I'm Your Peanut Pal

Illustration of a brown peanut with arms and legs and hair, holding an American flag in the center of the button with red text on the top edge and blue on the bottom

This button comes from Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign for the presidency. Carter was originally a peanut farmer from Georgia, and served as the state’s senator and later as governor during the 1960s and 1970s. When he campaigned for the presidency against standing president Gerald Ford, Carter was unknown to voters, which turned out to be an asset since he was distanced from the Watergate scandal that ended Nixon’s term. Carter appealed to average voters by advertising his former job as a peanut farmer and being interviewed by popular magazines like Playboy. Carter won the election with 50.1% of the votes, and as president escalated the Cold War, pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders, and signed the Camp David Accords. After his presidency, he set up the Carter Center in 1982, a human rights advocacy organization, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Jimmy Carter. (n.d.). Retrieved November 8, 2015 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter.