Elwood’s Wendell Willkie was an “outsider” as the GOP presidential candidate in 1940
Though Donald Trump has succeeded as a so-called “outsider” candidate in this year’s presidential race, he’s not the first Republican nominee to emerge from the business world with no political experience.
There has been a Republican nominee before who was primarily a businessman and not a politician. As Indiana Public Broadcasting’s Stan Jastrzebski reports, the 1940 GOP standard-bearer was an energy industry lawyer from Indiana who also rose to prominence on an unexpected wave of popular support.