The Carter surname will be a big help with name recognition and fundraising. Carter legacy hovers over grandson

Five days after Jason Carter jumped into the Georgia governor’s race, his grandfather, former President Jimmy Carter, delivered a speech urging a ban on the death penalty. Within hours, the newly minted candidate felt compelled to issue a retort: while he loves his grandfather, he told a reporter, “I believe in the death penalty for heinous crimes, and that won’t change when I’m governor.”

The episode spoke to the benefit and potential burden of the Carter surname for the upstart Democratic state senator, who is waging a long-shot bid to unseat first-term Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. Practically everyone in the Peach State knows the Carter name, and in state Democratic circles the ex-president remains a revered figure more than three decades after he left the White House.


But despite growing Hispanic- and African-American populations in Georgia — demographic trends that have rekindled Democratic hopes of a political revival there — the state is still solid GOP terrain. And for many conservatives “Carter” is shorthand for failed liberalism and weak leadership.

( PHOTOS: Jimmy Carter in Haiti)

Deal’s campaign has already made clear it intends to hang the “liberal” anchor on the grandson’s neck, saying that the potential matchup could be, in part, a “referendum on President Carter’s administration.”

Carter, a 38-year-old Duke- and University of Georgia-educated lawyer with an attractive young family, is a respected voice in the state Senate, and he has inspired a groundswell of enthusiasm in the state’s Democratic political class and in Washington. He’s pitching himself as a centrist Democrat who will work to reform education and state ethics laws. Highly ranked by the NRA, Carter stressed his pro-gun bona fides during a phone interview last week, at one point describing the gun with which he taught his child to shoot.

Some polls show he could put the governor’s seat in play as Deal also fends off primary challenges. Carter announced his candidacy earlier this month, a move that comes as Democrats are already energized about their 2014 prospects with Michelle Nunn — daughter of Georgia legend Sam Nunn, a former senator — seeking a Senate seat.

In the interview, Jason Carter said he deeply respects his grandfather but emphasized that he’s his own man.

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“He says a lot of things,” the younger Carter said of his grandfather with a laugh, predicting that “we’re going to have a lot of differences in public.” He added, in a more serious tone, “It’s important for folks to know, I’m Jason Carter, I have my beliefs. He’s Jimmy Carter, he has his.”

Jimmy Carter left office in 1980 with a 34 percent approval rating, tying President George W. Bush’s final presidential number. As with most presidents, his standing has improved since then, clocking in at 56 percent nationally as of April, according to Gallup. His favorability numbers have come down since the 1990s amid an active and at times controversial post-presidency. But a recent internal poll showed that in Georgia, the former president had roughly 60 percent favorability, and his wife Rosalynn Carter came in at close to 70 percent, according to a senior national Democrat who saw those numbers.

Two areas where the Carter surname will undoubtedly be a big help are with name ID and fundraising, factors Republicans acknowledge as well. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said that Jimmy Carter’s relationships could help the younger Carter — who has represented a heavily Democratic Atlanta-area state Senate district since 2010 — introduce himself to the rest of the state.

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“His task now is to get out throughout Georgia and meet the people,” said Johnson, who called Jason Carter a “shining star” in the statehouse.

Former Democratic Rep. Buddy Darden, who represented Georgia in Congress for six terms, said he expected the younger Carter would have to break with his grandfather from time to time on the policy front, but that overall having a “famous grandfather has its advantages.”

“He will have to build some effort to separate himself, his own opinions from those of President Carter,” Darden said. “At the same time, as time passes I think history is going to treat, is already treating, Jimmy Carter here in Georgia quite kindly.”

Republicans don’t plan to make the governor’s race entirely about the ex-president. But they see an opportunity to link the new candidate to a liberal last name before he can define himself on his own terms, and they will argue that when another prominent Carter was in office, the country flailed amid economic and foreign crises.

As the former president remains in the public eye, they are betting that he will continue to stake out positions to the candidate’s left, as he has already done on topics like the death penalty and the Middle East.

“I think you’re going to have a couple of situations where he’s going to get caught in between his grandfather espousing a more traditionally liberal, Democratic ideology,” GOP strategist Joel McElhannon said. “He’s trying to tack more to the political center. It’s going to be a problem for him.”

Deal’s campaign manager said the Republicans won’t let Carter cherry-pick which aspects of his grandfather’s profile to embrace.

“If Jason Carter’s campaign looks to place an emphasis on his grandfather being a former president, which we anticipate they will do, then they can’t wrap themselves in the good and distance themselves from the bad,” Tom Willis wrote in an email. “We are sure everyone in the Carter family is anxious to see what a 2014 referendum on President Carter’s administration will look like. We look forward to that referendum as well, and are confident the Carters will be disappointed in the result.”

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), another candidate for Senate, put it simply: “I don’t think Jimmy Carter’s well-known as a conservative, and Georgia tends to be conservative. So I think that it would be a detriment.”

Others aren’t so sure of that. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the state’s outgoing senior senator, questioned in an interview the extent to which voters remember the former president’s record in office.

“As with any political family, it cuts both ways, it will help in some ways, hurt in other ways,” Chambliss said of Carter’s presence in his grandson’s campaign. “But you know, Jimmy Carter was governor in the ’70s, he was president in the ’70s, that’s a long time ago. Most of the voters … weren’t around when Jimmy Carter was governor. I don’t know how many would have been around when he was president.”

He added, “Jimmy Carter was president, that carries a certain amount of statesmanship with it. Obviously, his presidency went through some very difficult times, it carries both positive and negative connotations, but President Carter’s a fine gentleman.”

A spokeswoman for Jimmy Carter declined an interview request. She relayed a statement the former president issued when Jason Carter entered the race praising him as a “fresh leader” who would work to improve education and bring “trust and transparency back to state government.”

Carter said his relationship with his grandfather can withstand disagreements from time to time. The two are close, he said: They go fishing, spend time on the family farm together and teach the next generation of Carters how to shoot guns.

“I love him, I think he’s a wise, wise person,” Carter said of the former president. “One of the things that’s important to me is, he and I aren’t the same person, we don’t have all the same opinions, but I still have a great amount of respect for him. … I certainly would never set out to distance myself from my grandfather.”