If you were alive, fully grown, politically oriented, and remember the 1980s, there was no way not to have a strong reaction to Reagan, you reacted either strongly positive, or strongly negative, Perry became an active Democrat leader and campaigner for Al Gore.
Sam Rayburn died in 1961, it didn't influence anyone during the Reagan Revolution.
For Southern Democrats in those days, it was a team phenomenon. They may not entirely have disliked Reagan’s policies. They just wanted someone from their own team in the White House. If it all sounds crazy or strange now, it’s the way things were for years. Living as we do in a much more polarized age it’s hard to understand how things were in the Carter era. And given that some people in the 1970s were still voting on things that happened in 1861, voting on the basis of what happened in 1961 doesn’t look so strange.