New York Sun Taking Note Of Jack Carter

Jack Carter, Jimmy's Son, Is Cut From Different Cloth is the headline of the conservative New York Sun's report on Jack Carter's campaign to unseat Senator Ensignificant.

From a newspaper like this one you'd expect some trashing of a Democratic candidate, especially a Carter son. Surprisingly, that's not the case.

The Sun's reporter, Seth Gitell, seems to be intrigued by Jack Carter's rural strategy as he devoted a big chunk of his article on this:

On Monday, he has just returned from a four-day, 11-town tour of the rural North. "It was one of those old fashioned, stump-speakin', country kind of deals like old Americana, and I just loved it," Mr. Carter exudes in a Plains patois. "I had a couple guys on a flatbed truck. One of them played guitar and the other one played the fiddle. We'd get to town an hour ahead of them and we'd go eat and tell people where we're going to be. I play enough guitar so that when we start playing ‘Sweet Home Alabama,' I can come up and play the start with them and then I turn into a stump speech about 10 minutes."

The jaunt, which took the campaign crew through such towns as Eureka, Tonopah, and Fernley, was somewhat unusual for a Democrat in Nevada politics.The bulk of the state's voters, particularly the Democrats, reside in Clark County, home to Las Vegas and its suburbs. At best, Democrats take 30% of the vote in the North. During the 2004 election, President Bush beat Senator Kerry 90% to 10% in some areas, according to Democratic political operatives. Mr. Carter thinks he can turn the usual political logic on its head.

"I'm from Plains, Georgia, 650 people," Mr. Carter said. "Those are my people."

Again and again you can witness Jack's plain outspokenness. He speaks his mind and not just talking points. Read the article for what Jack had to say on some of the issues.

I found Mr. Gitell's assesment of the next couple of months particularly interesting:

While other contests, such as the Connecticut Senate race, are garnering more attention, the spotlight will likely turn to Nevada in September. Nevada, which will hold a caucus in early 2008, has now supplanted New Hampshire as the second primary season contest, just after Iowa. President Carter will be here on June 29 as the keynote speaker for the Clark County Democratic Party's Jefferson/Jackson Dinner. If Mr. Carter is viewed as having a chance against Mr. Ensign, many of the presumptive 2008 presidential candidates can be expected.

Of course June is long over, the date is September 28th, as I wrote in a post on the President's visit. However, I agree that Presidential hopefuls should and will come to Nevada this fall to help Jack get elected. Today's newest poll numbers will most likely help in this respect.

Mr. Gitell also had an intriguing observation on the similarities between Jack and Jimmy Carter (though with some conservative bias):

When the national candidates and press get here, they will find a smart, soft-spoken, rural, "moderate" politician running against Washington. But that shouldn't be much of a surprise. In 1976, Jimmy Carter was a devout Southern Baptist, who had offered Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson's name for nomination at his party's 1972 political convention. "It's time for someone like myself to make a drastic change in Washington," Governor Carter had told a New Hampshire political gathering, according to Betty Glad's "In Search of the Great White House"; a political advertisement criticized his congressional opponents for being a part of the Washington "bureaucracy." He was politically adept and he caught the right political tide at the right time.

Ultimately, President Carter governed differently from the way he ran his 1976 campaign. His son says "if I can present myself as a reasonable alternative, somebody they're not going to be afraid of, then, I think I'll win."The question is, what kind of senator would he be?

A darned great one!