ORLANDO, Fla. — Bill Beckett dropped out of college in 1976 and became a wanderer, traveling from state to state before settling back in Orlando. But the 21-year-old wasn’t an aimless kid — he was part of Jimmy Carter’s “Peanut Brigade,” and the group had a presidential campaign to win.

“I went to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey, and didn’t get paid,” said Beckett, who later finished college and law school and became an Orlando attorney. “I had to borrow $20 from Carter’s friend John Pope to get to the next state because I didn’t have enough money for gas.”

Nearly five decades later, Beckett and his wife, Terry, were among a group of Florida campaign veterans who paid their respects to the former president while his body lay in state in Atlanta. The state funeral for Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, was set to take place today in Washington, D.C.

Florida was a key state in Carter’s rise to the presidency, with his victory here over Alabama Gov. George Wallace in the March 1976 Democratic primary not only helping him win the nomination but also marking a turning point in the state’s move away from its segregationist Jim Crow past.

“We all wanted to make sure Florida didn’t embarrass itself and vote for Wallace again,” said Beckett, referring to the Alabamian’s primary win here in 1972. “I heard about Jimmy Carter, and he seemed like a moderate Democrat from a southern state. And I thought this guy had had a chance.”

Carter defeated Wallace in Florida by 4 percentage points, kicking off a string of wins across the country helped in part by the Peanut Brigade, which canvassed for him as volunteers.

Democratic fundraiser Richard Swann raised money for the Peanut Brigade — started by Carter’s friends and family in Georgia and named in reference to the candidate’s profession of peanut farmer, —to travel the nation on Carter’s behalf.

Swann, a lawyer and financier who died in 2019, first got involved with Carter “through happenstance,” said his son, Christian Swann of Winter Park.

“He was renting our garage apartment in Winter Park to a Rollins College student whose family was really close to the Carters in Georgia,” Christian Swann said.

Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, later came down on a fact-finding mission to identify the key players. Swann’s name popped up thanks to their tenant, and he became the campaign’s state finance chair.

“Getting momentum in a swing state like Florida, where nobody really had a true foothold, was very important for Carter,” Swann said. “And to be able to raise the kind of money that they did gave him credibility early.”

One of the first Florida legislators to endorse Carter was the young state Rep. Dick Batchelor of Orlando, who had met Carter in Atlanta just a few years earlier.

Carter was then Georgia’s governor, and Batchelor was still a college student at what would become the University of Central Florida.

“He was kind enough to give me an audience when I was just a student doing term papers, and then I was approached to endorse him in ‘76,” Batchelor said. “And I, of course, did.”

Once in office, Carter named the 29-year-old Batchelor to the White House Conference on Aging. “I learned some things that I could use at my age now,” he joked.

After Carter won the nomination, the Peanut Brigade moved into key positions for the fall campaign against Republican President Gerald Ford. Beckett became the Orange County campaign chair.

“In the general election, I was getting a whopping salary of $350 a month to run Orange County for Carter,” Beckett said. “At least I had the money to send John Pope the $20 bill back. That’s what you got paid in those days to work in presidential elections. But it was worth it.”

Carter won Florida in the fall, and then the presidency.

He made several trips to Florida during his time in the White House, including a swing through Central Florida for his 52nd birthday in October 1978.

On that trip, Carter took a tour of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral along with then-Gov. Reuben Askew and astronaut Alan Shepard. He also paid a visit to Walt Disney World for an International Chamber of Commerce convention, with an Orlando Sentinel photo showing him speaking in front of Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom.

But while Florida and many Southern states were in the Carter camp in 1976, by 1980 Florida and most of the region turned against Carter, who lost that year to Ronald Reagan, ending his time in Washington after a single term as president.

“He was ahead of his time in recognizing the things that needed to be done as far as energy and climate change,” Beckett said. “But people are now recognizing that he was a good president.”

For Beckett, who also worked for then-U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson and served as vice chair of the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority, Jimmy Carter meant more than just politics.

He met his wife, Terry, later the campaign manager for Orange County Mayor Linda Chapin, while they both worked on Carter’s campaign. Decades later, a Carter interview she watched on Good Morning America led to the chance viewing of a TV show about siblings in need of adoption, two of whom soon became their sons Pat and Dash.

“Jimmy Carter was responsible for our whole family,” Beckett said.

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