Jimmy Carter earned ‘a special place in the hearts of Minnesotans,’ politicians and advocates say

Minnesotans with long-held connections to Jimmy Carter reflected Sunday on the legacy of the president, who died at the age of 100.

Carter, the longest-lived American president, maintained a unique tie to the state after selecting Minnesota Sen. Walter “Fritz” Mondale as his running mate in 1976. The pair, who ran on the so-called “Grits and Fritz” ticket, was credited with elevating the vice president’s office into a more powerful position.

Carter died Sunday in his hometown of Plains, Ga.. He lived there with his wife, Rosalynn, who died at the age of 96 in November 2023.

Salutes to the former president peppered social media Sunday.

Gov. Tim Walz, who unsuccessfully ran for vice president this year on the Democratic ticket with Kamala Harris, posted Sunday night on X.

“President Carter defined what it means to be a servant leader,” Walz wrote. “He fought for our democracy, our climate, humanity, and civil rights around the world. We can find peace today knowing that he is reunited with the love his life, Rosalynn.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar said in an interview Sunday that she visited Carter in his hometown during her 2020 presidential run. She remembered watching Carter teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church, then joined him in eating his wife’s pimento cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

“He always had a sense of humor and was still focused on what was going on in our politics,” Klobuchar said. “He emailed me a number of times after, with ideas and strategies. He encouraged me even though I was coming from behind. He said, ‘I won that way.’”

In an earlier statement on Sunday, Klobuchar said Carter “earned a special place in the hearts of Minnesotans” when he invited Mondale to join his presidential ticket.

Skyrocketing inflation and oil prices marked Carter’s first and only term. An economic downturn, combined with the Iran hostage crisis, sunk his chances at re-election and overshadowed his foreign policy accomplishments, including brokering a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and negotiating the return of the Panama Canal to Panama.

Carter, who lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan, inspired great admiration in the decades after his presidency, working with wife Rosalynn to create the Carter Center, a nonprofit human rights organization, in 1982. His dedication to democracy and economic development earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

“He actually led for decades,” Klobuchar said Sunday. “I don’t think many people would doubt he was our best post-president president in terms of everything he did. That was one of his lasting memories. He served everyone he could.”

Sen. Tina Smith recalled meeting Carter during one of his trips to Minnesota in the early 2000s. He struck up a conversation with her husband on the “virtues of fly fishing.”

“I remember how warm and friendly he was, and how unpretentious he was,” Smith said on Sunday. “He was eager to talk about just regular things in life and very happy to not talk about himself.”

Rep. Tom Emmer, the Republican House majority whip, said in a post on X that he is grateful for Carter’s “decades of service — from his time in the military to public office and beyond — and pray for peace and comfort for the Carter family during this difficult time.”

U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, a Republican who represents northeastern Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District, also memorialized Carter on X.

“There is no denying that he was a compassionate man who dedicated his life to serving others,” he wrote.

Carter also was remembered Sunday for his environmental work, which made an impact in Minnesota. While he was in the White House, Carter signed the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act, which added 50,000 acres to the Boundary Waters and provided additional environmental protections that included logging and mining bans.

Chris Knopf, executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters, said in a statement that the organization worked with the Carter administration to put in place the Boundary Waters protections.

“This was not an easy thing to do. For many in his own party, this was not a popular bill,” Knopf wrote, adding that “Carter championed a bill that has had a profound impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who love wild places and who have been touched by the splendor of the Boundary Waters.”

Carter cemented his legacy as a philanthropist in the decades after leaving office. He and wife Rosalynn were the country’s most high-profile volunteers for Habitat for Humanity.

They donned hardhats and tool belts well into their older years, drawing media attention to the nonprofit through their annual Carter Work Project, an all-hands-on-deck effort to construct homes in the U.S. and abroad.

The project twice came to the Twin Cities. In September, volunteers constructed 30 homes on St. Paul’s East Side — the first phase of an ongoing affordable housing development. Carter, just days shy of 100 this fall, didn’t appear at the festivities.

But in 2010, an 86-year-old Carter and Mondale pitched in on a homebuilding project in north Minneapolis.

“The initiative in this neighborhood will be an inspiration to people all over the nation,” Carter said at the time.

Chris Coleman, the president and chief executive of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, described Carter in a Sunday interview as a humble person who enthusiastically got to work on homebuilding projects.

”It was fun to see someone understand what service was really all about,” Coleman said.

“He didn’t have to do any of that stuff, but he did it because he believed in the cause. He believed in making sure that we left the world a little bit better place than when we found it.”

This story contains material from the Associated Press.