a department store credit card in the name Patricia M.a Chicago Motor Club card for Linda C.Chicago Motor Club document bearing the name Yepez Juventino. phone bill carrying the name Mary Stevenson, c/o Willtrue Loyd.She also had “three new cars, a full-length mink coat, and her take is estimated at a million dollars.” In October 1976, Reagan-who had lost that year’s GOP nomination to Gerald Ford-devoted one of his regular radio commentaries to updating the story of the “welfare queen, as she’s now called.” (While I haven’t found any examples of him saying “welfare queen” on the stump in 1976, he did use the term in this radio address.) According to Reagan, it had now been revealed that this woman (he still didn’t identify her by name) had operated in 14 states using 127 names, claimed to be the mother of 14 children, was using 50 addresses “in Chicago alone,” and had posed as an open heart surgeon. The yawning chasm between “probable” and “indictable” was wide enough for Reagan to label Linda Taylor a public scourge, and for the candidate’s critics to claim she was a media myth. Taylor’s welfare fraud case stalled in the courts for long enough that her 1974 indictment remained campaign fodder for Ronald Reagan in 1976.
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