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After helping Jimmy Carter win the presidential election in 1976, Hamilton Jordan was White House chief of staff. (White house) |
Hamilton Jordan, 63; key architect of Carter's improbable White House win
WASHINGTON - Hamilton Jordan, a high-profile political operative who helped propel a virtually unknown politician from the Georgia state house to the White House, died Tuesday night at his home in Atlanta, close friends said. He was 63.
He had been treated over the past 20 years for six types of cancer.
As Jimmy Carter's young and tireless campaign director, Mr. Jordan (pronounced JER-den) was the principal architect of the 70-page blueprint that laid out the strategy for electing a Democratic president from the South. Along the way, he cultivated a reputation as a Georgia "good ole boy," masking an astute political mind.
"His mind seems to fit Carter's like a peanut fits its shell," Garrett Epps said in a 1978 story for the
Mr. Jordan received a lion's share of the credit for the unlikely victory of the Navy nuclear engineer turned evangelical peanut farmer. Rolling Stone magazine featured him and press secretary Jody Powell as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
After the Carter administration took office, Mr. Jordan played a key role in several accomplishments. He chaired task forces on civil service reform and the Saudi-Egyptian arms package. He also played a vital role in the successful effort to uphold Carter's nuclear carrier veto and the repeal of a Turkish arms embargo.
Carter bestowed the title of White House chief of staff on his 34-year-old political adviser as part of a comprehensive shakeup of the administration. Mr. Jordan's first task was to oversee a personnel evaluation that ran down to the level of deputy assistant secretaries in the Cabinet departments and to the middle level of staff aides in the White House.
Mr. Jordan also took on more of a foreign policy role in the waning days of the administration. In 1980, the president sent him to Panama to mediate a dispute between Panamanian authorities and a team of American doctors about medical treatment and facilities for the deposed shah of Iran.
Mr. Jordan's major success was his role in the passage of the Panama Canal treaties. He organized White House briefings for influential people in key senators districts and flew to Panama for a long visit with General Omar Torrijos, the Panamanian head of state.
Powell, who was Carter's press secretary, said Tuesday night that in the last 20 years of Mr. Jordan's life, "when he fought cancer so courageously for so long," there was "a reflection and amplification of the qualities I saw in him in the 20 years before then - courage and unfailing good humor and concern for other people."
Mr. Jordan spent the past two decades not merely fighting for his life but "trying to help other people fighting cancer," Powell said.
At the same time, Powell said, he "managed to be a wonderful husband and father and friend."
William Hamilton McWhorter Jordan was born in Charlotte and grew up in Albany, Ga. Although born with bowed legs, he corrected the condition by wearing braces to bed for 11 years.
His family said he had been a "political animal" since childhood.
While a student at the University of Georgia, he attended a rally for Carter, who was running for governor. Impressed by the candidate's sincerity and his progressive stance on race, he signed on as Carter's youth coordinator.
When Carter lost in the 1966 Democratic primary, Mr. Jordan finished work on his undergraduate degree and volunteered to serve in Vietnam, but he was classified 4-F, medically ineligible for the service, because of flat feet.
He went as a civilian with the International Voluntary Service, a refugee relocation organization, and stayed 10 months in the field.
Mr. Jordan became campaign manager for Carter's successful race for governor in 1970. He served as the new governor's executive secretary but was soon concocting ambitious plans beyond the Peach State for his boss.
In 1972, two years before the end of Carter's term as governor, he submitted a year-by-year plan for capturing the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination.
As Carter's national campaign director, Mr. Jordan raised money throughout 1974 and brought in a team of political newcomers that included press secretary Powell, media consultant Gerald Rafshoon, pollster Patrick Caddell, and Stuart Eizenstat, Carter's director for issues and policy.
Mr. Jordan "was the best," Rafshoon said. "A brilliant strategist, a dedicated American, and a great friend."
Carter began the general election campaign with a 20-point lead in the polls over President Gerald Ford, who was hobbled by Watergate and his pardon of Richard Nixon. The lead dwindled as Carter made mistakes; party professionals blamed Mr. Jordan and his team of novices. After the Georgian squeaked by with a slim margin, Mr. Jordan told Kandy Stroud, author of "How Jimmy Won" (1977): "We couldn't do it the simple way. We had to screw around."
House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill called him "Hannibal Jerkin."
After the White House, Mr. Jordan headed the Association of Tennis Professionals and was a marketing executive for Whittle Communications. He ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate from Georgia in 1986.
He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1984; he said he thought exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam led to the affliction. The cancer went into remission after five months of chemotherapy. In 1990, he battled skin cancer and then prostate cancer four years later.
Mr. Jordan wrote a memoir, "No Such Thing as a Bad Day" (2001).
His marriage to Nancy Konigsmark ended in divorce.
Mr. Jordan leaves his wife of 26 years, Dorothy Henry Jordan, and three children, Hamilton Jr., Kathleen, and Alex.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
