Jimmy Carter-NASCAR connection ran from Atlanta all the way to White House

Shortly after waving the green flag on the April 4, 1971 Cup Series race at Atlanta International Raceway, Jimmy Carter made his passion for NASCAR abundantly clear.

This was no transactional photo op for a U.S. presidential candidate visiting a race track.

“I’m really proud to be back here; it’s been one of the favorite sports of my life,” Carter told the Universal Racing Network during the race broadcast. “My wife and I have been racing fans for more than 25 years and just to see this sport develop into a worldwide effort where the race car drivers are becoming worldwide heroes is really thrilling to me.

“I’m very glad to see the Atlanta Raceway recuperate from those first long numbers of years with too much rain. … This is a kind of race day that’s exciting for fans all over the world.”

President Carter died at 100 on Dec. 29 as the oldest living ex-president in history, sparking a torrent of conversation dissecting whether the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner did more after leaving office or during his single term as the leader of the free world in the late 1970s.

But there’s no doubt Carter was the most NASCAR-friendly U.S. president in history — a legacy cemented years before he occupied the White House.

As Georgia governor from 1971-75, he hosted three NASCAR dinners when drivers, team owners, officials and media were in town for Cup races at the speedway south of Atlanta. After attending the driver meeting for the March 29, 1970 race, Carter said he told his wife, Rosalynn, that “if I am elected, I‘m going to have those guys out to the mansion the first time I get a chance.”

Just a few months after assuming the Peach State‘s highest office, Carter feted a group of 26 drivers at the governor‘s mansion in Atlanta and spent time regaling two of the top three qualifiers at the speedway earlier in the day — seven-time Cup champion Richard Petty and four-time Indianapolis 500 winner A.J. Foyt (who won from the pole position three days later for one of his seven Cup victories).

“You two have been my heroes for more than 10 years,” Carter told Foyt and Petty, according to an April 2, 1971 story in the Atlanta Constitution. “This is the greatest honor I have had since I got into politics.”

Carter traced his love of racing to attending dirt tracks in North Carolina and Virginia. After the 1.54-mile oval in Hampton, Georgia, opened in 1960, he was a track fixture — though a story that he was a ticket vendor seems apocryphal. In an interview with NASCAR Productions for the 2015 documentary “The Perfect Storm” (about the 1979 Daytona 500), Carter didn‘t recall working at Atlanta Motor Speedway but had fond memories of several races there — as did the drivers who had met him.

With NASCAR still primarily a regional entity, President Carter‘s Southern roots and rural upbringing resonated with a cadre of blue-collar stars who raved about a former peanut farmer born in a home without running water or electricity. Carter‘s faith-driven and humble authenticity left a mark with many NASCAR Hall of Famers.

Before the March 21, 1976 race at Atlanta, longtime NASCAR journalist George Cunningham conducted a presidential straw poll of nine stars in the 36-car field. Five said they planned to vote for Carter if he became the Democratic nominee (three split their votes between Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George Wallace, and a fourth abstained).

No one stumped harder for Carter than three-time Cup champion Cale Yarborough, who was a part-time politician himself. After becoming the first Republican since Reconstruction elected to the Florence County council, he was re-elected as a Democrat in 1976 — switching parties because of his fervent support for Carter.

“If I‘m going to work for him, I should be in the same party,” Yarborough told Cunningham. “Carter is the best man, and I believe he will be elected. He‘s turned on 90 percent of the country‘s big news media already.”

Buddy Baker also was smitten. “One thing for sure, we don‘t need any cowboy actors in the White House,” Baker said in a reference to Reagan (who would beat Carter for the presidency in 1980). “I‘m for Carter because he seems conscientious and a good person. That‘s about all you can judge by because they all sound alike. Besides, it‘s nice to be able to say you had dinner with a president.”

Junior Johnson appreciated Carter as a Washington outsider with practicable sensibility. “Ain‘t a lot of people got a hold of that man yet, and I haven‘t seen him promising anybody anything,” Johnson told Cunningham before the 1976 race.

But Carter made good on a famous campaign promise he made later that weekend in the drivers meeting — celebrating stock car racing in the nation‘s capitol.

NASCAR received a triumphant White House welcome Sept. 13, 1978, with a buffet dinner on the South Lawn. A delegation including Yarborough, David Pearson, Benny Parsons, Bill France Sr. and Bill France Jr. was hosted by the First Lady, who served roast beef, ham and cornbread. Willie Nelson entertained a raucous crowd with a rollicking set of “Whiskey River,” “Crazy,” “Amazing Grace,” “Georgia” and “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

Jimmy Carter missed the gala because he was preoccupied with the biggest accomplishment for world peace during his presidency — brokering the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel.

He still delivered a tremendous boost to NASCAR‘s profile —just five months before the sport got another jolt of mainstream electricity with the epochal 1979 Daytona 500.

“Jimmy told us if he ever got to be president, we would share in some of the glory,” Pearson told Atlanta columnist Lewis Grizzard at the Washington, D.C. extravaganza. “Here we are.”

Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is the host of the NASCAR on NBC Podcast and also has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.