Taking Jimmy Seriously

Suddenly he is no longer Jimmy Who?

Barnstorming the nation, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, 51, has begun to emerge as the fastest of the dark horses racing for the Democratic presidential nomination. Last week the pleasant, soft-spoken candidate with the picket fence of white teeth and the mod, silver-flecked blond hair scored a minor coup. Casting a straw vote for presidential candidates, 67% of the 1,049 delegates to Florida's Democratic state convention gave their ballots to Carter. The rest of the field got humiliatingly small totals, particularly his archrival, Alabama Governor George Wallace, who garnered 5.4%.

Not even the congenitally optimistic Carter expects that the results will be the same in the showdown primary on March 9, which will go a long way toward making or breaking his campaign. Wallace is much more popular with the rank-and-file voters than with the Democratic Party officials who go to state conventions. In 1972 Wallace won the Florida primary with 41.5% of the Democratic vote. Next year, if Carter can capture 30% or so while holding Wallace to less than 40%, his camp will claim a victory. The stakes are high. Reports TIME'S Atlanta bureau chief James Bell: "Jimmy Carter has to prove to the nation that there truly is a new South, and that he, not Wallace, represents it."

To build momentum before Florida, Carter is also organizing zealously in Iowa and Oklahoma, where Democrats will select their delegates by a series of party caucuses beginning in January. "Carter always does better than I expect him to," says Iowa's Democratic national committeeman Robert Fulton. "He got here early. He comes across as honest and open, and that's apparently what people are looking for." Though Oklahoma is the home of another dark horse -former Senator Fred Harris -Carter has won the tacit support of Democratic Governor David Boren, who has turned loose his band of youthful supporters to form a kind of Kennedy brigade for the Georgian.

Soft-Sell Style. In New Hampshire, which has the nation's first primary on Feb. 24, Carter seems to be closing in on Arizona's Congressman Morris Udall (who is having fund-raising problems), Indiana's Senator Birch Bayh and Harris. Carter already has 400 people working for him, and he will spend 14 days shaking hands ("I'm Jimmy Carter and I'm going to be your next President") before primary day. State Democratic Chairman Laurence Radway is impressed by Carter's soft-sell style of campaigning and his hard-nose style of organizing. Says he: "I can't honestly say he's second to anybody."

Campaigning six days a week, 14 hours a day, Carter has hit 42 states this year and set up organizations in 35. He plans to enter all 29 primaries, as well as state caucuses and conventions, hoping to pick up stray delegates here and there under the party's new proportional-representation rules.

Carter exploits the fact that he has never been a member of Congress or the federal bureaucracy. Opening lines of a typical speech:

"I'm not from Washington [applause]. I'm not a lawyer [applause]. I think this is the time for someone outside of Washington of about my age ... [laughter]."

Reducing Waste. He emphasizes his record as Governor of Georgia (1971-75): reorganizing the state government and reducing waste while increasing social services and creating a surplus of more than $50 million. He favors drastically shrinking the federal bureaucracy and, although a former nuclear-submarine commander, he criticizes the Defense Department as "the most wasteful agency in the Federal Government."

Asked to sum up his ideology, Carter says: "On social justice, human rights, the environment, I would be quite liberal. On questions dealing with the management of Government, I would be quite conservative."

"Everywhere I go," Carter adds, "people want to know whether our system of government can continue to exist. 'Can the federal bureaucracy be controlled? Can it be competent?' I think it can. It needs the tough-minded business planning that I represent."

Notwithstanding his present spurt. Carter is a long shot for the nomination, though he has become a strong candidate for the vice-presidential slot. In a Gallup poll released on Oct. 26, 35% of the Democrats picked Senator Edward Kennedy as their preferred candidate, followed by Wallace (14%), Senator Hubert Humphrey (13%), Senator Henry Jackson (8%) and Senator Edmund Muskie (5%). Carter is lumped in with the "all others" who got 9%.

As Carter battles to improve his position, some officials at the Democratic National Committee have begun privately to criticize him. The Georgian makes some Democrats nervous because he is running as a maverick; no one knows quite what to make of him at this point or what he will do in the months ahead. For Jimmy Carter, a sure sign of progress is not only the friends he has won but the opponents he has made. They are taking him seriously.

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