Jimmy Carter: One of three presidents with Iowa ties
Jimmy Carter was a Georgia peanut farmer and former one-term governor when he decided to run for the presidency in 1975.
He was almost unknown nationally.
He had virtually no experience in the federal government or national politics.
He was a Democrat from the Deep South – a party that had not won an election with a candidate from the Deep South for almost a century and a half since Andrew Jackson of Tennessee became the nation’s first Democratic president in 1828 and won re-election in 1832.
Iowa had moved quietly into the No. 1 position in the presidential election process in 1972 when the Democrats moved their Iowa caucuses to a new position on the calendar. For the first time in memory, the first statewide test for presidential candidates would not be the New Hampshire primary election. For Democrats, it would be the Iowa caucuses.
In 1976, both parties joined hands in Iowa, setting their caucuses ahead of the New Hampshire primary election.
The Republican candidates for president that year chose to sidestep any major campaign effort in Iowa.
On the Democratic side, however, Jimmy Carter spotted an opportunity. There were several Democrats already actively campaigning in various states when Carter essentially moved into Iowa.
He was a dark horse candidate with limited funding. Iowa would be his starting line in his run for the Democratic nomination. It was a months-long campaign that caught virtually all the other Democratic candidates off-guard. He finished at the top of a five-candidate Democratic field and overnight became the party’s top contender for the nomination.
He might have won the nomination if there had been no Iowa caucus in the lead position on the calendar, but it is hard to see a path for him that would have been as powerful as the win in Iowa in making him the front-runner.
Other presidents with Iowa ties
At least two other presidents, Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan, had Iowa ties. Both are Republicans.
Herbert Hoover, elected in 1928, was born in West Branch, Iowa in 1874. His parents both died when he was a child, and he ultimately went to live with an uncle in Oregon, where he grew up.
He is associated with California, however, more than any other state. He graduated from Stanford University, and he and his wife, also an Iowa native (Waterloo), maintained a home in Stanford, California for many years.
Hoover’s most lasting connection to Iowa is his Presidential Library, situated in West Branch.
Ronald Reagan had a relatively brief connection to Iowa. He grew up and went to college in Illinois. In 1933, when jobs were scarce due to the Depression, he landed a position with WOC radio in Davenport, where he broadcast University of Iowa games.
Soon, he moved to WOC’s sister station, WHO of Des Moines, where he broadcast Iowa football and recreated broadcasts of Chicago Cubs baseball games from ticker tape, a kind of play-by-play printed record of the game.
Reagan left Des Moines in 1937 for Hollywood, the movies, and ultimately a political career beginning with the governorship of California.
Among these three presidents with Iowa ties, Reagan ranks the highest on at least one list of best-to-worst presidents.
Reagan is No. 16. Carter comes in at No. 22, and Hoover at No. 36. The 2024 survey was based on rankings by 154 presidential scholars.
It is not unusual, however, for rankings to be reassessed following the death of a president.
Viewers could almost hear the assessment of Carter’s presidency running in that direction in the news coverage following the announcement of his death on Sunday.
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