Former President Jimmy Carter celebrates his 100th birthday today, the first centenarian U.S. President in American history.
When Carter sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, he was an unlikely contender in a field of big names seeking to reclaim the White House two years after the Watergate scandal led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. An Annapolis graduate who served one term as a state senator and one term as Governor of Georgia, Carter was polling at 2% nationally just three months before winning the New Hampshire primary.
Despite his election as the 39th President of the United States, Carter never won voters’ support in New Jersey. He lost the state in all four elections he ran: two primaries and two general elections.
As the Carter juggernaut began winning primaries, with many of his early rivals dropping out, new candidates emerged; Frank Church and Jerry Brown entered in March and won a combined eight states.
With an April 29 filing deadline — the latest in the nation — New Jersey became ground zero in the Stop Carter movement. With 108 delegates, New Jersey held its primary on June 8, along with California and Ohio, the last primaries before the Democratic National Convention.
State Sen. James Dugan (D-Bayonne), the Democratic state chairman, became the de facto campaign manager for influential party leaders who wanted former Vice President Hubert Humphrey to enter the New Jersey primary.
On April 23, the New Jersey Poll conducted by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University showed that an astronomical 61% of Democratic primary voters said Humphrey would be their first choice if he entered the race.
More than half of Carter voters said they preferred Humphrey. But without Humphrey, Carter had a 33%-17% lead in New Jersey over George Wallace, with Scoop Jackson, at 15%. Jerry Brown was in fourth place with 5%.
Humphrey appeared ready to get into the race if Jackson beat Carter in Pennsylvania on April 27, but Carter took it by a 37%-45% margin, and the Happy Warrior refused Dugan’s request that he run in the New Jersey primary.
Instead, the movement to nominate either Humphrey or Brown at the convention by running a slate of uncommitted delegate candidates was joined by U.S. Senator Harrison Williams, Middlesex County Democratic Chairman Nicholas Venezia, Essex County Democratic Chairman Harry Lerner, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino (D-Newark), and Jersey City Mayor Paul Jordan.
That was a significant embarrassment to Gov. Brendan Byrne, who played a leading role in recruiting Carter delegates while hedging on an endorsement until April 29.
At a nationally televised press conference on the day of New Jersey’s filing deadline, Humphrey announced that he would not enter the race, ending speculation that the state would be the only venue for a head-to-head contest between Carter and Humphrey.
Carter’s May 6 fundraiser in East Brunswick became overshadowed by Byrne’s order that Community Affairs Commissioner Patricia Sheehan fire one of her assistants, Daniel Horgan, from his state job for helping Dugan organize the uncommitted slate. Byrne met Carter at Newark Airport and spoke on his behalf but did not attend the fundraiser.
New Jersey was to elect 91 delegates on June 8 — ten elected in a statewide at-large vote, two from each of the 40 legislative districts — with one bonus delegate to the Bergen County-based 37th district because it had led the state in voter turnout in 1973 and 1974 — and 17 more to be picked by the elected delegates by the proportional vote for each of the candidates.
The presidential primary in those days was a beauty contest, with the real power coming from the directly elected delegates. The strategy was simple to insiders but a tougher sell to rank-and-file primary voters: if they wanted Humphrey or Brown – or anybody but Carter – they needed to vote for a recognizable Democratic name running as an uncommitted delegate.
One plan was to bracket the candidates under the “Williams-Rodino” slogan, but Rodino begged off using his name after other campaigns complained. After Humphrey announced that he would not run, Rodino and Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson dropped out of the delegate race.
After Jackson dropped out of the race, his delegate slate, including New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Marciante, former Attorney General Artur Sills, State Sen. Alene Ammond (D-Cherry Hill), Essex County Register Larrie West Stalks, and former congressional candidate Martin Fox also withdrew.
Marciante flipped from Jackson to uncommitted and joined a slate that included Williams, Venezia, Jordan, CWA Area Director Clara Allen, Trenton Mayor Art Holland, Assemblywoman Barbara McConnell (D-Flemington), Assemblyman Albert Burstein (D-Tenafly), Atlantic County Clerk Lori Mooney, and Paul Bontempo, the son of former Democratic State Chairman Salvatore Bontempo.
Carter’s at-large ticket was led by former Assembly Speaker S. Howard Woodson (D-Trenton) and included: State Sen. Anthony Scardino (D-Lyndhurst); Assemblymen John Paul Doyle (D-Brick) and Kenneth Gewertz (D-Deptford); New Jersey AFSCME President Alfred Wurf; Bergen County Freeholder Joan Lessemann; Morristown Councilwoman Beatrice Jenkins; Puerto Rican Congress of New Jersey President Alfonso Roman; Democratic lawyer and fundraiser Howard Rosen; and Nancy Hobart, a Democratic state committeewoman from Morris County and former East Hanover Democratic municipal chair whose husband’s great-grandfather, Garret Hobart, served as William McKinley’s first vice president.
Prominent Carter district delegate candidates included: State Sens. Anne Martindell (D-Princeton) and Raymond Garramone (D-Haworth); Assemblyman Paul Contillo (D-Paramus); future Assemblyman Dennis Riley (D-Gloucester Township); Diane Legreide, who went on to hold several top state government posts; Long Branch Mayor Henry Cioffi; Union County Freeholder John Mollozzi; and future Assemblywoman Mildred Barry Garvin (D-East Orange).
Rep. James Howard (D-Spring Lake Heights) and NBA star Bill Bradley (who won a U.S. Senate seat two years later) headed Mo Udall’s at-large ticket in New Jersey.
Brown didn’t enter the New Jersey primary because he would be the beneficiary of the uncommitted slate if Carter didn’t go to the convention with enough delegates to win — and if Humphrey remained out of the race.
Despite his brewing feud with Byrne, Lerner switched his support to Carter.
Carter won the New Jersey primary with 58.4%, running 161,621 votes ahead of Church (13.6%). Jackson, whose name remained on the ballot even though his delegate slate did not, received 8.8%, followed by Wallace (8.6%) and pro-life Democrat Ellen McCormack (6%). Udall ran a delegate slate and did not file in the primary. Carter won all 21 counties. (Noteworthy: the combined votes of segregationist and pro-life candidates in the 1976 New Jersey Democratic primary was nearly 15%.)
But the delegate race is where Carter effectively lost the New Jersey primary.
The Williams-led uncommitted slate won 73 delegates, while Carter took just 18.
The at-large uncommitted ticket beat the Carter delegate slate by 67,211 votes, 42%-28%. Udall delegates received 13%, followed by Church (7%) and Wallace (6%), and McCormick (4%).
The uncommitted ticket carried 12 counties, and Carter’s statewide delegate slate carried Burlington, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Mercer, Ocean, Passaic, Salem., Sussex, and Warren.
With Democrats no longer permitting winner-take-all primaries, Woodson, Rosen, and Wurf took at-large seats for Carter.
In the race for 81 district delegates, Carter won two seats in the Cape May-Cumberland 1st district and one in the Atlantic-based 2nd district, where Mary Jane Kelly pledged to Carter and won by 33 votes. In that race, Assemblyman Michael Matthews (D-Atlantic City) ran a solid fifth place on a ticket pledged to Church.
While Carter won Gloucester County, the candidacies of State Sens. Raymond Zane (D-Woodbury) and Joseph Maressa (D-Atco), and Assemblymen Donald Stewart (D-Woodstown) and Francis Gorman (D-Gloucester City) helped the uncommitted slate hold four delegate slots. The same thing happened in Burlington, where Assemblymen George Barbour (D-Maple Shade) and Charles Yates (D-Edgewater Park) ran on the uncommitted line in the 7th. Former Assemblyman John Sweeney (D-Florence) robbed Carter of one delegate in the 8th when he edged out Charlotte Krail by 82 votes.
The Ocean County-based 9th district had one of the state’s closest district delegate races: Carter-pledged former Superior Court Judge Thomas Muccifori was the top vote-getter with 3,591 votes, but Ocean County Freeholder Robert Gasser, running as an uncommitted candidate, finished second with 3,387. Gasser edged out his running mate, Assemblyman Daniel Newman (D-Brick), who had 3,271, and Legreide, who received 3,250.
While Carter won Mercer, the uncommitted slate recruited Senate Majority Leader Joseph Merlino (D-Trenton) and Assemblyman Francis McManimon (D-Hamilton) and easily took two delegate seats in the 13th district.
Next door in the 14th, which included parts of Mercer, Hunterdon, Morris, and Middlesex counties, Martindell, an early Carter supporter, ran way out in front with 4,552 votes, followed by Hunterdon County Democratic Chairman Michel Gold with 3,799. Gold just narrowly beat out Udall state campaign leader Fred Bohen, a former LBJ White House aide who had run for Congress in 1972 and 1974, by 426 votes. Uncommitted candidate Hugh Farley, the mayor of Hampton, ran 11 votes behind Bohen.
(Martindell, the aunt of former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes), later became U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand under Carter.)
In the Morris-Union-Passaic 24th, Ravenal B. Curry III, an asset management company founder from Summit who was pledged to Carter, outpolled former Assemblyman John Sinsimer (D-Pompton Lakes) by 222 votes. The other seat went to uncommitted candidate Marian W. Smith, a Parsippany councilwoman.
In the 26th district, which included East Orange, West Orange, and Orange in those days, two uncommitted candidates, State Sen. Pat Dodd (D-West Orange) and the iconic Constance Woodruff, a labor and civil rights leader who served two terms as the Democratic National Committeewoman from New Jersey, easily delivered the two district delegate seats for the uncommitted slate. But the presence of Assemblyman Eldridge Hawkins (D-Orange) on the Udall ticket pushed the Cater ticket into fourth and sixth place.
In the 28th district, which included South Orange, Irvington, and the West Ward of Newark, the uncommitted won with ease. Still, the big surprise was that two delegate candidates pledged to Wallace outpolled the Carter candidates.
The Newark-based 29th gave Carter another delegate after the uncommitted slate lost one of their candidates. Carter had the endorsements of eight of nine members of the Newar City Council, with Gibson and Councilman Donald Tucker, who captured one of the two district delegate seats, remaining uncommitted.
With candidates like Dugan, Assemblyman Bill Perkins (D-Jersey City), North Bergen Mayor Peter Mocco, Democratic county chairman Bernard Hartnett, Union City mayor, and State Sen. William Vincent Musto, and Hudson County Freeholder Joseph Simunovich running on the uncommitted line, delegate candidates pledged to Carter got crushed.
The uncommitted delegate candidates in the Paterson-based 35th eked out a win over the Carter candidates by roughly 120 votes.
Carter won two delegates in the 36th when Rutherford Mayor William Brooks (2,961) and Palisades Park Democratic Municipal Chairman Michael Pollotta (2,794) defeated the uncommitted candidates, labor leader Joseph W. Smith (2,722) and Wallington Councilman Ronald Yuswack (2,604). Absentee ballots may have put Pollotta over the top.
In the 37th, with one bonus delegate, the uncommitted slate won all three seats, albeit by 464 votes.
Contillo (2,771) and Rose Teague (2,371), the president of the Bergen County Democratic Women’s Club, both won their races in the 38th, giving Carter two delegates from Bergen County. They defeated Paramus Council President Joan Masel (2,175) and 18-year-old Arthur Feltman (2,067), an 18-year-old River Dell High School student and intern for Rep. Andrew Maguire (D-Ridgewood).
Two other Bergen districts gave one delegate each to Carter and the uncommitted slate. In the 39th, Washington Township Councilman John Callahan (2,666), who ran on the uncommitted slate, was the top vote-getter. Garramone edged out the other uncommitted delegate candidate for the second seat, Assemblyman Harold Martin (D-Cresskill). Former Assemblyman Herbert Gladstone (D-River Vale) ran a distant sixth as a Udall backer.
District 40 elected uncommitted slate member Paul Lewis (2,940), a Ho-Ho-Kus attorney and former Assembly candidate, and Richard Bond (2,933), a former Ramsey council candidate pledged to Carter. They defeated Ann Willis (2,845), an uncommitted candidate who had run unsuccessfully as a Humphrey delegate candidate in 1972 – she lost to Loretta Weinberg, Jim Bouton, and others – and Carter-pledged Norma Konstadt (2,792), the administrator of the Bergen County Mental Health Board.
Among the losing candidates for delegate in the 1976 Democratic primary were future Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, who ran for alternate delegate pledged to Carter. In the 19th legislative district, future 22-term Republican Rep. Christopher Smith (R-Manchester), who was 23 when he ran on the McCormack slate in the Middlesex-based 19th district, and 21-year-old future State Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Woodbridge), who ran for delegate on the Udall ticket, both lost.
Two weeks after the primary, the winner of the 91 delegate seats met in East Brunswick to pick the remaining 17 delegates – thirteen for the uncommitted slate and four for Carter.
The Carter campaign gave their four seats to Byrne, Lerner, United Auto Workers Union state director Martin Gerber, and Ruth Puglisi, a 29-year-old Carter campaign staffer and Garramone aide from Woodcliff Lake who became the youngest member of the New Jersey delegation. Years later, Puglisi married Dugan, the leader of the uncommitted slate.
Team Uncommitted seated the other three at-large candidates who had run in the primary: Holland, Mooney, and Bontempo.
Additional uncommitted slate delegates included: former Gov. Robert Meyner; former Assemblyman Robert Wilentz (D-Perth Amboy), who would be nominated by Byrne three years later as the chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court; Rep. Dominick Daniels (D-Jersey City); Senate President Matthew Feldman (D-Teaneck); Bayonne Mayor Dennis Collins; International Ladies Garment Workers Union official Edward Kramer; Camden County Freeholder Director William Simon; Sister Lucille Ann Egan, a former admissions director at the College of St. Elizabeth; Eleanor Alexander, whose husband, Princeton attorney Archibald Alexander, was the finance chairman for the uncommitted slate; and Horgan, who became the uncommitted campaign manager after Byrne ordered his termination.
After criticism that the delegation didn’t have enough women delegates, Horgan stepped aside so South Brunswick Democratic municipal vice chair Sylvia Johnson could attend the convention. Instead, Horgan became a floor whip for the Democratic National Committee.
By the time of the first-ballot roll call at the Democratic National Convention in New York in July, after Carter had clinched the nomination, New Jersey cast all 108 of its delegates for Carter.
“What purpose would it serve not to switch,” said Dodd, a former Senate President. “What would we be proving.”
After Williams announced the state’s unanimous support for Carter, one of the delegates, Gorman, the Gloucester County assemblyman, stood and yelled no. Gorman wanted to vote for Brown. Undeterred, 108 votes were counted for Carter.
1976 General Election
The contest for New Jersey’s 17 electoral votes in 1976 was close from the start. A May poll by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University had Carter leading Republican Gerald Ford by 15 percentage points, 49%-34%. By mid-September, Eagleton showed Carter ahead in New Jersey by six points, 42%-36%.
New Jersey was a swing state in those days and had voted for every winning presidential candidate in the 20th century, except for 1916 and 1948.
The Carter campaign dispatched John W. Billett, a former advance man for John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, a Capitol Hill veteran who worked for California Gov. Pat Brown in 1966, and George McGovern to manage the New Jersey campaign. Horgan was hired to run Carter’s campaign in Ohio.
Ford’s New Jersey campaign was led by Assembly Minority Leader Thomas Kean (R-Livingston) and two 28-year-old operatives who would later become his closest advisors when he became governor: Anthony Ciciatiello, who moved from Ohio to New Jersey to manage Kean’s 1974 congressional campaign against Millicent Fenwick; and Greg Stevens, a former Home News Tribune statehouse reporter.
By October, Eagleton put New Jersey too close to call: Ford led Carter, 42%-41%.
A pivotal moment in the campaign was a rally Carter held a rally at Scheutzen Park in North Bergen on October 23, which drew a crowd of about 3,000 people, something the New York Times described as a “chilly and undersized welcome” in heavily-Democratic Hudson County. The newspaper report referred to “old days” rallies for Democratic presidential candidates in Jersey City that would draw a crowd in the tens of thousands.
This was blamed on a lack of coordination between the Carter campaign and the Democratic organization. But it also caused Carter to cancel his final trip to New Jersey, sending his running mate, Walter Mondale, his wife, mother, and son instead as surrogates in the last week.
Ford visited New Jersey in the final week. So did First Lady Betty Ford and other members of the first family.
Republicans worked to tie Carter to Byrne’s unpopular state income tax plan.
The October poll said that 53% of the state would vote for a Republican candidate against Byrne, while 19% said they would support his re-election as governor. Byrne’s job approvals were at an upside-down of 17%-79%.
Ford wound up carrying New Jersey by 65,035 votes, 50%-48. He carried 11 counties, while Carter won 10.
Carter won his biggest pluralities in Essex (40,523; 55%-42%), Camden (26,053; 56%-42%); Hudson (23,605; 55%-44%), Mercer (11,168; 53%-45%), and Middlesex (9,320; 51%-47%). Ford’s largest margins came in Bergen (56,593; 56%-43%), Morris (42,172; 61%-37%), Ocean (21,462; 57%-41%); Monmouth (21,148; 54%-44%), and Somerset (15,002; 57%-40%).
After the election, Billett blamed the loss on Dugan, still the Democratic state chairman and a state senator from Hudson County, and the escalating war with Byrne heading into the 1977 Democratic gubernatorial primary.
1980 Primary Election
The final day of the race for the 1980 Democratic nomination came down to New Jersey and seven other states as Carter, and Ted Kennedy battled for delegates in a rare bid to deny a sitting president his party’s nomination for re-election.
Carter won 14 of the first 15 primaries – he took New Hampshire by ten points and lost only Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts but began to falter after a failed bid to rescue Americans held hostage in Iran on April 25.
One of the states Carter won was Illinois, where he had dispatched a young Bergen County man who had worked for Byrne and Mondale, Bob Torricelli, to manage his primary campaign there. Carter won 51%-38%.
By the last day of the primary calendar, June 3, Carter had not clinched the nomination.
Over 617,000 Democrats voted in the New Jersey primary, breaking the turnout record four years earlier with 575,000.
In 1980, Democrats were to elect 77 delegates in the primary election: six delegates each in the 1st and 2nd congressional districts and five in the rest of the 13 districts. Each district was to be apportioned based on the popular vote.
After the primary, state Democrats would pick another 36 delegates proportionate to the Carter vs. Kennedy primary vote, bringing the size of New Jersey’s delegation to 113.
U.S. Senator Harrison Williams, who had been implicated in the Abscam scandal, was for Kennedy, and Gov. Brendan Byrne was a Carter supporter.
Carter had the backing of former Gov. Robert Meyner and former Rep. Helen Meyner (D-Phillipsburg), who ran for delegate in the congressional district she represented for four years before losing re-election in 1978. He also had Assembly Speaker Christopher Jackman (D-West New York), Democratic State Chairman Richard Coffee, Bergen County Democratic Chairman Vincent Rigolosi, State Sen. Anthony Russo (D-Union), Assemblywoman Jackie Walker (D-Matawan), former Assemblywoman Greta Kiernan (D-Harrington Park), and Howard Rosen, who had supported him in 1976 and later served as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations.
Kennedy supporters included Essex County Executive Peter Shapiro, Newark Councilman Sharpe James, Bergen County Freeholder Jeremiah O’Connor, Assemblyman Richard Van Wagner (D-Middletown), Newark Councilman Sharpe James, and Livingston Democratic municipal chairman (and now a longtime Essex County commissioner), Patricia Sebold.
Kennedy defeated Carter in New Jersey by 102,722 votes, a 56%-38% margin, in the June 3 New Jersey primary. That gave Kennedy 68 delegates from New Jersey, with 45 for Carter.
In a campaign managed by the legendary Fran Rein, Kennedy carried 19 counties. He won Bergen by a 2-1 margin, Essex by over 20,000 votes, and Hudson by 625. Carter won Cape May by seven votes and Salem by 198.
Rep. James Howard (D-Spring Lake Heights) was the chairman of the Kennedy delegation to the Democratic National Convention, and Assemblywoman Barbara McConnell (D-Flemington) was vice chair.
In addition to New Jersey, Kennedy won California, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and South Dakota. Carter won Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia in a narrow win for renomination.
1980 General Election
The general election in New Jersey – the last time the state had 17 electoral votes – was initially close. A September Eagleton-Rutgers poll produced a statistical tie: Ronald Reagan led Carter, 33%-32%, with 22% for independent John Anderson.
The Carter campaign brought in a top political tactician to run their New Jersey campaign: Gerald Doherty, a veteran of John F. Kennedy’s 1952 U.S. Senate campaign against incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, and a former Massachusetts legislator who served as Democratic State Chairman while JFK was in the White House. Doherty had run Robert F. Kennedy’s winning campaign in the 1968 Indiana primary and Carter’s 1976 campaign in New York.
Reagan’s New Jersey campaign was run by Albert Angrisani, a Bernardsville councilman who had played a key role in Jeff Bell’s stunning upset over four-term U.S. Senator Clifford Case in 1978. Angrisani got the job on the recommendation of a top Reagan advisor, Roger Stone.
On Labor Day, the traditional start of the general election campaign, Reagan held a rally at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. During the campaign, Carter went to Newark, Peth Amboy, and Lyndhurst, while Reagan was also in Bayonne, Cherry Hill, Lodi, and Paterson.
Another poll taken during the third week of October still had the race tied at 36% each, with Anderson now down to 10%. But the last Eagleton poll released the Saturday before Election Day gave Reagan a 41%-37% lead, with 9% for Anderson and 13% still undecided.
Carter, Reagan, and Anderson visited New Jersey during the campaign’s final week. So did Mondale, Tip O’Neill, Coretta Scott King, Muriel Humphrey, and Ted Kennedy.
Regan beat Carter in New Jersey four years later by 399,193, 52%-39%. Independent John Anderson won 8%.
Reagan won everywhere but Hudson, Essex, and Mercer counties — unimpressive victories for Carter. Carter took Essex by 28,059 votes (51%-41%0, Mercer by 7,438 (47%-42%), and Hudson by just 4,415 (48%-46%).
Bergen County went for Reagan by 92,569 votes (56%-34%); Reagan won Morris by 56,295 (61%-28%), Ocean by 51,510 (62%-30%), and Monmouth by 48,845 (57%-34%).
Anderson’s best showing came in Hunterdon and Morris, winning 10%.