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
Jimmy Carter and a distant cousin to the Carter family of musicians. Carter and Rosalynn Smith were married in July 1946. They have three sons, one daughter, eight grandsons, three granddaughters, and two great-grandsons. Mary Prince (an African American woman wrongly convicted of murder, and later pardoned) was their daughter Amy's nanny for most of the period from 1971 until Jimmy Carter's presidency ended. Carter had asked to be designated as her parole officer, thus helping to enable her to work in the White House. The Carters celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in July 2016, making them the second-longest wed presidential couple