The backlash against affirmative action and the ERA confirmed that liberal reformers were losing ground to conservatives. By the early 1990s, liberalism had become identified with special interests and elitism, and conservatives could boast of numerous successes. The election of former California governor Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 reflected the spectacular growth in political power of the New Right, finishing what Barry Goldwater had started in his unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1964. Reagan pushed the conservative economic agenda of lower taxes and business deregulation alongside the New Right’s concern for traditional religious and family values. His presidency installed conservatism as the dominant political ideology for the remainder of the twentieth century.