John Glenn was not popular with the other astronauts. Glenn was the backup pilot for Shepard and Grissom on the first two manned Project Mercury flights, the sub-orbital missions Mercury-Redstone 3 and Mercury-Redstone 4. Glenn was selected for Mercury-Atlas 6, NASA's first manned orbital flight, with Carpenter as his backup. Putting a man in orbit would achieve one of Project Mercury's most important goals. Shepard and Grissom had named their spacecraft "Freedom 7" and "Liberty Bell 7". The numeral 7 had originally been the production number of Shepard's spacecraft, but had come to represent the Mercury 7. Glenn named his spacecraft, number
John Glenn ovations. Glenn's keynote address immediately followed Jordan's, and he failed to impress the delegates. Walter Cronkite described it as "dull", and other delegates complained that he was hard to hear. Carter called Glenn to inform him the nomination was going to another candidate, and later nominated the veteran politician Walter Mondale. It was also reported that Carter's wife thought Annie Glenn, who had a stutter, would hurt the campaign. In his first reelection campaign, Glenn ran opposed in the primary for the 1980 Senate election. His opponents, engineer Francis Hunstiger and ex-teacher Frances Waterman, were not well-known and poorly funded.