United States presidential election of 1976

The Democratic campaign

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With a political career that included only four years as an unheralded state senator and a single term as Georgia’s governor (he was prohibited by state law from seeking a second term), Carter was not given much of a chance early on. Political observers pointed out that, after he stepped down as governor in January 1975, he had no apparent political base, no organization, no standing in the polls, and little or no money with which to finance his campaign. But Carter had been planning his campaign carefully for two years prior to his announcement. His executive secretary, Hamilton Jordan (who would become his campaign manager), drafted the first installment of the Carter campaign plan before the presidential election of 1972. In it and subsequent installments, Carter’s manifest political weaknesses were duly noted, but he and his aides preferred to dwell on his strengths. His background as a naval officer, peanut farmer, agribusinessman, and late-blooming state politician, as well as his extraordinary ability to campaign on such issues as “love” and “trust,” were ideally suited to the mood of a public that, thanks to Watergate and the Vietnam War, had grown weary and cynical toward officials in Washington and politics in general.

Moreover, recent presidential elections had indicated that it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for a Democrat to win the presidency without the support of the old “Solid South” that had played such an important role in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition of the 1930s and ’40s. It was thought that Carter, a “New Southerner,” could appeal to both whites and African Americans and possibly bring the South back into the Democratic fold. He would have to overcome some bias that Northern liberals might have, as well as fears about his fundamentalist, born-again Christian, Southern Baptist faith. But these did not appear to be insurmountable obstacles.

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Carter planned to enter all of the 31 presidential primaries held in 1976 (actually, he entered 30, having failed to qualify a slate of delegates in West Virginia). He correctly assumed that the record number of primaries—plus the limitations on campaign spending and fund-raising imposed by the federal campaign finance law of 1974—would lead his better-known Democratic opponents to pick and choose among the state primaries in order to husband their resources. Carter’s decision to contest the nomination everywhere reflected his knowledge that, as a relative unknown, he needed as much exposure as possible and that the Democratic Party’s new rules would give him a proportionate share of delegates even in states where he did not finish first.

Carter’s plan served him well. Early victories in January’s Iowa caucuses and February’s New Hampshire primary, the results of his effective one-to-one campaigning techniques and his penchant for meticulous organization, put him on the covers of Time and Newsweek and established him as an early front-runner. He went on to defeat Alabama Gov. George Wallace, an “Old Southerner” making what many felt was his last try for national office, in Florida and North Carolina and in every other Southern primary except in Wallace’s home state. Carter scored an unexpectedly strong victory in Illinois and narrowly defeated his main liberal opponent, Rep. Morris K. Udall of Arizona, in Wisconsin. By the time of the April 27 Pennsylvania primary, only two other serious candidates remained in the race, Udall and Sen. Henry M. Jackson of Washington. Carter decisively defeated both of them in Pennsylvania, forcing Jackson out of the race and causing Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, who had been waiting in the wings in the hope that the active candidates would eliminate each other, to decide against an active candidacy for himself.

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Carter’s drive for the nomination was certainly not without setbacks. He lost badly to Jackson in Massachusetts and New York and was embarrassed several times in May by two quixotic latecomers to the race, Gov. Edmund (“Jerry”) Brown, Jr., of California and Sen. Frank Church of Idaho. Still, Carter continued to pile up delegates in state after state even when he did not finish first. By the final day of the primaries, June 8, his nomination had become a foregone conclusion.

Convening in New York City in July, the delegates to the Democratic National Convention managed to suppress any nervousness they felt about Carter’s “outsider” status and nominated him on the first ballot. They approved a platform in keeping with his generally moderate-to-liberal views and cheered his choice of a bona fide liberal, Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota, as his vice presidential running mate. Most delegates appeared to be impressed with Carter’s basically liberal acceptance speech, which he would later describe as "populist" in tone.

The Republican campaign

Meanwhile, Ford, the “accidental president” who had been appointed vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew’s resignation and succeeded to the presidency the next year when Nixon resigned, was having a much harder time of it in the Republican primaries. Despite victories in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Florida. Ford was unable to force his conservative challenger, former California governor Ronald Reagan, out of the race. Reagan went on to beat Ford in North Carolina and to trounce him in Texas, Indiana, and California, as well as in Georgia and several other Southern states. Ford countered with victories in Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Suddenly the Republican Party, which generally prided itself on its decorum, had a civil war on its hands, while the normally fractious Democrats were headed for their most peaceful convention in at least 12 years.

Despite the Ford-Reagan fight during the primaries and immediately afterward, the Republicans nominated Ford on the first ballot at their convention in August. In an effort to strengthen his shaky base in the Midwest and the farm belt, the president surprised many delegates by choosing Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, known as a tough, hard-hitting campaigner, to be his running mate. Ford’s acceptance speech, in which he challenged Carter to a series of televised debates, was probably the best of his career.