A personal interest of mine is reading about old elections - for whatever reason, I think they're really interesting! Anyway, when I was reading this NPR article about Carter wanting Biden to give his eulogy, it stated that Biden was "the first elected official outside of Georgia to endorse Carter's [1976] run for president". That's kinda wild! Naturally, I wanted to find more details about it.

I found some info, but I could not find what I was really looking for, a long article discussing the full circumstances and reasoning behind Biden's endorsement, its effect if any on the dark horse Carter campaign and Biden's reputation at the time, and maybe some not-really-justified commentary about how this may have led to Biden's rise fifty years later. Alas.

I'm hoping the market can find me some answers! To make this more specific, I've written 7 questions (well, 6 questions and a bonus challenge) I'm curious about. Resolves to the number of these questions which I feel I have satisfactory answers to by market close (at 6pm PDT on Sat., April 15, in about a month - I'm experimenting with midday close times). Some of these should be relatively easy, while some may take more digging or even creativity. I will only give points for an answer that satisfies my curiosity on that question.

1. TIMELINE: When did Biden actually endorse Carter? This would imply which point in the primaries, which would imply how much Biden was sticking his neck out with the endorsement.

2. REASONING: Why did Biden endorse Carter before all the other non-Georgian elected officials? Both official reasons and potential more cynical ones - right now I don't have a good sense of why Biden made his choice.

3. OTHER ENDORSEMENTS: Were there other elected officials outside Georgia who endorsed Carter soon after Biden, or was he alone for awhile?

4. EFFECT ON CARTER: What effect, if any, did this have on the 1976 Carter campaign? (Did it give him a boost in the primaries? In Delaware? Make him more acceptable with party elites? Maybe nothing?)

5. EFFECT ON BIDEN: What effect, if any, did this have on Biden's immediate political career? (Did he get any rewards in the Carter administration? Did he get flack for endorsing an unpopular president? Both? Neither?)

6. COINCIDENCE?: How coincidental is it that the first non-Georgian elected official to endorse such an unlikely candidacy later went on to be VP and president? Maybe it's a total coincidence, but maybe there are some arguments to be made that it reveals something broader about Biden. I'm willing to consider both options.

7. BONUS FUN FACT: What cool fun fact about this situation do I not know? (This may be impossible if there don't exist any sufficiently cool fun facts.)

Details from My Research So Far

However, the Wikipedia articles on the 1976 primaries, Carter's 1976 campaign, and Biden himself all have nothing to say about it. I did find a bit of info: this AP article says it was March 25, 1976 when Biden went to Wisconsin to campaign for Carter. It includes this Biden quote: "Some of my colleagues in the Senate thought it was youthful exuberance ... I was exuberant, but as I said then, Jimmy’s not just a bright smile. He can win and he can appeal to more segments of the population than any other person. ... Gov. Carter proved me right."

According to this primary calendar, that date was after a lot of primaries, so Carter would've been the frontrunner then, and presumably Biden actually made the endorsement prior to March 25 if he was the first elected official outside Georgia.

There's this LA Times article, which doesn't discuss the endorsement directly but does suggest that Biden learned the importance of politicking from Carter, and also sought to distance himself from Carter fairly soon after he was inaugurated: "'The president is learning, but not fast enough', he [Biden] said in 1977. 'Nixon had his enemies list and President Carter has his friends list. I guess I’m on his friends list, and I don’t know which is worse.'"

Anyway, that's all I got. I'm excited for what this market turns up!

General policy for my markets: In the rare event of a conflict between my resolution criteria and the agreed-upon common-sense spirit of the market, I may resolve it according to the market's spirit or N/A, probably after discussion.