Jimmy Carter [postcard]

Atlanta, GA: 1976 Democratic Presidential Campaign Committee, Inc., 1976. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus. Post Card. Format is approximately 6 inches by 4.25 inches. One one side is a black and white photograph of candidate Jimmy Carter, with a rustic background and his hand on a fence rail. He is dressed informally for the outdoors and sports a large oval belt buckle. On the other side the left half has a printed message that reads: Dear Friend, Thank you for your letter. We need your continuing strong support. Jimmy Carter. The right side has the name and address of the recipient and the postage. At the bottom is a statement that this was paid for and authorized by the 1976 Democratic Presidential Campaign Committee, Inc. There is a small device at the bottom that indicates that this was printed by the Graphic Arts International Union Official Union Label Local No. 251 Atlanta. Jimmy Carter took his first step on the road to the White House in 1972 by becoming chair of the Democratic Governor's Campaign Committee, and then his second step in 1974 by getting himself named as the campaign chairman of the Democratic National Committee. This position gave Carter access to key Democrats nationwide, and the major Democratic gains in the first post-Watergate election added to his reputation. Just before the end of the year, Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for president. Public reaction to his candidacy revealed that exposure to his party was not enough to gain him wide recognition. He was all but ignored and his national profile was almost non-existent. However, Carter's anonymity turned out to give him an advantage in the 1976 election. In response to the twin nightmares of Vietnam and Watergate that had shattered public confidence in government, Americans gravitated toward leaders who were outside the Washington sphere. Answering the nation's need, Carter's slogan was "A Leader, For A Change." He approached the race like so many challenges before-with grim determination. Portraying himself as an outsider who could "clean up the mess in Washington," Carter simply out-hustled his competition. He won the first skirmishes, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and kept rolling, winning more than half the primaries. Instead of entering selected primaries, Carter recognized that under new Democratic rules, he could gather some delegates even in states where he would not come in first. And so he campaigned everywhere. One by one, the other Democrats dropped out, leaving Carter the front-runner, even though he had not won a majority of delegates in the primaries. At the party convention that summer, he won the nomination on the first ballot. For his vice presidential running mate he chose Walter Mondale, a United States Senator from Minnesota. Mondale offered a "Northern presence" on the ticket to give it geographic balance, and his liberal record on labor issues helped calm the fears of labor unions that were uneasy about a president from the traditionally anti-organized labor south. Condition: Good.

Keywords: Presidential Campaign Committee, Jimmy Carter, Political Campaigns, Political Ephemera, Campaign Material, Postcard, Democratic Party

[Book #78927]

Price: $35.00