Yesterday in La Crosse
Western Wisconsin was popular in the 1988 presidential campaign
An early April primary in 1988 brought several presidential hopefuls to La Crosse in the two weeks before the voting. Senator Al Gore held a rally at UW-L, shortly before his 40th birthday. Illinois Senator Paul Simon got a tour of the Heileman Brewery, and Senator Bob Dole spoke at Heileman Hall just a few days before dropping out of the race. On Good Friday, the weekend before the primary, the Reverend Jesse Jackson drew a late-night crowd to a hangar at the La Crosse airport.
The busiest airport in the U.S. was not in Chicago any more. O’Hare Airport was displaced as the busiest in 1987 by Hartsfield in Atlanta. The FAA says three thousand more flights went to Hartsfield that year than to O’Hare.
On the air in March of ’88, you could hear Larry King, Bruce Williams, and Owen Spann do daily talk shows on WIZM. Rush Limbaugh would start his national show in August of that year. Z-93’s lineup for music started in the morning with Keith Carr’s Breakfast Club…followed by Carl Cross, Don London, Samantha Strong in the evening, and Joey Dee overnight. Thirty years ago, 1988, yesterday in La Crosse.
