Jimmy Carter and the post-reform evolution of the presidential nomination process, Part 1
A look at how the 39th president and his campaigns influenced how presidential nominees in the United States are chosen
To mark the 30th anniversary of his inauguration back in 2007, the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia held a conference on the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The Carter Presidency: Lessons for the 21st Century, a three-day event organized by Professor John Maltese, was a wide-ranging exploration of impact the Georgia native had on various aspects of American politics before, during and after his term in the White House.
Maltese also envisioned an edited volume as an offshoot of that conference. And while that book was ultimately scrapped, the paper my UGA colleagues, Paul Gurian and Audrey Haynes, and I added to the effort survived. Upon President Carter’s passing, I will share a serialized version of that paper, lightly edited to account for the passage of nearly two decades, in this space.
As a preface, I will add that Carter did influence the nomination processes that followed him. However, he was in some respects also the beneficiary being in the right place at the right time in the immediate aftermath of the reforms to the Democratic presidential nomination process ahead of the 1972 cycle. Someone, for example, was going to be the first to identify the importance of the early contests in a sequential process through the states. That was George McGovern in 1972, but Carter hammered the lesson home for subsequent aspirants in 1976. Someone was going to recognize the value in having advantageous states at helpful (and/or early) spots on the primary calendar. While state-level actors played a role, Jimmy Carter and his campaign team were again on the cutting edge of the slippery slope that would come to be known as frontloading. Carter left his mark on the process of how Americans nominate presidential candidates, a mark that even while the process has continued to evolve in ways both big and small, remains imprinted on the blueprints that have guided and will guide those who seek those nominations.
The Impact of Jimmy Carter's Primary Campaigns on the Presidential Nomination Process
Presidential primary rules have been shown to influence outcomes, oftentimes in ways that were unanticipated. In no other American political institution do the rules of engagement change so frequently. Since the late 1960s the presidential nomination process has undergone change upon change in the rules that govern delegate allocation, the schedule of primaries, campaign finance, and so forth. Candidates running for the parties’ nominations have attempted to take advantage of these rules and, when they had the opportunity, to influence the rules. Jimmy Carter stands out in both of these categories as a modern icon. As a candidate he was able to use the uncertainty created by the new rules to his advantage. As president he utilized his power to influence the rules of the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination campaign with some success. Carter’s strategies are still employed by candidates, although their ability to emerge from the pack has been constrained by the rise of frontloading.
Each modern nomination campaign has involved a slightly different set of rules. In the 1970s and early 1980s, momentum was the dominant dynamic in these campaigns. Longshot candidates like George McGovern (in 1972), Jimmy Carter (in 1976), George H.W. Bush (in 1980) and Gary Hart (in 1984) used victories in Iowa or New Hampshire as a springboard to become a major candidate for the nomination. State legislatures soon realized that by moving their primaries to an earlier date, they could exert more influence on the party’s selection of a presidential nominee (Putnam 2007, 2010). This phenomenon has come to be known as frontloading. By 2000, there were so many primaries so soon after Iowa and New Hampshire that the frontrunners in both parties were able to effectively capture the nomination within weeks of the first contests. Frontloading appears to have dampened the potential impact of momentum, although the results of more recent campaigns seem to belie that conclusion. Despite major changes in the schedule, Carter’s emphasis on the importance of the first contests still rings true.
The rules and procedures governing nomination campaigns condition the interactions between the candidates, the voters, donors and the news media. These rules have both normative and strategic implications (Crespin 2001; Geer 1986; Gurian 1990; Haskell 1992). They influence the strategic calculations candidates make in allocating resources, which affect the outcomes of the primaries (Dunn 1994; Haynes, Gurian and Nichols 1997; Norrander 2000; Parent, Jilson and Weber 1987). These results affect each candidate’s probability of nomination via their impact on media coverage, fundraising, the acquisition of delegates and thus the field of active candidates (Aldrich 1980a, 1980b; Damore 1997; Lengle and Shafer 1976; Marshall 1981).
Here, we will examine the changes that emerged in presidential nomination politics from the traditional convention-dominated system to the current system. We will give special attention to the strategically innovative Carter campaign of 1976 and the combative battle in the Democratic Party’s nomination campaign in 1980 where a sitting president found himself utilizing his entire arsenal, including manipulation of the rules, to win. We will end with a discussion of the impact that Carter’s playbook, directed in large part by his campaign manager Hamilton Jordan, had on the strategies of contemporary political aspirants seeking their party’s nomination for the presidency.