Narrator: Election season 1972, Jimmy Carter extended his hospitality to Democratic hopefuls. Barely two years in the Governor's Mansion, he already had his eye on the White House.

Chip Carter: Every Democrat running for office came to Georgia. And every single one of them, Dad would ask to come and stay with him at the governor's mansion. And we realized that they were just people like him.

Narrator: That July, Carter led the Georgia delegation to the Democratic National Convention, hoping for the second spot on the ticket.

Rosalynn Carter (archival): I'm over here in the box and I really can't tell what's going on so much. But, Jimmy comes over from the floor and kind of briefs me once in a while. It's the first time I've ever been to a convention... and I'm just so excited about it.

Gerald Rafshoon, Media Adviser: I remember at the end of the McGovern speech at 3 o'clock in the morning, Hamilton Jordan and I were walking away from the convention hall, and I said, "You know, if Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Terry Sanford, Scoop Jackson, George Wallace, Ted Kennedy can run for president, Jimmy could run for president" And then of course we said, "And if these guys who are running these campaigns" -- like we met the people in the McGovern campaign -- "can run a campaign for president, hell, we could do that."

Rosalynn Carter: I called Ruth, I said, "Jimmy's going to run for p-p-," I couldn't even say the word, it was so... unreal to me.

Carter (archival): I'm one of 15-20 people in the country who were active in the Democratic Party who have been mentioned for a place on the ticket...

Narrator: Carter's timing was perfect. For the next two years Americans would be gripped by the Watergate scandal. Disillusioned with politics, they were ready for a change.

Rafshoon: It was 19... early 74. I went over to see him one night. Rosalynn was out of town. I went over to the Governors mansion. I said, "Lets just talk about what the themes would be." And he took a yellow pad and he wrote, "Fairness, not from Washington, not a lawyer, southerner, religious." These things were coming from Carter were the themes of the campaign.

On the Street Interviews (archival): "Jimmy Who?" "Jimmy Carter?" "I don't know who he is." "Jimmy Carter is a basketball player isn't he?"

Narrator: Carter officially announced his candidacy in December,1974. The one-term Southern governor, was a long shot.

Doug Brinkley: Nobody knew him. It was like picking a name out of the phone book. I mean, it takes a bit of hubris to think you're the best person to be the president of the United States, because you were a one-term governor of Georgia.

Campaign Song:"Once and for all, why not the best?"

Doug Brinkley: It's a kind of arrogance run amuck...

Carter (archival): I want to see us once again have a nation, that's as good and honest and decent and truthful, and competent, and compassionate, and as filled with love, as are the American people...

John Farrell, Journalist: At that time character was a monumental issue. The country had been through a horrible time and Jimmy Carter represented honesty and decency.

Carter Ad: I will never tell a lie. I will never make a misleading statement. I will never betray the confidence any of you has in me...

Doug Brinkley: Lyndon Johnson lied to us about Vietnam; Richard Nixon lied to us about Watergate. He's saying, you know I'm not one of those turkeys whose messing things up up there.

Narrator: Carter's campaign strategy was simple: run early and run hard. Before any other candidates even announced, Carter had traveled more than 50,000 miles, visited 37 states and delivered more then over 200 speeches.

Peter Bourne: He was a wonderful speaker before small groups. He would get up and talk without notes with extraordinary passion. Almost like a preacher really having the spirit with him.

Narrator: It was a grassroots effort, financed on a shoestring.

Chip Carter: We had all these stepping stones we had to do. We had to qualify for federal matching funds by a certain point and we accomplished every one of them. And every time you accomplished one, it gave you more and more confidence.

Rosalynn Carter: We had our boys out, we had Aunt Sissy out, we had his mother, all going in different directions.

Chip Carter: At one point in the presidential campaign we had 11 family members in eleven different states at the same time.

Narrator: The first test came in January 1976. With no delegates at stake, other candidates wrote off the Iowa caucuses, but Carter saw them as a way to surface early and gain the attention of the press. Iowa put Carter on the political map, and gave him momentum heading into a field of better-known Democrats -- Mo Udall, Birch Bayh, Sargent Shriver -- in the all-important New Hampshire primary.

Jody Powell: We had almost a month, between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, which gave us time to build on the win, both in terms of recognition and coverage, and in terms of raising just enough money to make it through New Hampshire and have a bit left over.

Narrator: Campaign volunteers from Georgia, the "Peanut Brigade," descended on the Granite State.

Chip Carter: We were out every day, knocking on doors. We knocked on 60,000 doors in New Hampshire. That was probably almost every Democratic household that we could identify in the whole state.

Peanut Brigadier: "Hello. Are you Mrs. Cobb? I'm Dot Padgett and I'm..."

Betty Pope: You'd say, "Mrs. Smith? My name is Betty Pope and I'm from Americus, Georgia." And if Mrs. Smith was there with her dog, I would remember that this beautiful lab came to the door with her. So I'd make a note, and I'd talk to her a little bit about Jimmy, and often it was, "Have you ever met him?" And of course, that's why we were there.

Chip Carter: So we did get our name out. And I think that we surprised America when he won.

Walter Cronkite (archival): Jimmy Carter took a long lead tonight in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. He won the New Hampshire primary handily...

Carter (archival): I remember when we couldn't find a microphone... [cheer]

Narrator: The next crucial contest was Florida. The leading contender, George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama, was an outspoken segregationist who had become a liability to the Democratic Party.

Walter Mondale: We'd run a Northerner that was right on civil rights, and George Wallace would steal a third of our vote and we couldn't get elected. Here came along a man from the South, with very good civil rights credentials, who just might be able to handle George Wallace.

Narrator: As a native son, Carter could appeal to white voters. He also had the support of African American leaders.

Chip Carter: Martin Luther King Sr. had endorsed us. Andy Young was on our team. Great civil rights leaders here in Atlanta were behind us, others that got to know us. It was a real asset to us.

Andrew Young: All of the liberals that I had worked with got nervous in a room full of black people. And Jimmy Carter didn't. He was very comfortable, very relaxed. When I talked with him, I realized that he read more; he was more disciplined, more organized; his personal life was more meaningful; his religion was really way down deep in the marrow of his bones. And I said, you know, "That's the kind of guy that ought to be running this country."

Narrator: Most candidates stayed away from Florida, confident the little known Georgian could be dealt with later.

Dan Carter: There really was an underestimation of Carter from the beginning in that '76 campaign. And he took advantage of that repeatedly. Carter in no way played the Southern [rube], but there was a little bit of this sneaking up on everybody. By decisively defeating George Wallace, he not only succeeded in doing what the liberals wanted him to do, but transforming himself into a really powerful, major candidate.

Betty Glad: What the liberals had not realized is that by the time of Florida, Jimmy Carter would have won Iowa, would have won New Hampshire, and would have this huge retinue of press following him around. And he was the man to beat.

Narrator: Carter's stamina seemed superhuman. "Behind that Huckleberry Finn grin," one reporter observed, "there is a perfectionist campaign machine that shuts down only six hours out of twenty four. State by state, the delegates kept adding up. By the time the Democrats convened in New York in July 1976, Carter had a lock on the nomination.

Walter Mondale: The fact that Carter could unite the nation, North and South, and give us a clean shot for the presidency. This was the culmination of my dreams.

Carter (archival): My name is Jimmy Carter and I'm running for president. [smiling] And now I've come here to accept your nomination... [cheer]

Betty Glad: He'd pulled off a miracle. In the fall of 1975, he was barely visible as a candidate, below five percent in all the polls. And suddenly, six months later he has the Democratic presidential nomination, and he is running 70 percent in the public opinion polls. That is a miracle. Now the problem was that he had his vulnerabilities, and they showed in the fall.