Jimmy Carter

:For the submarine, see USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23).

Early political career

Carter started his career by serving on the Plains school board. In the 1960's, he served two terms in the Georgia State Senate.

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In his 1970 campaign, Carter was elected governor on a pro-George Wallace platform. Carter's campaign aides handed out photographs of his opponent, former Gov. Carl Sanders, showing Sanders associating with black basketball players. On the stump, he promised to re-appoint an avowed segregationist to the state Board of Regents. But, following his election, Carter said in speeches that the time of racial segregation was over, and that racial discrimination had no place in the future of the state. He was the first state-wide office holder in the Deep South to say this in public (such sentiments would have signaled the end of the political career of politicians in the region less than 15 years earlier, as was the case with Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen Jr., who testified before Congress in favor of the Voting Rights Act). Carter served as governor of the state of Georgia from 1971 to 1975.

Related Topics:
1970 - George Wallace - Carl Sanders - Racial segregation - Racial discrimination - Deep South - Atlanta - Ivan Allen Jr. - Voting Rights Act - Governor - 1971 - 1975

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When Carter entered the Democratic Party Presidential primaries in 1976, he at first was considered to have little chance against nationally better-known politicians. However, the Watergate scandal was still fresh in the voters' minds, and so his position as an outsider, distant from Washington, DC, became an asset. He ran an effective campaign, did well in debates, and won his party's nomination and then the election, receiving 50.1% of the popular vote, making him one of only two Democratic Party Presidential Candidates to win a majority of the popular vote since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944.

Related Topics:
Democratic Party - 1976 - Watergate scandal - Washington, DC - Popular vote - Franklin Delano Roosevelt - 1944

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The centerpiece of his campaign platform was government reorganization. Carter was the first candidate from the Deep South to be elected president since Reconstruction.

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