No president lived as long as Jimmy Carter, or was an ex-president longer. He died late in 2024 at age 100, almost 44 years after leaving the White House. He left a great legacy, from Habitat for Humanity to the Camp David Accords. He also had some interesting ties to Nevada history.
When Carter ran for president in 1976, one of his challengers was from the state next door—California Governor Jerry Brown. His father Pat Brown had been governor at the same time that Nevada’s governor was Grant Sawyer. They had a close relationship. Both of them lost bids for third terms in 1966—Brown to Ronald Reagan, Sawyer to Paul Laxalt. They developed a close relationship, too.
Anyway, Sawyer was unimpressed with Jerry Brown, and chaired Carter’s Nevada campaign. The co-chairs of Brown’s campaign in Nevada were Bette Sawyer, the former governor’s wife, and Ralph Denton, one of his closest friends. For what it’s worth, Brown easily won the Nevada primary, but Carter won the nomination. His opponent, President Gerald Ford, overcame Reagan in the Republican nomination fight. When they faced off in the general election, Ford won Nevada’s electoral votes.
That was big news. From 1912 on, Nevada’s electoral votes had gone to the winning candidate in every presidential election. After going for Ford, Nevada went back to picking the winner until 2016.
But Carter took office with close connections to Nevada. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies has organized those events since 1901. In 1977, the chair was Howard Cannon, the senior senator from Nevada. He and Carter had a good relationship. Cannon also was the architect of one of Carter’s favorite and most important achievements: the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, to encourage more markets and carriers while maintaining safety.
Cannon was a big proponent of a strong national defense. In 1978, Carter backed Missile X, for Experimental. The MX would be located mainly in the Nevada and Utah desert and move via railroad tracks. Carter was unable to get the MX project off the ground, and it encountered a lot of opposition in Nevada.
Cannon also was a key vote in a Carter administration priority: completing the turnover of the Panama Canal to Panama. It was important to Nevada’s political history. Reagan made it a major issue, and Laxalt, then a senator, helped lead the Senate opposition to the treaty. Republicans attacked Cannon for supporting it, and it was a factor in defeating Cannon for his fifth term in 1982.
By then, Carter had lost his reelection bid and began what many consider an incredible post-presidency. He continued to speak out on the issues. In 1988, he delivered the Barrick Lecture at UNLV, and didn’t have many nice things to say about Reagan’s foreign policy. He returned to the state on a book tour in 2001.
In 2006, Carter returned to Nevada for a different reason. He campaigned for his son Jack, who challenged John Ensign for his second term in the Senate. Ensign won easily.
It’s amazing to think that Jimmy Carter was 82 when he campaigned here for his son, and he lived another 18 years. He was our longest-lived president, and longest-tenured ex-president, at 44 years. As we look back at his efforts to promote new energy initiatives and human rights, we remember a consequential president, and a consequential ex-president.