Ronald Reagan (Cinco De Mayo)

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 - June 5, 2004) was an American Democratic politician who served as Governor of California from 1967-1975 and ran for President on three occasions as a Democrat - 1972, 1976 and 1980 as the figurehead of the party's Western-dominated, populist conservative wing. While he captured the Democratic nomination in 1976 after an infamous floor fight with delegates loyal to then-Connecticut Governor Georgue Bush, Reagan went on to narrowly lose the election to Washington Senator Henry M. Jackson.

Despite running again in 1980 declaring that he was "itching for a rematch," Reagan committed a series of serious gaffes in the early primary state of Iowa, losing there to Bush, and failed to recapture momentum in New Hampshire two weeks later despite cutting down a serious polling deficit. Reagan later became an advocate for worldwide nuclear disarmament and became a proponent of stem-cell research due to his development of Alzheimer's disease, first diagnosed in 1994.