Jimmy Carter Memory

In 1976, 48 years ago, I was living in Englewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. In the evenings I would go to downtown Denver and do phone-banking for the “Jimmy Carter for President” campaign. Although I did some campaign work in 1972, 1976 was the first presidential election year I was eligible to vote. Although I voted for Congressman Mo Udall from Arizona in the primaries, I thought evangelical Georgia Governor Carter was the perfect candidate to bridge the differences between the North and South following the difficult Watergate and Civil Rights years. 

Phone-banking was strange – cold-calling people, some of them hostile. My fellow callers were kind of unknowable people – professionals mostly; mainly lawyers. When I referred to the woman companion of the phone-bank leader as his wife, I was swiftly corrected by one of the other volunteers, who warned me that we didn’t want any “faux pas.” Oh, now we speak French! Life in the big city has so many levels of complexity. 

On October 4, 1976, Jimmy Carter came to Denver for a downtown rally. I arrived at the rally to help out. As I recall, Carter was speaking from the steps of the Federal building, but it was difficult for anyone to see him, because the national media had set up tables and placed big television cameras directly in front of him. I got angry, and along with others, started yelling at the national media. That felt good. I was pleased that in newcasts that evening you could hear our inarticulate shouts in the background. The hostile local media (after all, in 1976, Colorado was a Republican state) reported that the audience was only 4,000 people. I’m sure that the crowd was bigger than that (although, to be truthful, the downtown buildings did hem in the audience and prevent it from being even bigger). 

After the rally, I returned late to the phone bank headquarters. The leader was closing up shop. “Do you want to come with me to the airport?” he asked. I thought, “Sure, why not?” Only later did I think to ask why we were going to the airport. “We’re going to say farewell to Jimmy Carter,” he replied. Oh boy! 

We barely arrived in time at the foot of the stairs out on the tarmac at Stapleton International Airport. The limousine arrived, Jimmy Carter stepped out, shook hands all around (including mine) and posed for a few photos with the lady volunteers. Given the “lust in his heart” controversy at the time, I thought it notable that he placed his arm around their waists while posing for photos. Then the entire traveling entourage climbed up the steps into the jet aircraft and they headed out for another city. 

Happy 100th birthday to Jimmy Carter!:

As a candidate, Carter’s faith had endeared him to many fellow white evangelicals and cultural conservatives. That made him a difficult foil for Republicans, who wanted to cast Democrats as out-of-step with most of America. The flip side, Scheer noted, was the many young voters and urban liberals — key Democratic constituencies — who “wondered if he was this Southern square.”

“Hamilton Jordan (Carter’s campaign manager) had always called Carter’s faith ‘the weirdo factor,’” said media historian Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor who has written extensively on Carter. “Talking to Playboy was their way to prove he wasn’t some kind of prude.”

Scheer, who was with Carter as part of his traveling press corps, said Playboy’s early text release sparked a frenzy. 

“Reporters were scrambling, asking me, ‘Bob, what is this?” he recalled.