Bill Roy, Jr., left, and former Lt. Gov. Dave Owen share their memories of the 1974 senate race between Bob Dole and Bill Roy, Sr. during a 40th anniversary program at the Dole Institute of Politics. Owen served as Dole's campaign manager while the younger Roy was a 20-year-old college student who volunteered on his father's campaign.

Topeka ? Forty years ago in Kansas, an incumbent senator was locked in a tough re-election campaign against a well-financed and highly talented opponent.

In a race that bore striking similarities to this year’s senate race, the campaign between Sen. Bob Dole and U.S. Rep. Bill Roy Sr. drew national media attention, lots of money from third-party independent groups and appearances from national figures such as President Gerald Ford, who came to help save an embattled Republican senator.

In the end, Dole squeezed out a narrow victory by about 13,000 votes, but it was a campaign political historians still talk about because of how it symbolized the era and the trends it helped establish in U.S. politics, many of which continue today.

Thursday night, two of the veterans of that campaign spoke about their memories at the Dole Institute of Politics.

“In 1974, I was a student at the University of Kansas,” said Roy’s son, Bill Roy Jr. “I took the autumn semester off and actually started campaigning for my father that summer and was on the road throughout the state of Kansas. I have been everywhere in this state.”

Dave Owen, the Republican lieutenant governor at the time, chose not to run for governor that year and to work instead managing Dole’s re-election campaign.

“The thing I remember the most was walking into the campaign headquarters and seeing a stack of bills and no money in the bank,” Owen recalled.

Campaign photos from 1974 of political rivals Bill Roy, Sr., a Democratic congressman from Topeka, and Republican Sen. Bob Dole.

The race was notable because it came just months after President Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Dole had served as chairman of the Republican National Committee during much of the Nixon administration and was considered tainted by his association to him.

It was also the first national election after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Roe vs. Wade legalizing abortion, making it the first race in which abortion became a major issue. Roy, an obstetrician, was suddenly criticized for having performed abortions, even though they had been made legal in Kansas a few years earlier through a bill that Owen, then a state senator, had voted for.

Roy said he thought abortion played a major role, especially when outside groups handed out leaflets in Catholic churches in heavily Democratic areas the Sunday before the elections.

But Owen said he didn’t think the abortion issue was any more significant than Watergate.

Roy, who died in May at age 88, returned to his medical practice in Topeka after the election. After he retired, he became a regular columnist for the Topeka Capital-Journal.

But his son recalled something his father said many times in later years: “Once politics gets in your blood, the only way to get it out is with embalming fluid.”