Iowa played a starring role in the 1976 presidential election when Jimmy Carter, a little-known peanut farmer and former Georgia governor, won the Democratic presidential nomination and then the presidency.
Carter, 100, died Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga.
When Carter announced his presidential aspirations in 1975, he was dubbed “Jimmy Who?” The laid-back, one-term Democratic governor headed to Iowa in early 1975, nearly a year before the Jan. 19, 1976, Iowa Democratic caucuses, the first test of electoral strength in the nation.
Carter spent a lot of time in small towns talking to locals while pointing out he was a fresh voice with no ties to the mess in Washington, which had seen Republican President Richard Nixon resign in 1974 after being impeached.
Second place
Carter didn’t win the Iowa Democratic caucuses — but yet he did.
He finished second behind “uncommitted” delegates, but he outpaced all the other Democratic hopefuls by a solid margin, putting him and his campaign on the national political map.
His showing in Iowa “got him media attention and allowed him to build his campaign more,” according to University of Iowa political science professor Timothy Hagle.
“Carter’s success helped the Iowa caucuses, and the Iowa caucuses helped Carter,” he said.
Hagle said Carter’s campaign began with “a few people in living rooms” and grew. Carter came to Iowa and did the work, he said.
Hagle characterized Carter as a “homespun, easygoing type of a guy. He often referred to himself as a peanut farmer from Georgia,” and being able to discuss farming helped him in Iowa, he said.
‘Refreshing,’ ‘steely’
The Gazette in a March 2, 1975, article described Carter as “a refreshing candidate, making no effort to duck tough questions. He’s small in stature, but facile of tongue and has a nice way of disarming those with opposite points of view, without damaging their egos.
”In other words, he’s sort of like the talented diplomat who could tell you to go to hell in such a charming manner that you looked forward to the trip.“
Former Cedar Rapids resident Joyce Proctor, now of Petersburg, Va., was Carter’s Linn County coordinator in 1975-76 and agreed the Georgian “marketed himself very well. I think he got a lot out of Iowa. The caucuses helped him establish his name” nationally.
She still has a picture of Carter on her desk with a caption that reads, “Hello, I’m Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for president.”
Proctor, who spoke to The Gazette last year when Carter entered hospice care, recalled two interactions with him.
In the first one, she’d spent hours preparing a five-minute introduction of him for a Marshalltown appearance.
“He was so pleased with it he reached out to give me a kiss on the cheek. I took my fist and pushed him back … and then we both smiled.”
Her reaction, she said, was a mixture of surprise and her feminist leanings, and she was unsure how an audience of mostly Iowa Democrats, many of them union members, would react. She chalks Carter’s reaction up to him being a Southerner — where kisses on cheeks apparently were more common
Her second encounter came in Cedar Rapids at the Hotel Montrose on Nov. 22, 1975, where only 45 people showed up — mostly because the event was competing with a Hawkeye football game.
Carter was not pleased. “The steely look in his blue-gray eyes could have cut me though,“ she said, though the experience did not sway her support of Carter.
The Gazette’s Dale Kueter covered the Hotel Montrose event, reporting Carter predicted he would win the Democratic presidential nomination over Sens. Edward Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie. “Big shots can no longer anoint a particular person as candidate,” he said.
Rosalynn as guest
During the run-up to the caucuses, Proctor and her then-husband, Robert van Deusen, also housed Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, and the Carters’ daughter-in-law, Caron, at their Cedar Rapids home on 19th Street SE. (Rosalynn Carter died Nov. 19, 2023.)
Van Deusen, now of Williamsburg, said he fixed breakfast for the future first lady one morning. They had a pleasant conversation, he said, recalling her grace and Southern charm.
Van Deusen, who had coordinated George McGovern’s caucus campaign in 1972 in Linn County, thinks Carter followed McGovern’s successful Iowa caucus strategy: Start early. Carter crisscrossed Iowa in 1975 and talked to a lot of people, he said.
Inauguration
Connie Duncan Birmingham of rural Marion supported Carter but never met the Georgian when he was campaigning in Iowa. But as a press aide to Iowa’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Clark, she was invited to Carter’s inauguration Jan. 20, 1977, and an inauguration ball that followed.
Seeing the nation’s 39th president sworn into office, she said, was “very moving — it was a very powerful historical moment. I felt very privileged to be there.”
A few months later, she met Carter when he returned to thank Iowans for their help and support. Those waiting in line, she said, had name tags. Her long hair was covering her name. Carter reached out and gently brushed her hair aside to read her name tag. “Lovely to meet you, Connie,“ he said.
