Quad-Cities politician, activists’ daughter remember Carter

Her mother and father, Mary Ellen and Lynne Chamberlin, were early supporters of the little-known peanut farmer, Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher and Georgia governor in 1976 as he vied for support ahead of the Iowa caucuses.  

Lynne Chamberlin drove Carter around the Hawkeye State, and Mary Ellen marshalled volunteers, made phone calls and organized for Carter. 

Their efforts, among others, would pay off. Carter launched out of Iowa with a better-than-expected performance in the 1976 Iowa caucuses and rode that wave on to capture the Democratic nomination and White house.

Carter’s campaign offered a grassroots Iowa playbook other lesser-known candidates would try to replicate for decades to come.

Amy Chamberlin, in a phone interview this week after news broke of Jimmy Carter’s death Dec. 31, told the Quad-City Times/Dispatch-Argus her first time meeting Carter was emblematic of his broader political style and appeal.

Carter was flying into the Quad-Cities with reporters, Amy Chamberlin said. Her mom asked her, her sister and a friend to put together sandwiches and pieces of fruit for the people on the plane. She was in high school at the time — probably 16 or 17 years old, she said.

Amy Chamberlin was used to volunteering for her parents’ political activism — she said she leafletted the entire city of Bettendorf at the age of 12 with three of her friends and their moms.

“We started to pack up the lunches and stuff. Next thing I know there’s some guy standing at my elbow asking, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ I turn around and it’s Jimmy Carter,” Amy Chamberlin said. “… He didn’t look around or ask why aren’t these done yet. He stood with us elbow-to-elbow helping us pack lunches for the press guys on the plane. It had a huge impact on me.”

Carter asked the young women about their futures and what they wanted. Having been around other politicians — candidates for congress, governor, president — she was dazzled.

“I was very, very, very impressed by my first meeting with Jimmy Carter. After that, every time he came into Iowa I met him, and he called me his second favorite Amy Lynn,” Amy Chamberlin said. Amy Lynn also happened to be the name of the Carters’ daughter. “We had potlucks with Rosalynn and Jimmy. It was more like an old family friend than dealing with the president of the United States when he was elected. He was that easygoing.”

That folksy demeanor helped win over Iowans, and the nation, as Carter promised to be honest and help heal the nation after fallout and distrust from the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon’s resignation and the Vietnam War.

Bill Gluba is a longtime Democratic politician from Davenport who was supporting a different candidate in the 1976 primary — Fred Harris, whom Gluba describes as a Bernie Sanders-esque candidate of the era.

Gluba gives Mary Ellen Chamberlin a lot of credit for organizing support for Carter ahead of the Iowa caucuses.

“She volunteered over a year at that time, working, doing nothing but helping Jimmy Carter do well in the caucuses,” Gluba said. “In other words, she organized, got on the phone, called people. Just did the grassroots organizing that it takes to get people to go to the caucus for your candidate and convincing people that he’s the real deal.”

“Mary Ellen just did one world of a job of organizing, and he came out of Iowa with 27%,” Gluba said.

“Uncommitted” captured the most support in those Iowa caucuses, with 37.2%. Carter came in second with 27.6%. Birch Bayh, a U.S. Senator from Indiana, got third with 13.2% and Harris, Gluba’s preferred candidate, came in fourth with 9.9%.

“The fact he (Carter) did so well on the grassroots made the caucuses become a big deal nationally,” Gluba said. “He caught the attention of the national media, and that was the launch pad that laid the groundwork for him to become president of the United States.”

Mary Ellen Chamberlin was selected for the platform committee at the Democratic National Convention in New York in July of 1976, according to newspaper reports from the time, and was selected by Carter as the only Iowan to serve on a 43-member Democratic National Campaign steering committee.

The Carters and the Chamberlins remained close in the years following. The Chamberlins did work for Carter’s reelection campaign and would organize visits for Rosalynn, Chip and Amy Carter.

In 1979, Carter returned to the Quad-Cities as president, taking a riverboat called the Delta Queen along the Mississippi River. He stopped for a private reception on the lawn of the Chamberlins’ home at 709 Grand Ave. Davenport.

Reporters and photographers for the Quad-City Times also captured Carter jogging in the fog near Lock and Dam 14, speaking with 13 Quad-Citians by phone from the studio of local radio stations KSTT and WXLP, touring what was then called the Deere Administrative Center in Moline, testing out a Deere bio-mass converter by dumping corn cobs into the machine and greeting ranking officers on Arsenal Island.

Mary Ellen and Lynne Chamberlin would travel to Washington, D.C., for receptions. Mary Ellen even phoned her opposition to a Davenport flood wall to the Oval Office, she would later tell the Christian Science Monitor. The city was pursuing federal funding at the time for a combination earthen dike-floodwall.  

They exchanged Christmas cards and worked on Habitat for Humanity projects even after Carter left office. 

Amy Chamberlin said Jimmy Carter left an indelible mark on her and her family’s life. 

“He was probably the only real deal politician I have ever ever ran into,” Amy Chamberlin said. “Because of mom’s work, we met senators, governors, vice presidents, seated U.S. senators, representatives, seated justices, the list was endless. Meeting Jimmy Carter really changed something in me. And that’s the only way I can describe it. It was a life changer.”