Incumbent Democratic Governor Pat Brown was defeated in his bid for re-election by Republican nominee and future President Ronald Reagan.

[2] However, Brown's popularity began to sag amidst the civil disorders of the Watts riots and the early student protests at the University of California, Berkeley including the Free Speech Movement.

[7] With the nomination of Reagan, a well-known and charismatic political outsider-actor, the Republicans seized upon Brown's sudden unpopularity evidenced by a tough battle in the Democratic primary.

[8] Nixon worked tirelessly behind the scenes and Reagan trumpeted his law-and-order campaign message, going into the general election with a great deal of momentum.

[10] He ran a television commercial in which he used a rhetorical question to remind a group of elementary school children that John Wilkes Booth, another actor, had killed Abraham Lincoln.