Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Maybe dad’s fourth time a charm

Sun reporter J. Patrick Coolican sat down for a one-on-one interview with former President Jimmy Carter on Monday. Here's some of what Carter said.

On losing Nevada as a 1976 presidential candidate:

On negative campaigning:

How Congress has changed:

During the Civil War, we were regionally divided. Now, we're divided by party. But there's a growing reaction against the stalemate in Congress, a growing realization among the House and especially the Senate that a new approach to bipartisanship must be identified.

On new calls for energy independence:

Now, it's up to 12 million barrels. That is a scandal of the Bush administration. We've really hurt our country, and it debilitates our foreign policy. It doesn't allow us to question the Saudis or other nations. It puts handcuffs on us.

Sure, colitis is never fun, especially the extreme kind. But for Jack Carter, who contracted it about 10 days ago and has been in the hospital since last week, his colon inflammation may have been a fortuitous - if painful - gift to his U.S. Senate campaign.

His father, former President Jimmy Carter, came to visit and campaigned in his son's place Sunday and Monday, garnering a lot of free media in the process. He spoke Spanish to a Mexican Independence Day crowd in Freedom Park, and then spoke some more to Spanish-language media. That was followed by a gaggle of local English-speaking media.

Jack Carter was recovering at Summerlin Hospital Medical Center, where doctors kept him for observation as they awaited further test results.

The story line was heartwarming and easy to tell - humane former president visits sick son - and the result was a publicity jolt that's almost impossible to put a value on.

Still, the former president's presence raises questions about the viability of Jack Carter's challenge to Sen. John Ensign, the well-funded Republican incumbent. Namely, Carter is running largely on the strength of name recognition he's borrowing from a one-term president who lost Nevada three times and is no favorite of Republicans in the state.

As Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: The former president is a political "mixed bag" for his son's campaign.

Sabato conceded that Jack Carter would benefit from the free publicity. The former president is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, known worldwide as a humanitarian and deeply Christian man. He also can be an effective fundraiser for his son, with his vast network of wealthy friends.

But Sabato said the former president runs the risk of becoming a polarizing figure.

Indeed, Jimmy Carter, speaking to reporters at a campaign stop Sunday, went right after Ensign.

"I don't think there's any doubt that Jack's opponent has been among the most subservient members of the U.S. Senate to anything that the Bush administration has advocated," Carter said. Although he didn't mention Ensign by name, he said: "Jack's opponent has been in bed with the Bush administration."

Although a recent Wall Street Journal/Zogby Interactive poll suggested that the race was tightening, Jack Carter has a tall mountain to climb. He moved to the state less than four years ago and has far less money for his campaign than Ensign. As of July 26, the end of the last federal reporting period, Ensign had more than $3.2 million cash on hand, compared with Carter's $380,000.

The lack of money means Carter will have difficulty getting his message out. The former president's visit helps raise his son's profile, but a quarter century ago, that association would not have been a good thing.

Then, the Panama Canal Treaty and the MX missile system were two big irritants to Nevadans during Carter's presidency, said Michael Green, a Nevada historian at the Community College of Southern Nevada. But Green said those negatives have long been eclipsed by Carter's work as a statesman and humanitarian.

"I think more people look favorably upon him now, certainly many more than turned him out of office in 1980," Green said.

An improved image doesn't necessarily mean that voters would entrust him with high office again, however. By extension, that trust, or lack of it, is likely to play a role in how Nevadans view Carter's efforts to help his son.

Jack Carter does have one factor working in his favor - Nevada's changing demographics, fueled by its explosive growth, which has state voter registration trending Democratic. In 1980, more than 62 percent of the Nevada electorate voted for Ronald Reagan. Carter picked up 27 percent.

In 2004, voters almost evenly divided between the two major party candidates. President Bush defeated Democratic nominee John Kerry by 2 percentage points.

The Ensign campaign declined to comment Monday about Jimmy Carter's remarks, but Ensign has rebuffed the former president's argument in the past.

"I've proudly stood by the president when I thought he was right and vigorously opposed him when I thought he was wrong," Ensign said in a recent interview with the Sun. "The bottom line is that my opponent is not running for president. He's running against me for the U.S. Senate to represent Nevada."

Gary Gray, a Democratic consultant who's been here long enough to remember the Carter campaign's losses in Nevada, said that Carter's remarks tying Ensign's voting record to the Bush administration was fair game.

Former Nevada Sen. and Gov. Richard Bryan, while surprised by the tone of Carter's comments, said the stakes for the former president are personal: "He's out here campaigning for his son. It's exactly what one would expect him to do when he's making the case."

Bryan said Carter gave his son's campaign "star appeal" and said the state was probably more favorably disposed to the former president than in the years when voters turned him down three times.

The first loss was in the 1976 Democratic primary to former California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Ralph Denton, a lawyer and historian, ran Brown's Nevada campaign. "Carter was ripe, fresh from the South. He just wasn't that well known in Nevada." Brown, however, had political contacts here and benefited enormously from traveling the state on the campaign trail, Denton said.

Brown tried to give the impression "that he was a regular guy doing a regular job," Denton said. "To many, he was a breath of fresh air." Nevadans also were taken by Brown's platform against what he saw as expansive and costly government policies.

Gray said Carter focused his campaign in the South, ceding some of the smaller Western states to his opponents. Carter's faith also played a role in the Nevada vote, he said.

"As a Southern Baptist, a lot of people - and gaming in particular - didn't see him as sympathetic to the industry," Gray said. "In the calculation of the times, he was the second choice."

Although Carter ultimately won the presidency, he failed to carry Nevada, losing to President Gerald Ford by 4 percentage points. It was the first time since 1908 that the Silver State voted for the loser in a presidential contest, said Green, the state historian.

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