Early Political Career
Like most southerners at the time, Callaway grew up as a supporter of the Democratic Party. In 1964, however, he ran as a "Goldwater Republican" for a seat in the House of Representatives from Georgia's 3rd congressional district. He won, having defeated the former lieutenant governor, Garland T. Byrd, 57-43 percent. Callaway thus became the first Republican elected to the U.S. House from Georgia since the Reconstruction era.
Jimmy Carter, the future U.S. President who was then a member of the Georgia State Senate, planned to oppose Callaway for reelection to the U.S. House. However, when Callaway decided to leave the House after a single term to run for governor in 1966, Carter switched races and himself sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Callaway's House colleague, James D. Martin of Alabama, also gave up his seat after a single term to run unsuccessfully for his state's governorship. Martin was defeated by Lurleen Burns Wallace, the stand-in candidate of her husband, George C. Wallace, who sought the U.S. presidency on four occasions.
Callaway and Carter had clashed in 1961 over the location of a four-year state college. Carter wanted the school in Americus; Callaway, a University of Georgia regent preferred Columbus, the site of the Army base Fort Benning. Both cities now have four-year institutions. Callaway and Carter graduated from separate military academies, Callaway at West Point and Carter from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Though he had criticized Callaway's use of "God, Country, and Motherhood" as a campaign theme, Carter himself adopted similar platitudes in future races. Carter complained to Eugene Patterson, then editor of the Atlanta Constitution, that the state's largest newspaper was partial to Callaway despite its primary preference for Democratic former Governor Ellis Arnall, rather than Carter, and its then neutrality in the general election. In his memoirs, Carter does not mention Callaway, an associate of U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, Jr., whom Carter unseated in 1976. However, Rosalynn Smith Carter, termed Callaway a "favorite" of the John Birch Society even though Callaway had repudiated the anti-communist group founded by Robert Welch after Welch alleged that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower had been a "conscious agent of the communist conspiracy." Mrs. Carter further recalled in obvious distaste that a tobacco-chewing Callaway backer in Washington, Georgia, had spat upon her. Years later, Callaway recalled Carter as "a very sincere man trying to do his best who was simply over his head in the White House and was not able to be the decisive leader that the country needed."
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