The gubernatorial primary between Jimmy Carter and Carl Sanders in 1970 was the first political campaign I ever worked in. I had just gotten out of the service and was attending Augusta College in Augusta, Ga., my hometown as well as Sanders’. Sanders, a smooth, elegant man who resembled the actor John Forsyth in his youth, was running against a rural legislator named Jimmy Carter, the “goober-natorial” candidate. I worked as a volunteer at Sanders headquarters during the primary.

Carter wasn’t the smiling, near-saint that much of the world believes today. He was a ruthless, mean-spirited pol and brought that same demeanor to his campaign. I was so upset with his primary win, and the way he achieved it, that I voted for a Republican, Hal Suitt, for the first time in my life in the general election. But a few years softened my ire and, sadly, I actually worked for Carter in 1976 and 1980, not in any official capacity, but actively.

My memories of the 1970 campaign were rekindled today by this Washington Examiner piece. It reminded me of much that I’d forgotten about Carter’s tactics:

Readers should refer to Stephen Hayward’s The Real Jimmy Carter if they want a taste of the out-and-out racism that Carter employed in order to defeat moderate former Gov. Carl Sanders for the Democratic nomination that year. As Hayward’s book points out:

* Carter’s top campaign staffers were spotted distributing grainy photographs of Sanders arm-in-arm celebrating with two black men. Sanders was a part-owner of the Atlanta Hawks, and in the photograph he was celebrating a victory with two players who were pouring champagne over his head. Carter’s leaflet was intended to depress Sanders’s white vote.
* “The Carter campaign also produced a leaflet noting that Sanders had paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.”
* Carter criticized Sanders, a former governor, for preventing Alabama Gov. and notorious segregationist George Wallace from speaking on Georgia state property. “I don’t think it was right for Governor Sanders to try to please a group of ultra-liberals, particularly those in Washington, when it means stifling communication with another state,” said Carter.
* “‘I have no trouble pitching for Wallace votes and black votes at the same time,’ Carter told a reporter. Carter also said to another reporter, ‘I can win this election without a single black vote.'”
* Upon receiving the endorsement of former Democratic Gov. Lester Maddox, Carter responded by praising the life-long segregationist: “He has brought a standard of forthright expression and personal honesty to the governor’s office, and I hope to live up to his standard.” Maddox had not only refused to serve blacks in the restaurant he once owned, but he had also greeted civil rights protestors with a gun, and made sticks available to his white customers with which to intimidate them.
*
“The campaign paid for radio ads for a fringe black candidate, C.B. King, in an effort to siphon black votes away from Sanders.”
*
“Then there was the radio commercial in which Carter said he would never be the tool of any ‘block’ vote, slurring over the word ‘block’ so that it could be mistaken for ‘black.’

Carter won the Democratic nomination and the governorship — unsurprisingly, with almost no black support.