Presidency of Jimmy Carter taken on the eve of the election showed a close race, Reagan won a decisive victory. In polls of historians and political scientists, Carter is usually ranked as a below-average president. Carter was elected as the Governor of Georgia in 1970, and during his four years in office he earned a reputation as a progressive, racially moderate Southern governor. Observing George McGovern's success in the 1972 Democratic primaries, Carter came to believe that he could win the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination by running as an outsider unconnected to establishment politicians in Washington, D.C. Despite scant backing from party leaders, McGovern
Carter Braxton Bragg was named for the signer, but not apparently a descendant. Another great-grandson, John W. Stevenson of Kentucky, served two terms as U.S. Representative before the Civil War, and later won election as governor in 1868 and U.S. Senator in 1871, before retiring to his law practice and becoming president of the American Bar Association. Virginia lawyer Allen Caperton Braxton, who led efforts to limit blacks' access to education and voting, particularly during Virginia's Constitutional Convention in 1902, proclaimed his descent from Carter Braxton. Carter Braxton may have been buried at Chericoke, which remains in the family's possession today. Although