He appealed the result and a judge threw out the fraudulent votes, and Carter was handed the election. During his two terms in the state senate, Carter earned a reputation as a tough, independent operator.
He attacked wasteful government practices and helped repeal laws designed to discourage African Americans from voting. Consistent with his past practice and his deeply held principles, when a vote was held in his church to decide on whether to admit blacks to worship there, the vote was nearly unanimous against integration. Of the three dissenting votes, two were cast by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.
In , Carter planned to run for United States Congress. However, a Republican rival announced his candidacy for governor of Georgia, and Carter decided to challenge him. This attempt was a mistake. The civil rights movement had created a conservative backlash in the South ending the solidly Democratic stranglehold on the South.
Liberal Democrats like Carter were especially vulnerable. Although he campaigned hard, he finished a poor third in the Democratic primary. The eventual winner was Lester Maddox, an ultraconservative who proudly refused to allow blacks to enter a restaurant he owned, and who distributed ax handles to white patrons as a symbol of resistance to desegregation required under the Civil Rights Act of Carter was bitterly disappointed by the defeat and was saddled with a substantial debt from it.
He began to position himself for the gubernatorial election almost immediately. In the late s Carter campaigned tirelessly up and down the state. He campaigned on a platform calling for an end to busing as a means to overcome segregation in public schools. Carter thought that in order to win he would have to capture white voters who were uneasy about integration.
Consequently, he minimized appearances before African American groups, and sought the endorsement of several avowed segregationists, including Lester Maddox. The leading newspaper in the state, the Atlanta Constitution, refused to endorse him, and described him as an "ignorant, racist, backward, ultra-conservative, red-necked South Georgia peanut farmer.
The new governor's inaugural address surprised many Georgians by calling for an end to segregation, and received national attention for it. By and large, Carter governed as a progressive and reformer. During Carter's term as governor of Georgia, he increased the number of African American staff members in Georgia's government by 25 percent.
But his primary concern was the state's outdated, wasteful government bureaucracy. Three hundred state agencies were channeled into two dozen "superagencies.
However, he worked poorly with traditional Democratic politicians in the state legislature, and gained a deserved reputation as an arrogant governor, with a "holier than thou" attitude that isolated him from politicians who might otherwise have become his political allies.
While Carter was serving as governor, he was taking careful measure of the national political landscape. The Democratic presidential candidate in was George McGovern, a liberal who steadfastly opposed the war in Vietnam. Carter watched McGovern run an impracticable campaign, in which he was portrayed by his opponents as a radical extremist, and that ended with an overwhelming defeat at the hands of Republican incumbent, Richard Nixon. Governor Carter reasoned that the next election would require a different type of Democrat, and he quietly began laying the groundwork for a run for the White House in Grant Rutherford B.
Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Carter was honorably discharged on 9 October and transferred to the retired reserve at his request with the rank of lieutenant. Read President Carter's complete biography. Naval History and Heritage Command. The Sextant. Social Media. Toggle left navigation Nav. Toggle navigation Menu. After a year there, Carter transferred to Georgia Institute of Technology to study mathematics for a year in order to qualify for the U.
Naval Academy. In , Carter received an appointment to the academy and became a member of the Class of After completing the accelerated wartime program, he graduated on 5 June with distinction and obtained his commission as ensign.
On 7 December , he transferred to the retired reserve with the rank of Lieutenant at his own request. In he won election to the Georgia Senate.
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