By the 1970s however, especially after the watergate scandal, Republican successes in Wisconsin began to diminish significantly. In 1976, the state voted for Democrat Jimmy Carter to become President, and by the late 1970s, the Republicans had been completely shut out of power at both the state and federal levels of government, with the Democrats controlling all statewide executive offices and holding a supermajority in the Wisconsin state legislature. During this time, more conservative factions of the party started to grow in power, with the moderates becoming increasingly irrelevant. This trend eventually led to the rise of Lee S. Dreyfus, who ran for governor as a Republican in 1978. Dreyfus, a party outsider who had become fearful of a one-party system after a visit to communist China, and ran because he believed Wisconsin was at risk of becoming a one-party state under the Democrats, moved the Republicans in a fiscal conservative direction, echoing the national trend that occurred with the rise of Ronald Reagan. Dreyfus's fiscal conservatism and populist sentiments, while still remaining generally moderate on social issues, would ultimately lead him to win the governorship, ending unified Democratic control of the state. Later in 1980, Wisconsin voted for Reagan in his successful presidential bid, and conservative Robert W. Kasten Jr. unseated three-term incumbent Democrat Gaylord Nelson in the state's election for U.S. Senate.