Jimmy Carter and the post-reform evolution of the presidential nomination process, Part 2
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 following is a continuation of Part 1:
The Impact of Jimmy Carter's Primary Campaigns on the Presidential Nomination Process
The 1980 campaign: “Changing the rules changes the game”
Just as they had in the 1976 nomination campaign, the Carter campaign team proved adept at understanding and taking advantages of the rules. As incumbent president and de facto party leader, Carter was able to influence the rules to fit his needs as 1980 approached. The president’s campaign had excelled in 1976 by taking advantage of the primary calendar. Wins in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary provided candidate Carter with necessary momentum heading into the March 9 southern showdown in Florida between himself and George Wallace. But it was the Carter team’s foresight nearly a year in advance of the Florida primary that is striking. Grassroots organization in Iowa and New Hampshire was one thing, but to realize more than a year in advance the strategic importance of Florida specifically to their campaign is another altogether. As Elaine C. Kamarck (2005) noted:
“...in the mid-1970s, Jimmy Carter needed to get George Wallace, the only other southerner running, out of the race early; and so, he needed an early Florida primary. And yet Florida was thinking of moving its primary back, into April. So, in 1975, Jimmy Carter, Hamilton Jordan, and Charlie Kirbo made a trip to Tallahassee so that Carter could convince Governor Askew to keep the Florida primary in March instead of moving it later in the spring.”