Admirers Can't Get Enough of Things Named Reagan

(Feb. 1) -- They've already named an airport, an aircraft carrier, a courthouse, a medical center, at least two post offices, several schools and more than two dozen roads for him. A McDonald's in Alabama where he once ate even boasts a bust of him.

Yet that's not enough for the most devout supporters of Ronald Reagan. A year from this coming Saturday would have been the former president's 100th birthday. To honor him, his admirers are fanning out around the nation hoping to win another one for the Gipper. And another. And another.

Their goal: Get at least one significant landmark in every state named for the nation's 40th president, who left office in 1989 and died in 2004. They are far from achieving that aim. There are believed to be 103 dedications in 27 states and the District of Columbia. So, they're using the anniversary of his birth, Feb. 6, 1911, as a launching pad for renewed efforts in Nevada, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and elsewhere.

"We decided to aim for the biggest possible thing, which is a mountain," said Karri Bragg, 24, who heads up an effort in the Silver State being dubbed the Reagan Legacy Project and will kick off the formal effort at a Reagan birthday celebration at a Las Vegas casino.

The national effort to commemorate Reagan emanates from Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington, D.C., think-tank headed by small-government advocate Grover Norquist, a legendary Reaganite. Each year, Norquist's organization cajoles governors and state legislatures to brand Feb. 6 as Reagan Day -- some 30 states will do so this year, and it's permanently so in Hawaii.

The group keeps such close tabs of their list of all things named Reagan that it is more current and exhaustive than that of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif.

"It's 100,000 teaching moments when people see Reagan airport or judicial building," Norquist said. "It gets Little Johnny to say, 'Who was Reagan?' And then we can say, 'Here's why it's named for him.' What we try to do is suggest this is not a partisan moment, this is a teaching moment about the guy who won the Cold War."

Yet it's more than that. Supporters want to codify and glorify the Reagan legacy, to enshrine him in the select company of the top echelon of U.S. presidents. They also intend to deliver full credit to him for the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.

That notion remains controversial among liberals, but Reagan consistently figures among the top five presidents in public opinion polls; a 2007 Gallup survey put him at No. 2 behind Abraham Lincoln. He also is highly regarded by historians, rating No. 10 in presidential leadership among a C-SPAN survey of 65 leading scholars.

To some extent, the topic of Reagan has moved beyond partisanship. For instance, the heavily Democratic Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed a law last year creating an 11-person panel to oversee commemoration activities surrounding Reagan's centennial. The proliferation of Reagan Days, too, is an example.

"We get between 20 and 40 states each time and then we go and hammer the ones who don't do it, which usually comes down to R's who drop the ball or D's who are snotty about it," Norquist said. "Do you want to argue that this is a partisan position? Opposition to Stalin? Is that what you want to say?"

But Bragg has learned that the namings can get tangled in local politics.

She was surprised to realize upon leaving Norquist's organization to work in Las Vegas for the advocacy organization Citizens Outreach that nothing there had yet been named for Reagan despite the Silver State's prominent role in the former California governor's presidency.

Paul Laxalt, a former Nevada senator, was a key Reagan ally in Congress. The state's most prominent GOP spinmeister, Sig Rogich, created the "Morning in America" ads for the 1984 re-election campaign. And Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., now the gaming industry's chief lobbyist, was chairman of the Republican National Committee for most of the Reagan presidency.

Yet despite the construction of more than 200 schools in once-burgeoning Las Vegas since the 1980s, none has been named for Reagan. So Bragg said she's looking for a mountain to name for Reagan somewhere other than in the Democratic stronghold of Clark County, which contains Las Vegas.

"We're trying to find a peak that's in a place where people in that community would be supportive of it," she said, specifying rural northern Nevada as a likely target. "We're not planning to drop it in a town where the people just reject it."

Norquist said similar issues have tied up the pursuit of renaming a stretch of U.S. Highway 14 in Wisconsin that, on the Illinois side, is known as the Ronald Reagan Highway.

Illinois, where Reagan was born, has 16 sites named for Reagan, second only to 26 in California, where he lived most of his adult life, according to Norquist's list.

Reagan's name is affixed most often to roads, schools and landmarks; there's a Mount Reagan in New Hampshire, for instance. But also honoring him are a hotel suite where he stayed in Westlake Village, Calif.; a missile silo in North Dakota; and a statue in the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.

Despite all the efforts, Reagan remains far behind civil rights icon the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy in the naming department. Both have more than 800 sites named for them in the U.S., Norquist noted.

"People ask, 'Don't you think we've done enough Reagan stuff?'" Norquist said. "My answer is, when we get up to about 800, then maybe we can have a discussion about whether we've done enough."