Jimmy Carter of racial segregation and support the growing civil rights movement. He became an activist within the Democratic Party. From 1963 to 1967, Carter served in the Georgia State Senate, and in 1970, he was elected as Governor of Georgia, defeating former Governor Carl Sanders in the Democratic primary on an anti-segregation platform advocating affirmative action for ethnic minorities. Carter remained as governor until 1975. Despite being a dark horse candidate little-known outside of Georgia at the start of the campaign, Carter won the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination. In the general election, Carter ran as an outsider and narrowly defeated incumbent
Jimmy Carter seen as crippling to the Carter administration's policy toward South Africa. On May 16, 1979, the Senate voted in favor of President Carter lifting economic sanctions against Rhodesia, the vote being seen by both Rhodesia and South Africa "as a potentially fatal blow to the joint diplomacy that the United States and Britain have pursued in the region for three years and to the effort to reach a compromise between the Salisbury leaders and the guerrillas." On December 3, Secretary of State Vance promised Senator Jesse Helms that when "the British governor arrives in Salisbury to implement an agreed Lancaster