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Sam Lott was one of many local Georgians who campaigned for former President Jimmy Carter around the nation, in what was known as the Peanut Brigade. Lott shared how he and his wife had come to know Carter. “It started back when he was running for governor, and we were friends with the Carter’s. I was in the oil business, and I sold gasoline to the peanut processing plant over in Plains, and that’s kind of how I got to know him.”

Lott recalled watching Carter’s political career unfold, with his initial run as a State Senator. “Then, he decided to run for Governor and he came up with this idea about people from his home town and people he knew locally to go around the State of Georgia campaigning for him, and he called that Hi Neighbor campaign.”

Lott was involved in the gubernatorial campaign. “We spent two Saturdays with Ann and Bill Harris. They were with us too, and we went to little towns, and went to activities, whatever was going on we could find where people were congregating, and campaigned for Jimmy Carter and he was elected governor.”

A friend of Lott’s, Rudy Hayes, told him about a $50 chicken dinner that was going to be held at Georgia Southwestern. Jimmy Carter was going to be the speaker. “He was a writer for the TR, and he was good friends with the Carters, and he called me one day, and said they going to have, Jimmy Carter’s going to make an announcement, and that we ought to go hear him.”

Lott and his wife went to the dinner. “That’s when he announced that he was running for President. It shocked everybody. Everybody was enthusiastic about it. We said; ‘this is a lot of fun, but he’s not going to be elected President of the United States. There’s no way he can be elected President.’ Well, we know what history tells us. He was elected.”

The presidential campaign was modeled after the campaign Carter used in the governor’s race. “He did so well with the Hi Neighbor Campaign, that’s when he started the Peanut Brigade, and the Peanut Brigade, he would get all of his supporters that were willing to spend a week or two weeks somewhere in the United States campaigning for him, and so we volunteered to go to a week in Maine.”

Lott described the experience. “It was a lot of fun. We were greeted by the democratic committee in Augusta Maine, which is the capital of Maine, and they showed us around and gave us maps. We would go to, house to house, we’d go take neighborhoods and go leave pamphlets about Jimmy Carter and then we’d go to radio stations.”

He talked about the reactions of people in Maine. “Some good and some, you know, not so good.” Lott recounted one hazard of going door to door. “What you had to watch out for was the dogs. The dogs, sometimes they’re pretty mean.”

He did recount some perks. “The democratic committee in Augusta invited us to a lobster dinner, and they had all these lobsters that they had caught, in Maine, in a basket, in a cage out on the back porch. They’d bring those lobsters in and cook ‘em. They were so good. It was a great, great time for us to experience that.”

Lott recounted how the locals responded to Carter’s Southern accent. “They liked to listen to him talk.”

While Lott remembers the experience fondly, Carter was unable to win the State. “Jimmy did not carry Maine, but he came as close as any democrat has in a long time. Real close.”

For more stories about Jimmy Carter please go to www.americustimesrecorder.com/category/jimmy-carter/