How the man from Plains became governor: The early years of Jimmy Carter

Carter's three campaigns in Georgia before his White House bid tell the tale of a changing South—and a man who changed with it

Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn at the headquarters of his campaign for governor in 1966, following his stronger-than-expected performance in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary.

Former President Jimmy Carter died on Sunday at the age of 100, and in keeping with our focus at The Downballot, in the piece that follows, we take stock of his early electoral career in Georgia that set the stage for his dark-horse White House bid in 1976.

Carter was elected twice to the state Senate in the 1960s before winning the governorship on his second try in 1970, a victory that came after he employed tactics to appeal to supporters of segregationist politicians. But the new governor would shock the political world just months later with an inaugural address declaring, "The time for racial discrimination is over."

The Politics of the South

Carter grew up at a time when southwestern Georgia, like most of the South, was a one-party region run by pro-segregation Democrats. A central pillar in upholding white dominance was a rigged voting method called the "county unit" system, an Electoral College-esque scheme that gave small and predominantly white rural counties like Carter's native Sumter County massively disproportionate influence in the all-important Democratic primary.

The politics of the South suffused Carter's own upbringing, too: The future president's father and namesake, James Carter Sr., was an ardent supporter of Gov. Eugene Talmadge—who stood out even at the time for his virulent racism—and of Eugene's son and successor, Herman Talmadge.

Jimmy Carter had left Georgia in 1943 to enroll in the U.S. Naval Academy but resettled in his hometown of Plains after his father died in 1953, just a few months after the elder Carter had been elected to the state House as a Talmadge ally.

The younger Carter took over not just the family's struggling farming business, but as Jonathan Alter details in his Carter biography, "His Very Best"—which was an indispensable source for this obituary—Carter exceeded even his father's prodigious habit of joining local organizations, connections that would prove fruitful as he began his political rise.

One of these groups was the Sumter County Board of Education, an appointed body his father had served on. Carter was already known locally for personally opposing segregation, but Alter writes that when it came to actual policy, he'd never have been allowed on the board if "he had been considered unreliable on school desegregation."

And while Carter made enemies for being the only prominent white man in Plains to refuse to join the White Citizens Council, he remained quiet about the injustices inflicted on Black residents by local officials like Sheriff Fred Chappell, whom Martin Luther King Jr. would call "the meanest man in the world."

1962: His First Campaign

Carter got his chance to run for the state Senate in 1962 after the Supreme Court handed down a groundbreaking ruling in Baker v. Carr, a case that enshrined the principle of "one person, one vote" and soon led to both the end of the county unit system and a dramatic transformation of Georgia's legislative maps. New primaries were ordered for October, and Carter decided to run for a new district that did not have an incumbent.

Carter recounted decades later that he'd only informed his wife, Rosalynn, about his plans when she saw him changing into a coat to head to the courthouse to file his candidacy papers and mistakenly believed he was heading to a funeral. (This was far from the last time he'd surprise his family with his political ambitions: When Carter told his mother, Lillian Carter, that he was running for president, she replied, "President of what?")

Carter had just 10 days to campaign for the nomination in the seven-county district, which still retained a virtually all-white electorate in these final years of the Jim Crow era, but the first-time contender had some advantages. In addition to being a prominent agricultural businessman and now the chair of the county Board of Education, Carter was also a past president of the influential Georgia Crop Improvement Association.

Social connections, including his membership in the Lions Club, helped as well: The Carters were part of a square-dancing group that had members throughout the district. He would reminisce, "Had we not square-danced, I never would have been elected." Also working in his favor was the fact that his mother was a prominent nurse in the area.

However, while Carter would call his opponent, Homer Moore, "an honest, hard-driving, ambitious and active community leader," the same could not be said about Moore's patron. Quitman County political boss Joe Hurst, Carter recounted, told an ally, "I'm getting ready to stuff the ballot box."

Hurst didn't care whether or not fraud was actually necessary for his allies to win, saying, "Well, we do it every time, and I don't want my people to get out of practice." This time was no different, and it appeared that Quitman County had indeed cost Carter the win.

"Jimmy is so naive"

"Jimmy is so naive, so naive," the future president remembered his mother saying as the election was slipping away. But it turned out this time was different after all: Carter fought back in court against Hurst's fraud with the help of evidence uncovered by journalist John Pennington.

Election officials eventually ordered Carter to be listed as the Democratic nominee in a race where, in true "solid South" fashion, no one else was on the ballot for the general election. However, there wasn't enough time to print new ballots just four days before Election Day, so the Carter family and some friends showed up at each county seat and stamped "Jimmy Carter" on the ballots.

The night before the election, however, a judge ruled that no candidate should be listed on the ballot and said that the matter should be settled through a write-in battle between Carter and Moore. Sumter and Quitman counties, though, continued to identify Carter as the nominee. He ultimately won 58-42, with Carter later writing that once-corrupt Quitman County had backed him heavily after "the voters felt for the first time in many years that they were free from oppression."

In the state Senate, Carter had the satisfaction of helping collect further evidence against Hurst that sent him to jail for his many crimes, and he earned another term without opposition in 1964. Alter credits what would be Carter's sole reelection with his successful push to transform his alma mater, Georgia Southwestern College in the small city of Americus, from a two-year to a four-year institution.

Carter continued to say little publicly about racial discrimination during this time, even as Chappell and other authorities employed lethal violence against activists in Americus. Carter would admit decades later, "I never claimed to have been courageous during the civil rights movement. I wasn't."

Carter's uncontested 1964 win took place at the same time that Barry Goldwater became the first Republican presidential nominee ever to carry Georgia, four months after President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act. Lillian Carter ran LBJ's campaign in Sumter County, and her son recollected that her "automobile would be covered with scatological phrases written in soap on the sides, and her radio antenna would be tied in a knot." Goldwater took close to 70% in the county, and his coattails would set the stage for the next phase of Carter's career.

That same year, Bo Callaway became the first Republican to win a U.S. House seat in Georgia since Reconstruction when he flipped the 3rd District, which included Carter's home turf. Carter quickly began preparing to challenge the new incumbent two years down the line, though he said he was motivated by more than just a desire to serve in Congress.

"Bo and I were competitors at a young age. I went to Annapolis, he to West Point," Carter explained in 2014, not long after Callaway's death. "He wanted the first southwest Georgia four-year college in Columbus, I wanted it in Americus." While the two became friends decades later, Carter remembered, "He defected from the Democratic Party, I remained loyal."

1966: A Surprise Bid for Governor

That House duel, though, never took place. Callaway announced in May 1966 that he would run for governor, and despite the many hours Carter had spent planning out his congressional bid, he quickly followed Callaway into that contest.

Alter suggests that Carter would have easily won the 3rd District had he stayed the course (Democrat Jack Brinkley decisively won the general election after a close primary and never faced any serious opposition during his 16-year career), but his change of heart proved to be an important decision. As one ally in the legislature later put it, "You'd never have heard of Jimmy Carter outside of Georgia if Bo hadn't switched."

But for months, it appeared that few people inside Georgia would ever hear of Carter, much less vote for him. The unquestioned front-runner in the September Democratic primary to succeed Gov. Carl Sanders, who was barred by state law from running for a second consecutive term, initially was the popular former Gov. Ernest Vandiver, but he dropped out following a heart attack.

The new favorite was former Gov. Ellis Arnall, an anti-Talmadge politician elected in 1942 who had infuriated segregationists by refusing to fight court rulings to desegregate primaries.

With Vandiver gone, Arnall's main adversary was Lester Maddox, a frequent candidate who had recently made national headlines by chasing Black activists away from his restaurant with an axe handle. (Arnall would later say he'd recruited Maddox into the race in order to split segregationists, a claim Maddox denied.) Also in the running was another prominent racist, publisher and former state party chair James Gray.

Not Even Registering in the Polls

Carter, who waged what Alter characterizes as a "disciplined, ideologically hazy campaign focused on integrity and reform," looked like a minor player well into the race. A New York Times article describing a poll taken about a month before the primary that showed Arnall at 43% as Maddox led Gray 20-19 for the second spot in a likely runoff didn't even bother to report Carter's performance.

In fact, that piece, published just days before the election, lumped Carter in as one of the "two other candidates" in the race; the other was "a perennial candidate who seems to run for the fun of it."

But the senator had developed useful connections across the state through his farming business and service on planning boards. He also had a venue to speak at any of the 180 Lions Club locations in the state, which gave him access to small towns far from his geographic base. The future president, while struggling with pre-written speeches, nonetheless proved to be an effective retail campaigner and debater: A prominent state journalist wrote during that race that it was hard to hear Carter speak without "admiring his integrity."

Carter also attracted notice for what the Times characterized as his resemblance to "President Kennedy in appearance," though he was careful to distance himself from the Kennedy family and other national Democrats. Carter instead linked himself to segregationist Sen. Richard Russell by calling himself a "Dick Russell Democrat," a label he'd only shed after Russell died in 1971. However, Carter still stood out by refusing to weaponize racism and was even one of the first statewide candidates to visit Black churches, though he didn't emphasize his appearances.

Carter benefited from the help of several people who would be by his side throughout his political career, including Charles Kirbo, who had important ties to the Atlanta political establishment, and Hamilton Jordan, who began by organizing University of Georgia students but would later see his role expand dramatically. Rosalynn and Lillian Carter, who would be visible parts of all of Carter's campaigns, stumped for him across the state, though Lillian Carter left the country two weeks before the election to join the Peace Corps in India.

Another early ally was ad man Gerald Rafshoon who, after nearly driving "off the road" upon hearing a Carter radio ad that was "beyond horrible," persuaded him to create the "first cinéma vérité type of advertising in Georgia."

"They" say he can't win

The commercial Rafshoon pitched told the audience, '''They' say he can't win. 'They' say he doesn't have the backing, but 'they' don't make the difference—you make the difference." Rafshoon would recollect that a prominent adviser hated the idea but Carter, who would always serve as his own top campaign strategist, was impressed.

Despite his apparently poor polling, Alter writes that Carter appeared well-positioned to make a runoff with Arnall until the final days of the race, when unrest broke out in Atlanta's Summerhill neighborhood after police shot a Black man they accused of being a car thief. The former governor took 29% while Maddox, who likely benefited from the events in Summerhill, edged out Carter 24-21 for second as Gray grabbed 19%.

The New York Times was surprised by Carter's strong showing, but Carter was angry and frustrated he'd lost out to a "clown" like Maddox. The defeated candidate immediately made it clear he'd run for governor again in 1970 rather than seek a lower post like lieutenant governor.

However, he also recognized that he'd have to avoid alienating the Maddox supporters he'd need in four years. Carter thus remained neutral in the primary runoff, which Maddox won, and he didn't back the nominee in the general election against his old foe Callaway.

State Sen. Leroy Johnson, who was the first Black member of the body since Reconstruction, argued that African Americans and white liberals angry at having to choose between two candidates opposed to civil rights wanted a write-in option of "the Jimmy Carter type," but it was Arnall who submitted his name as an alternative.

Arnall's presence allowed Callaway to edge out Maddox by three-tenths of one percent, but under Georgia law at the time, that wasn't enough for victory. Because Callaway had failed to win a majority of the vote, the Democratic-dominated legislature instead got to choose the winner and picked Maddox. (Two years later, voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the state constitution requiring a runoff in such situations, a rule that remains in place today.)

1970: Cufflinks Carl and the Stink Tank

Carter started raising money for his 1970 bid in November of 1966 to succeed the already termed-out Maddox (governors would only earn the right to seek reelection in 1977, when Carter himself was president), but he once again began the primary as the underdog.

His main opponent this time was Sanders, who had attracted sports franchises and major projects to the state and stood out as a Southern governor who didn't relentlessly oppose desegregation. An internal Carter poll conducted about a year before the contest showed Sanders with a wide 53-21 edge, but it also identified some weaknesses that could be exploited.

That survey, as historian Randy Sanders would write in his detailed retrospective of the race, found that a large portion of the former governor's own backers saw him as someone who had gotten rich after leaving office and resented his connections to D.C. and "Atlanta bigwigs." Carter made the decision to portray Sanders as "more liberal" than the state and a wealthy "brash, young, eager man who doesn't deserve to be governor," a strategy he stuck to throughout the campaign.

Carter also recognized he had to appeal to supporters of Maddox and once-and-future Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the segregationist who had carried Georgia as a third-party candidate in the 1968 presidential election, while still being careful not to alienate Black voters and white liberals he'd need for the general election. (Alter adds that Carter's own conscience "wouldn't allow him to criticize integration directly.")

What followed was a campaign where Carter avoided the overt racism that had long defined state politics while employing what his biographer called "dog whistles and code words."

The most infamous of these was a photo showing Sanders, who was a co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise, being showered with champagne by a Black player. This picture, dubbed the "champagne shampoo," was spread by the Carter campaign's "stink tank," a bureau designed to operate supposedly without Carter's knowledge to give him plausible deniability about its actions.

The stink tank distributed fliers with the image across the state, including at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Sanders remained angry for the rest of his life, declaring just before he died in 2014 that the message his opponent wanted to send was, "Here's Carl Sanders making love with the blacks."

The Carter campaign's TV ads, meanwhile, sought to frame the race as a choice between a humble farmer and the man he'd dubbed "cufflinks Carl" even though Alter says the two opponents had "comparable net worths." One spot showed Carter harvesting peanuts as the narrator asked, "[C]an you imagine any of the other candidates for governor working in the hot August sun? Isn't it time someone spoke up for you?"

Another anti-Sanders ad featured a shot of a country club door and proclaimed it was "where big-money boys play cards, drink cocktails, and raise money for their candidate, Carl Sanders."

But not only did Carter hold his own closed-door fundraisers, he also benefited from his friendship with David Rabhan, a wealthy businessman who volunteered his services right after the 1966 campaign ended. Rabhan, who was close to the King family, served as the candidate's private airplane pilot throughout the race, which allowed Carter to easily visit small rural areas. Rabhan at one point even presented the cash-starved campaign with a pre-signed check with the amount left blank.

Carter benefited as well from Sanders' own missteps, including the presumptuous-sounding slogan "Carl Sanders ought to be governor again" and a jingle that the Times said "sounded like a tooth paste commercial."

Also hurting Sanders was the presence on the ballot of C. B. King, who was the first Black person to run for governor. King, a civil rights leader who was not related to Martin Luther King Jr., had some support from African American groups, though Johnson, the state senator, was a prominent Sanders ally. Carter's stink tank worked to draw Black voters from Sanders to King by creating a fake "Black Concern Committee," while Rafshoon's agency created radio ads for King.

"You won't like my campaign, but you will like my administration"

Carter, who told civil rights attorney Vernon Jordan, "You won't like my campaign, but you will like my administration," nevertheless openly sought Black support and pledged to appoint African Americans to government posts. He also had a productive meeting with Martin Luther King Sr. during the race, though Daddy King (as he was known) still backed Sanders.

Carter's campaign often had two different organizations in each county, one targeting Wallace-Maddox supporters and one aimed at winning over voters who favored integration. But even as Carter complained that the Atlanta newspapers "projected me as an ultra conservative racist, which I am not," he showed up the next day at a segregated private school to discuss private education.

Carter came close to winning the primary outright with 48.6%, while Sanders led King by a wide 38-9 margin for second. Sanders, recognizing he was in trouble for the runoff, went on the attack and portrayed the new front-runner as a phony, saying, "The last time Carter worked in the fields in the hot August sun was when his slick advertising agency took the pictures you see on television every day."

Carter defended his lead by arguing he'd become the target of a "smear" effort, while his team kept what they called the "smear sheet airlift" from circulating by pretending to be Sanders campaign workers to intercept his fliers and burn them.

During the second round of voting, Carter secured endorsements from two well-known segregationists, former Gov. Marvin Griffin and former state House Speaker Roy Harris. Sanders tried to capitalize by circulating a newspaper cartoon showing Carter climbing into bed with Harris, but it was far from enough. Instead, Carter's team welcomed the Atlanta papers' hostility, knowing that the voters he was trying to reach distrusted those he called the "big-shots that own the Atlanta newspapers."

Carter won 59-41, taking about 75% of the white vote as Sanders secured over 90% of African American voters. Carter never apologized for the way he ran his campaign, telling Alter decades later, "If I could rewrite it, I would have made a public statement, 'I don't want any supporters of Richard Russell to support me. I don't want to be associated with Roy Harris—because they're racists and I'm not a racist.' … But that would have been the end of my political career." Sanders, meanwhile, said before he died, "He is not proud of that election, and he shouldn't be proud of it."

The new nominee faced only weak opposition in the general election from Republican Hal Suit, a former TV anchor who had little support in what was still a Democratic-run state. Carter went on to publicly break with Harris and finished the contest by appearing more often among Black audiences than with white crowds. Johnson endorsed Carter despite the way Carter had campaigned in the primary, saying shortly afterward, "I understand why he ran that kind of ultra-conservative campaign … you have to do that to win. … I don't believe you can win in this state without being a racist."

A New Direction

Just days before Carter's 59-41 victory over Suit, though, he had a conversation with Rabhan that would start to change everything for him. Carter's advisers believed Rabhan would get him into trouble as governor, with Kirbo saying, "I told Jimmy to make a deal and get rid of that loon." Carter heeded that advice and, preparing to part ways, diplomatically asked his pilot what he could do for him after the race was over.

After thinking it over, Rabhan made Carter initial a pledge, written on a flight map, to say in his inaugural address, "The time for racial discrimination is over." Carter was reluctant to make that kind of declaration while on the same platform as Maddox, who was about to be elected to the powerful post of lieutenant governor, but he assented.

Carter did indeed utter those fateful words in January of 1971, a move that shocked the Georgia political world. Alter summed up the reactions of Carter's friends and foes alike by citing the response of one civil rights activist: "He said whaaat?" A dozen conservative Carter allies in the state Senate protested by walking out. The governor, though, backed up his declaration with deeds, and he soon graced the cover of Time Magazine with the caption, "Dixie whistles a different tune."

That was some of the first national exposure Carter, who just four years earlier had been an afterthought in campaign coverage, would receive before beginning another improbable ascent—one that would take him to the White House.