Having served as vice president during the two terms of President Ronald Reagan, former Texas congressman and Central Intelligence Agency director George H. W. Bush won an impressive series of state primaries by the time the Republican Party’s National Convention met on August 15, 1988, at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. With 1,525 party delegates having been secured, he easily outpaced his closest opponents, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and evangelist Pat Robertson of Virginia, and was duly nominated on the first ballot.