Карл Эдвард Сандерс: Джорджияның 74-ші губернаторының өмірі мен қызметі

American attorney and politician (1925–2014)

Carl Edward Sanders Sr. (May 15, 1925 – November 16, 2014) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 74th governor of Georgia from 1963 to 1967.

Carl Sanders was born on May 15, 1925, in Augusta, Georgia, United States to a middle class family. He later stated that he had "an exceptionally happy and secure childhood." He attended the Academy of Richmond County, where he performed well academically and played on the school football team. He was made an alternate appointee to the United States Military Academy, but when the primary appointee claimed the spot Sanders accepted a football scholarship and enrolled at the University of Georgia in 1942. He played as a left handed quarterback on the freshman football team. While Sanders was at college, the United States entered World War II, and in 1943 he left his studies and joined the United States Army Air Forces. He was commissioned as a lieutenant and piloted B 17 Flying Fortress aircraft. He named his own bomber "Georgia Peach", but was never deployed overseas. Most of his support came from urban areas. He then won the general election. Aged 37 upon his assumption of the office, he was the youngest governor in the country at the time.

Sanders appointed a Governor's Commission for Efficiency and Improvement in Government, which managed reforms in the penal system, mental healthcare, the civil service, the Highway Department, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Education. Sanders was a fiscal conservative. Most of his budgeting focus was directed at public education. His administration's 1963 budget recommendation to the General Assembly devoted 56 percent of expenditures to education. At the governor's request, the legislature created the Governor's Commission to Improve Education, with 25 members appointed by the governor. The body included the first black people appointed to a state commission since the Reconstruction era. Equipped with the commission's recommendations, the following year he stated that Georgia's education system was a "modern crisis" and called for a $30 million increase in taxes to improve schools. This included a 50 cent increase on the tax per gallon on liquor, a 12 cent increase on the tax per case of beer, 1% increase in the corporate income tax, and the elimination of the vendors' commission on collection of the general sales tax. He further requested that the State Board of Education be empowered to establish minimum standards and that $100 million in bonds be issued to fund new educational institution construction. The General Assembly incorporated his suggestions with minimal alterations. Over the course of his tenure, schoolteacher and university faculty salaries were raised, 10,000 additional teachers were hired, a record number of new schools were built, new junior colleges and vocational schools were created, and a Governor's Honors Program was established. Sanders asked the legislature to appropriate funds for airport construction to attract industry to outlying communities. As a result, 33 new community airports were established in Georgia between 1965 and 1966. Georgia's economy performed well during his tenure, and the state had a budget surplus when he left office. While serving as governor, Sanders supported an attempt by the General Assembly to draft a new state constitution in 1963. The proposed document was prevented from being scheduled for a referendum necessary to ratify it by a United States district court, which ruled that since the legislators who had created the constitution were from malapportioned districts, their work was invalid. Sanders was deeply disappointed by the ruling. The decision was later reversed by the United States Supreme Court, but by then there was not sufficient political will to revamp the constitution. On February 17, 1964, the Supreme Court ruled in Wesberry v. Sanders that Georgia had to redraw its congressional districts to comply with the principle of one man, one vote. The General Assembly had only four days to respond before its session was scheduled for adjournment, but Sanders urged it to redraw the districts. The legislators struggled with the process, and after his own floor leader had resigned the revisions to failure, Sanders visited the House floor on February 21 to encourage the body to keep working. Despite the vocal dissatisfaction of some legislators, a revised districting plan was ultimately passed.

Shortly after winning election, Sanders visited President of the United States John F. Kennedy. He was generally supportive of the president's administration and used his New Frontier rhetoric. In 1964 Sanders appointed a biracial delegation to represent Georgia at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, the first time that black people were represented on the delegation. Sanders explained, "[T]his is not a social club. This is purely a political organization, based on the fact that every voter should be represented." Under the term limit law then in effect, Sanders was ineligible to run for re election in 1966. In the general election campaign that year, he endorsed Democratic nominee Lester Maddox, a segregationist, as his successor though the two had disagreed on many issues. At the Democratic State Convention in Macon on October 15, 1966, Sanders told the delegates: "A man should be loyal to his country, his family, to his God and to his political party—and don't you ever forget it." In his speech, Sanders likened Maddox's Republican opponent, U. S. Representative Howard Callaway, to the "arrogance of Richard Nixon, the chameleon ability of Ronald Reagan to switch rather than fight, and the callous concern for human needs that is a throwback to McKinley, Harding, and Coolidge." Callaway criticized Sanders for mishandling the state budget surplus, a position which weakened the Republican among anti Maddox moderate voters. Callaway led Maddox in the popular vote but failed to win a majority, and the Democratic controlled Georgia General Assembly chose Maddox as governor. Sanders was succeeded by Maddox on January 10, 1967.

Sanders left office at the peak of his popularity and turned down several offers for federal government positions from President Johnson. Instead he returned to mount an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1970. The other two candidates in the Democratic primary were former state senator Jimmy Carter and black attorney Chevene Bowers King. Sanders was initially favored by most political observers as the candidate most likely to win. Early polls conducted at the behest of Carter showed most Georgians held a favorable view of Sanders' previous gubernatorial term. Carter directed his campaign team to frame his opponent as anti democratic, "nouveau riche", "Atlanta oriented", overly liberal, and hostile to George Wallace. Carter attempted to portray himself as friendly to the "average man" and working class voters, while portraying Sanders as out of touch and regularly referring to him as "Cuff Links Carl". He also regularly claimed without basis that Sanders had used his time in office to enrich himself. Sanders ran with the slogan "Carl Sanders ought to be governor again," which appeared to some voters as arrogant. Furthermore, while his television advertisements showed him as a man of success while jogging, boating, and flying, Carter's ads focused on his farming background and suggested that Sanders was the candidate of the "big money boys". Carter's campaign anonymously distributed a photo of Sanders getting doused with a bottle of champagne by a black Atlanta Hawks basketball player celebrating a victory at a game. The photo communicated several potentially damaging messages about Sanders, including his wealth, an association with alcohol (which was disliked in teetotalist rural communities) and a personal connection with a black person. The Carter campaign also published anonymous "fact sheets" which described Sanders as a staunch ally of controversial black legislator Julian Bond (the two actually disliked one another), noted his attendance at the funeral of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., and attacked him for denying Wallace an official visit to the state. At the same time, the campaign set up a fictitious "Black Concern Committee" to draw black support away from Sanders by arguing that he had failed to honor promises to the black community during his gubernatorial tenure. Carter's campaign press secretary later described their efforts as a "nigger campaign". In the September 9 Democratic primary, Carter led with 388,280 votes, while Sanders placed second with 301,179 votes, most of them from blacks or urbanites. With the contest moving to a runoff since no candidate had won an outright majority, Sanders began a series of attacks on Carter. At a press conference shortly after the first primary, he called Carter "a smiling hypocrite" and a staunch liberal. When Carter refused to debate him, Sanders hosted a televised debate with an empty chair, though the absent opponent brushed the event aside, quipping "Some folks said the chair was ahead." After Carter secured the endorsement of segregationist publisher Roy V. Harris, Sanders' campaign crafted a pamphlet which depicted Carter climbing into a bed with Harris. Sanders' workers also created another pamphlet showing a picture of dilapidated tenant housing on Carter's farm, captioned "Isn't it time someone spoke up for these people?" Carter denounced the literature as smear sheets and warned his campaign workers about their distribution. During the last few days of the campaign, Sanders' organization launched an intense effort to fly the pamphlets into far flung areas of the state. Many were intercepted by Carter supporters posing as Sanders campaigners and destroyed. In the runoff primary Carter won with 60 percent of the vote. Sanders received 93 percent of the black vote and the support of his erstwhile backers, but Carter won overwhelmingly in rural areas. He felt guilty about the tactics he had employed, and after his win he called Sanders to apologize for attacking his character. Carter was victorious in the subsequent general election, and was later elected President of the United States in 1976. Sanders remained bitter about the 1970 campaign, and later said of Carter, "He is not proud of that election, and he shouldn't be proud of it,"

In 1967 Sanders joined with several other lawyers to create the firm Troutman, Sanders, Lockerman & Ashmore He renewed his focus on the firm—which was renamed Troutman Sanders in 1992—after his loss in the 1970 gubernatorial race and recruited Georgia Power and Southern Company as clients. He became chairman of First Georgia Bank in 1973. He served as chairman of the law firm for thirty years, and in 2006 became its chairman emeritus. At the time of his death, Troutman Sanders had grown to include 600 lawyers. The Carl E. Sanders Family YMCA opened in Buckhead, Atlanta, in 2000, after a gift to construct it was made in Sanders’ honor by Guy Millner.