FILE - Clarke Reed, who was chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party from 1966-76, discusses the contested 1976 Republican National Convention in Greenville, Miss., on April 6, 2016. (AP ...

The magic number needed to capture the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 was 1,130 delegates, and Ronald Reagan was oh so close as the national convention prepared to convene. After ...

If not for one momentous decision in 1976, Mississippi’s Clarke Reed would be considered one of the great heroes of the Republican Party renaissance of the latter 20th century. The reality that he ...

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Clarke Reed, a Mississippi businessman who developed the Republican Party in his home state and across the South starting in the 1960s, died Sunday at his home in Greenville, ...