Remembering Jimmy Carter, the last Democrat to win a presidential election in Texas

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Texans who worked with Jimmy Carter remember him as a principled and compassionate leader, the last Democrat to win the state in a presidential election. Carter died Sunday afternoon at his home in Georgia at the age of 100.

The peanut farmer-turned-politician was praised for his philanthropy, which continued into his 90s through a single-term presidential term that began with the defeat of Republican President Gerald Ford in 1976.

“He’s just the right person to be president,” John Poland, Carter’s state coordinator for the 1976 Democratic primary, said shortly after learning that Carter would receive hospice care. “He lived what he felt was the right way to live as a Christian.”

Born and raised in Plains, Georgia, Carter spent eight years actively serving in the Navy after his father’s death in 1953 before returning to his home state to take over his family’s peanut growing business.

Carter served as Georgia state senator and governor before winning the 1976 presidential election. Carter came out on top in Texas with 26 electoral votes, a victory he was unable to repeat in 1980 when he lost to Republican Ronald Reagan.

Carter became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Brownsville during the campaign shutdown at the end of the 1980 election season.

He admired the area’s farmland, which he saw during a low-level plane trip from Houston. He praised his achievements in education. He boasted that he had appointed more than 200 Hispanic Americans to senior positions, “more than any other administration in history.”

With polls pointing to defeat, Carter also took a philosophical turn in his speech in Brownsville, talking about the burden of making “final decisions in the solitude of the Oval Office.”

“It’s a lonely job at times, but it can also be rewarding if the American people participate,” he said in a speech on November 1, 1980.

He ended up losing Texas by nearly 14 percentage points, beginning a losing streak for Democratic candidates that lasted for the next 10 presidential elections.

Two Texans players may have had a hand in that loss. In 1980, former Texas Governor John B. Connally Jr. ran for the Republican nomination against Carter. When Connally lost, he supported Republican candidate Ronald Reagan.

That summer, Connally and former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes traveled to the Middle East, meeting with heads of state in various capitals. During the campaign, the Carter administration became embroiled in the Iran hostage crisis, in which 52 Americans were captured in Iran. Nightly news of the crisis strained Mr. Carter’s support, and charges of incompetence made him vulnerable. During the trip, Burns said, Connally instructed Middle Eastern leaders to send a message to Iran that President Reagan would give him better terms if it waited until after the election to release the hostages. .

Burns kept quiet about her trip for decades, only revealing it to The New York Times in March, when it was announced that Carter was in hospice care. Connally died in 1993.

Mr. Connally told Arab leaders in their first meeting, “’Look, Ronald Reagan is going to be elected president, so we’re going to make a better deal with him than with Mr. Carter. We need to tell Iran,’” Burns said. he told the Times. “He said, ‘It would be very wise to tell the Iranian people to wait until after the general election.'” So, let me tell you, I was sitting there and I heard the sound of it. , I realized now, I understand why we are there. ”

Former aides to Mr. Carter speculate that he might have won had he returned the hostages before the election. The 52 Americans were released the day President Reagan took office.

Mr. Carter was introduced to Texans in the 1976 Democratic primary when he ran against Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, a politically established Texan.

“The ‘Jimmy who?’ line wasn’t assembled,” Poland said. “We probably heard that word more than anything else.”

Carter defeated Bentsen, and although the Georgian had been established as the party’s standard-bearer by the time the Texas primary was held, Poland attributed Carter’s success to his service in the Navy and Christian values, including Texas voters. I think this is due to the characteristics that appeal to people.

At the time, Texas was at the end of a century of Democratic control of state politics following the Civil War. There were 133 Democratic members in the 150-member state House of Representatives and 28 in the 31-member state Senate. The biggest political divide was not between Democrats and Republicans, but between liberal and conservative Democrats. However, the Republican Party has made inroads in presidential politics. Richard Nixon won the state by 33 percentage points four years ago, ending the Democratic Party’s winning streak at three. Mr. Carter won the state with 51% of the vote.

But the state was rapidly changing as conservatives flocked to the Republican Party. Two years after Carter was elected, the state elected its first Republican governor since Reconstruction, Bill Clements. Mr. Poland said Mr. Carter served as a model for attracting moderate Southern Democrats, which former President Bill Clinton tried to replicate but failed.

Former Texas Land Secretary Gary Mauro, who ran for president in Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign, recalled him as honest and enthusiastic.

Mauro said Carter never considered excluding people and did not limit access to himself even as his campaign gained momentum. Mauro recalled many times when he dialed a campaign number and the candidate’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, answered the phone.

“He was truly the people’s president,” Mauro said.

Mr. Carter’s influence on the Texas Democratic Party was immense, Mr. Mauro said, and he restructured the state party’s power base to accommodate newcomers to the team.

“Jimmy Carter empowered a whole new generation of leadership in Texas,” Mauro said.

Mr. Poland added that Mr. Carter’s altruistic views remained the same despite his years in politics, and since leaving office, Mr. Carter has taken an active role in promoting human rights through his nonprofit organization, the Carter Center. He added that he accomplished it.

“He went to the same church, worked on the same farm, hung out with the same friends, and continued to live his life as an example of the very compassion he preached,” said Poland’s Carter.

Carter was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Texas, but his legacy remains clear within the party, said Rep. John Bryant, R-Dallas.

Bryant, who served as Carter’s campaign manager in Dallas County during Carter’s first presidential campaign, said: “He is committed to human rights and has a strong message to the Democratic Party that he is for human rights, peace and integrity in government. It gave me confidence.”

Bryant cited the post-presidency years as President Carter’s most influential period.

“Instead of serving on a corporate board, earning big speaking fees, playing golf, he was going to go to Habitat for Humanity. He was at (Carter Center) and… He wrote 30 books, the proceeds of which were donated to nonprofit organizations,” Bryant said, adding that Carter was “just a great example of how to live a life dedicated to the public good.

“He lived his faith. He practiced what he preached,” Bryant said. “It’s very important that the country recognizes that.”

In August 2007, Carter, along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, called on the state of Texas to halt the execution of death row inmate Kenneth Foster, who served as the getaway driver in the murder case. Then-Governor Rick Perry commuted Foster’s sentence to life in prison hours before he was scheduled to be executed.

After Hurricane Harvey, Carter joined four other former presidents — Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton and George H.W. Bush — in donating to recovery efforts. called out. The effort raised more than $41 million in response to 2017’s costliest natural disasters, with extreme flooding in Houston and surrounding areas causing more than $125 billion in damages.

Carter continued his commitment to service throughout his life, helping build and repair homes in Dallas for Habitat for Humanity in 2014, when he turned 90.

“No matter what our faith, we are taught to share what we have with the poor,” he told The Dallas Morning News at the time. “It’s very difficult to cross the gap between someone who has everything and someone who has never owned a proper home. Habitat makes it easy to cross that line.”