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. The media obviously knew that I served in leadership positions with the U.S. Conference of Mayors when Ronald Reagan was President. Some even knew I met Ronald Reagan in Massachusetts long before he was President of the United States. We also met and spoke socially and politically over the years. Usually we spoke about two of our favorite topics, Pope John Paul II and major league baseball, but we also spoke about movies. I loved asking him questions about the lead up to the collapse of communism, in which he played a pivotal role, and he was deeply interested in how the Pope was doing. He always wanted to know what the Pope thought about the historic role that they both played in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and years later, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Along with my several conversations with Solidarity Labor Leader Lech Walesa, General Wojciech Jaruzelski leader of the communist party in Poland, Reagan's trusted friend CIA Director Bill Casey and Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the USSR, I probably got to know as much behind-the-scenes confidential information as anybody. But I think that people around Walesa and even Reagan knew my union background and knew that where I came from, we do a lot of listening and not much talking.
But during those historic and challenging years, I also got to talk to Nancy Reagan on a few occasions. A few days before Reagan's reelection in 1984, I was invited to greet the President at Logan Airport in Boston. Also, the Reagan Committee wanted to authorize the use of Boston City Hall Plaza for a massive political rally. Both events were hugely successful and well covered by the media, but the leaders of the Democratic Party were not happy with the new Democratic Mayor of Boston. But following that, both the Reagan and Bush Republican White House staff were always open to Legislative initiatives that would directly benefit the people of Boston, including the construction of a new Boston City Hospital, the Ted Williams Tunnel and the largest development and jobs project in America, the Big Dig. I also got invited every year to the big St. Patrick's Day party at the White House.
