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Mondale bowed to overwhelming defeat with dignity and grace. After voting near his home in North Oaks, Minn., he traveled to St. Paul for dinner at the Radisson Plaza Hotel with his campaign staff. Said his press secretary, Maxine Isaacs: "It was not a weepy scene at all, just quiet." The Democratic challenger then secluded himself to write the concession speech he delivered to a sparse crowd of 1,000 at the St. Paul Civic Center. Over some shouts of "No!" Mondale, his face at times mournful but his voice steady, said Reagan "is our President, and we honor him tonight. This choice was made peacefully, with dignity and with majesty . . . We rejoice in the freedom of a wonderful people, and we accept their verdict."
The man who had received that verdict was the picture of joy Tuesday, though there was one slight pall. His wife Nancy was still suffering dizziness after a fall Sunday night at a hotel in Sacramento. She joined the President on a helicopter trip to vote in Solvang, Calif., but tottered as they left the polling place. Then her knees buckled as she climbed down the helicopter steps in Santa Monica on the way back to Los Angeles; Reagan and a Secret Service agent grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.
During an interview with TIME on Tuesday afternoon, Reagan said, "I'm kind of concerned. She feels a little unsteady. She really hurt herself in the middle of the night [Sunday]. The hotel is one of those where the bed is up on a platform. During the middle of the night she got cold, and there was an extra cover in the room; she got up and forgot all about the platform. The next step there was nothing there, and she did a header into a chair. She has got quite an egg concealed under her hairdo." The First Lady was stoic with reporters. Said she: "My bump is gone. I feel fine."
The Reagans watched election returns on four television sets in a suite at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. They were driven to the Los Angeles home of Businessman Earle Jorgensen, a longtime friend, for dinner and returned to the Century Plaza for an elaborate victory celebration just as the polls closed at 8 p.m.
The President was greeted by 3,000 flag-waving supporters who surged through the hotel ballroom. The First Family formed a line on the stage, with Reagan looking buoyant but his wife still tentative in her movements. "It seems we did this four years ago," quipped Reagan, recalling his 1980 celebration in the same room. Then he turned serious, reciting a familiar list of accomplishments: lower inflation, more jobs, cuts in Government spending, strengthened military forces. "But our work isn't finished," he said. "Tonight is the end of nothing; it's the beginning of everything." He closed with his standard rally-ending line: "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"
It was a cry that had resounded constantly through the final week of the campaign, foreshadowing the sweep to come. For his closing swing, beginning in Boston last Thursday, Reagan gathered into his entourage most of his closest aides, including some who have been campaigning with him, in California and nationally, for 20 years. Their exultation was mixed with a note of melancholy: this was the last hurrah.