Former Kentucky U.S. Sen. Walter "Dee" Huddleston has died at the age of 92. Huddleston was a Democrat who served two terms in the Senate before being unseated by Mitch McConnell in 1984.
In the 1984 election, McConnnell famously deployed a commercial featuring a gaggle of hound dogs that "searched" for Huddleston, claiming that the senator was "missing big votes on Social Security, the budget, defense, even agriculture."
That year, President Ronald Reagan won reelection in a landslide, sweeping Kentucky by more than 280,000 votes.
Riding Reagan's coattails, McConnell ended up defeating Huddleston in deeply Democratic Kentucky by a little more than 5,200 votes.
Huddleston never ran for elected office again, but went on to work as a lobbyist in Washington, and later as chairman of a bank in Elizabethtown.
A longtime resident of Elizabethtown, Huddleston also served as a tank gunner during World War II, was a member of the Kentucky State Senate from 1965 until 1972 and worked as an owner and manager of radio stations across the state.
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