Flashback Friday: On This Day In 1987, Pat Robertson Announces White House Bid

Oct. 1, 1987:

Pat Robertson, a conservative former televangelist, announces his candidacy for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination.  He makes the speech in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, which is predominantly black and where he once lived.  He says more than three million people signed petitions urging him to run.

Earlier in the month he won a GOP straw poll in Iowa, home to the first contest of 1988, and a combined force of Robertson and Jack Kemp supporters won control of the Michigan Republican Party state committee.

Robertson, making his maiden political campaign, is hoping to corral votes from the party's evangelical Christian wing, running on opposition to communism, abortion and taxes.

Flashback Friday is a weekly feature on Political Junkie.

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