Marching Through Manhattan

I'm not a city person. I'm a country hick.

--Lillian Carter

There are no hicks in America any more.

--Lenny Bruce

Anyway, not the Carters of Georgia. The family seemed just as much at home on the sooty sidewalks of New York as on the red clay of Plains. They attended plays and parties, shopped at Bonwit's and Bergdorf's, held a family dinner at Mamma Leone's, munched pastrami and corned beef at a delicatessen, rode the Staten Island ferry and the Circle Line around Manhattan and artfully revealed and concealed themselves as the press and crowds of curious, friendly people dogged their every step. It was almost as if the Carters were throwing a party and New York was invited.

Jimmy's mother, "Miss Lillian." gave a continuous round of interviews. "I don't mind the questions at all," she confessed. "I like them a lot." A little too much perhaps for her son's taste. She offered a novel account of how he first declared his intention of seeking the presidency. Clad only in his shorts one night in 1973, he put a foot on her bed and started to speak. "Take your foot off the bed." Miss Lillian commanded. When Jimmy said that he would run for President and win, she thought he must be joking. Then she spotted a telltale sign. "Jimmy has a vein in his forehead that throbs and throbs when he's excited. I saw that vein was really working, so I knew he was serious."

Miss Lillian was also free with advice for Jimmy. Her vice-presidential choice was Minnesota Governor Wendell Anderson, chairman of the platform committee. "He's so good-looking," she explained. "He speaks so good and handles himself so well." After addressing the Gray Panthers, an organization for promoting the cause of older people, she said Jimmy should help senior citizens if he is elected. "I want him to get into that because I'm gettin' old so fast." (She is 77.)

Miss Lillian became a reporter herself for Georgia's Columbus Ledger (circ. 30,000). She recorded her impressions on tape, which were then phoned to the paper and put in print. On meeting Jane Fonda, she reported saying: "Jane, maybe the reason we're getting along so beautifully is that we're both so controversial." She described her reaction to the convention: "You know I felt it was a sacred thing I was looking at."

Jimmy's wife Rosalynn was everywhere--from convention hall to caucus meetings to a black women's press conference. At a luncheon sponsored by a group of New York professional women, she explained that she had earned her husband's professional respect when she kept the books for the family peanut business. "Jimmy asked me 'How's this doing?' and 'How's that doing?' So I became an adviser to him."

It was her choice, she insisted, to work so hard in the campaign. "If Jimmy had told me to go out and campaign every day, I'd have stayed at home." She had sat in on all the vice-presidential interviews and then spent some time alone with each of the wives. "Frankly, I wanted to see if we were compatible, and if I liked them. Well, there was not one that I didn't like." If Jimmy is elected and they move to Washington, she said, they would put their daughter Amy, 8, in the public school system, which is almost entirely black, if "the security thing can be worked out." Said Mary Hurtig, a Udall delegate from Philadelphia: "That really blew my mind. Wow! The President's little girl in a city public school. What a fine example!"

The three Carter sons--Jack, Chip and Jeff--and their wives filled in for Jimmy at some of the 300 functions to which he was invited. They easily barged into the bash thrown by Rolling Stone, while such luminaries as Bella Abzug, Warren Beatty and Lauren Bacall waited futilely in line outside. The brothers devoted two hours every morning to meeting the press--no arduous exercise since the same questions were asked over and over again.

Aside from Jimmy, no Carter received more attention than Amy, though she did not invariably bask in it. She lapsed into silences and pouts after too many microphones were thrust into her face and too many inquiries were made that would insult the intelligence of any normal eight-year-old. Did she like the convention? "Not much." Was she thrilled to be in the hall where her father would be nominated for the presidency? "Nope." At a pier party for delegates, she responded to questions about how she felt by saying: "I'm not going to tell you."

She had a better time when her mother took her to Central Park. "Say cheese," Rosalynn reminded Amy as she clambered up on the lap of a statue of Alice in Wonderland. On the way back to the hotel, she spotted a playground and asked Mom to stop. Then for a few carefree moments, while her long blonde hair flashed in the sunlight, she cavorted with other kids--mostly blacks, like her classmates in Plains--on the swings and slides.

At dawn on Tuesday, Jimmy's sister Ruth Stapleton flew to Atlantic City to promote her book The Gift of Inner Healing. Sales lately have been running at 4,000 copies a week. Ruth signed autographs and chatted with about 200 people who were standing in line at the Christian Booksellers Association convention (see RELIGION). Then she flew back to New York and the intrusion of politics. She received letters addressed "Jimmy's Sister" or "Faith Healer, Plains, Ga."

Though he enjoyed himself in New York, Younger Brother Billy, 39, seemed to yearn for the serenity of Plains. He mainly roamed the Americana Hotel, beer planted firmly in hand, socializing with one and all. He joked that while Jimmy would appeal to the temperance people, he would win the votes of the drinking classes. Billy, however, lost a case of beer by betting that Congressman Peter Rodino would be his brother's vice-presidential choice. But then he won a case by wagering against the selection of Senator John Glenn. "I have never heard anything good about New York," said Billy, "and since I've been here I haven't seen anything bad."

Togetherness was not practiced by the Carters in New York; most of the time they went their individual ways, each contributing to the campaign mosaic. But one night the family decided to dine together at Mamma Leone's. Jimmy explained: "21 isn't my style." While others in the family plowed through the meal, Jimmy and Rosalynn danced to the strains of a guitar and a tambourine-snapping singer. At the Carters' request, the musicians rendered Baby Face. Miss Lillian asked the restaurant photographer to take a family portrait. When the clan failed to pay attention, she commanded: "Everyone turn around for the camera." They did as they were told, including the man who was about to be nominated for President.

On their one Sunday in New York, Jimmy, Rosalynn and Amy attended a morning service at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. While Amy was distracted by fans stored in the pew, her parents sang lustily, and their voices seemed to rise even higher during one hymn, appropriately titled Blessed Assurance.

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