Political Operative
In 1976, I was a campaign operative, a “Field Coordinator” for the Carter/Mondale Presidential campaign. My job duties varied. I was “in charge” of campaign activities for six rural counties in Ohio including Miami University, the Get Out the Vote and “illegal” sign operations in Hamilton County (Cincinnati), and statistics for the entire region. It was the perfect job for a twenty year-old willing to “sell out” for a political campaign; 100 hours of work a week, often snatching a couple of hours in a sleeping bag on the floor in the office, or in the back of my 1967 Volkswagen “Squareback”.
(I learned a hard lesson about the Volkswagen: never, ever, drive it to the United Auto Workers Hall in Hamilton, Ohio. The Union President wrapped his huge arm around my shoulder and made it clear: he wouldn’t tolerate a “foreign” car in his parking lot. I borrowed Dad’s 1969 Old’s Cutlass for trips after that – the UAW guys loved it, and it got me to Hamilton a lot faster anyway).
In the Bullpen
It was exciting, I was a part of a “big” cause, electing the President of the United States. I had my three-piece suit and my Bicentennial Tie (it was 1976), and my “staff” Carter/Mondale button. And for that, I got $75 a week, a check from the Campaign in Atlanta (OK, that’s not quite as bad as it sounds – in 2023 dollars that’s $400 a week). Oh, and I had a desk in our “headquarters” in the sleezy Ft. Washington Hotel between Sixth and Seventh Street downtown. I was in the “bullpen” with the other young coordinators.
Only Paula and Mike, the County and Regional Coordinators got their own offices. My desk was just outside the “phone bank”, where twenty phone lines were used to reach out to voters. In the last few weeks of the campaign, there was ten hours-a-day of the constant murmur of high school kids and older women, calling registered Democrats for the Carter campaign to ask what they thought of the former Governor of Georgia. Today we’d call it “push polling”, but back then it was just another check, a contact to a registered voter. Mike said the “magic number” was five; five contacts to “insure” a Carter vote.
Surrogates
Around the first week of October, Mike said to stay close to Cincinnati. While I should keep my rural counties going, the “big cheese” for the campaign was Cincinnati, in Hamilton County. If we could win here, or at least keep it very close, then the urban areas up north; Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, Toledo; would bring Carter across the finish line for a win in Ohio. (That strategy ultimately worked – Carter won Ohio by a little over 11,000 votes out of 4 million). And Mike introduced me to a new duty, being part of the “team” for Carter “surrogates” who came into town.
I got to meet “Jimmy” (he insisted we call him that, not Governor). It was a brief fly-in, a “meet and greet”, with a few thousand supporters at a local airport. His plane swooped in, Jimmy talked to the crowd, then he came into the terminal and gave us local staff a quick pep-talk and handshake, then flew back out again. Beside shaking the hand of the future President, the most notable event of that day, was Senator Howard Metzenbaum. He was left at the airport by his own staff. He “bummed” a ride back downtown with me, in the Volkswagen Squareback. Me, driving with a US Senator in the passenger seat.
The Family
I got to spend a little more time with the rest of the Carter family. Rosalynn (pronounced Rose-a-linn) came into town in the middle of October. While she had a full Secret Service detail in protection, Mike delegated a “staffer” to be with her as she went to campaign events. It was important to brief her on who she would meet, what they did, and what the local “issues” might be. She was amazing; intellectually, politically, and as a person. Rosalynn had the ability to make anyone she talked to feel that they were the center of her attention. She was gracious, and kind and caring.
Rosalynn showed me a new reality: that politics, particularly national politics, is a team effort. Sure Jimmy was the candidate; but his wife, children; even daughters-in-law all bore the burden of communicating his ideas. Rosalynn was an impressive campaigner, so were the daughter’s in-law. I took one on a college campus “tour” to meet the campaigns I helped establish there.
Not quite so much the sons. And, for those with a really long memory, one of the best Carter “surrogates” was Jimmy’s mother, Lillian. She was already accomplished – a career nurse and a Peace Corps volunteer at sixty-eight years of age, and now approaching eighty, she campaigned across the Nation for her son.
Fifty Years On
It was the two-hundred year anniversary of the United States. At that time, we were recovering from Vietnam and the Watergate political debacle. And it wasn’t just those, it was the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King, and even the attempt on George Wallace’s life. In 1976, it took both a solid family from Georgia, and, a solid family from Michigan, President Gerald Ford and Betty and their kids, to help bring the Nation back to normal.
Here we are now, just two years from the two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the USA. And we are again in the midst of new crises; both in the world and in American politics. In the campaign of ’76, both candidates and their families helped. Ford’s gracious acceptance of defeat, and Jimmy’s magnanimous victory, healed political wounds.
Jimmy is ninety-nine years old now. Rosalynn passed away this past weekend. The former President lost the love of his life. He and Rosalynn were married for seventy-five years. The graciousness they brought to the White House helped heal a Nation. The purpose they showed in their post-Presidential life set an example for the world.
We are still searching for today’s “example”, the families that can bring our country back to normalcy. It seems we have a long way to go.
