By Don Newman

January 2, 2025

I first met Jimmy Carter in December 1974, almost 50 years to the day of his death, at 100 years of age, on December 29th. We met in Kansas City, Missouri at a special convention of the Democratic Party. I had just completed my second year in Washington as the first correspondent posted there by CTV.

Two years earlier, the Democrats had suffered a monumental defeat in the presidential election to Richard Nixon, before the reporting on Nixon’s cover-up of the Watergate break-in led to his resignation in August 1974. Halfway between that presidential election and the next in 1976, the Democrats held a mid-term “mini convention” in the middle of the country to rally their troops.

The Kansas City convention was seen as a showcase for Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination in two years. Senator Edward Kennedy was the party’s star but was still in political purgatory after his 1969 automobile accident on Martha’s Vineyard that killed a young political staffer named Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy said he was not seeking the nomination but would instead run for another term to represent Massachusetts in the Senate.

Into that open field stepped a number of lesser-known candidates, including California Governor Jerry Brown, Alabama Governor George Wallace, Arizona Rep. Mo Udall, Washington Senator Scoop Jackson and Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia. Outside his home state, Carter was virtually unknown and he was in Kansas City to try to change that. Carter anchored himself on the convention floor next to a large riser built to accommodate television cameras from the three American networks and other stations, and foreign networks covering the convention.

I had just stepped down from the platform on to the convention floor when I was approached by a friendly-looking man about my age. In a southern drawl he asked, “Would you like to meet Governor Jimmy Carter from Georgia?”

I said I would, and followed the man around the television platform. That man turned out to be Jody Powell, who was then and later in the White House would be Carter’s Press Secretary. There waiting for us was a middle-aged man, about average height and with a shock of bushy greying hair and a big smile. As I approached, he grinned, held out his hand and said the words that would soon become his underdog trademark:

“My name is Jimmy Carter and I’m running for President.”

We shook hands, spoke briefly, and I took my leave. Frankly, as I walked away, I thought I’d probably never see him again, at least not in person. But I was wrong. Carter kept plugging away, and put himself at least into the conversation for the presidential nomination. Just over a year later as the first primary campaigns were heating up, I saw Carter and Powell again.

As I approached, he grinned, held out his hand and said the words that would soon become his underdog trademark: ‘My name is Jimmy Carter and I’m running for President’

It was in New Hampshire, the first state to test the electability of the candidates and elect delegates for that summer’s convention in New York City. My camera crew and I joined Carter in a large van as we toured around the state looking for Democrats to vote for him. While Carter seemed glad to have us along — it made him look more important to be filmed as he campaigned — he wasn’t too thrilled about where we were from.

“Who did you say you were with?” He asked when we showed up.

“CTV,” I replied.

“Why couldn’t you be from CBS?” he lamented.

In New Hampshire, Carter seemed to have grown. No longer was he hovering behind a TV-camera platform looking a bit forlorn. Now, he confidently strode from pre-arranged event to pre-arranged event. He was a serious candidate with a serious campaign.

Carter, who had stunned observers by coming in second in the Iowa caucuses, narrowly won the New Hampshire primary. Then he won some more. Pretty soon, he was the frontrunner for the nomination. I was with him again on April 27th in Philadelphia when he won the Pennsylvania primary, and signalled in a private conversation with me that he’d pick Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale to be his running mate.

By Inauguration Day, I had moved to the CBC and was standing at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue as Carter made history when he stopped the parade, got out of his limousine and walked with his wife Rosalynn and their daughter Amy the rest of the way to the White House. And after he became president, I was often in the White House briefing room when he met with reporters. On one particular Canadian occasion, he was visited by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who had no trouble calling the President “Jimmy.”  Carter had more trouble with the Prime Minister’s first name, ending up calling him “Peer.”

And I was with Carter at the moment of his greatest triumph. For twelve days, I was at Camp David in Maryland in September 1978 as he cajoled Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to agree to the peace treaty that still stands today. And six months later, I was with him broadcasting live from the North Lawn of the White House as Carter witnessed Begin and Sadat signed the Camp David Accords.

And I was with him at the end, in November 1980, on a Monday evening before the next day’s election in a joint appearance with Mondale in Ohio. The American hostages had been in Iran for more than a year. Carter told Mondale sotto voce to keep the message positive, no mention of the hostages. He still thought he could win. On the flight back to Washington, his aides gave him the bad news. He was going to lose. That night was the last time I saw him.

Jimmy Carter accomplished a great deal. He emerged as a modest man from a small town in the Deep South, which hadn’t produced a president since before the trauma of the Civil War. Over time, I began to believe his modesty was a shell — that he was supremely confident and believed he was always the smartest person in the room, not a rare attribute in occupants of the Oval Office.

Despite that confidence, I never got the impression he was particularly happy with the perquisites of power. Perhaps that satisfaction came in his long, post-presidential life.

Contributing Writer and columnist Don Newman, an Officer of the Order of Canada and lifetime member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, is Executive Vice President of Rubicon Strategy, based in Ottawa.