Caddell dies of stroke at 68
Pollster helped Carter in bid for presidency
WASHINGTON – Patrick Caddell, the pollster who helped propel Jimmy Carter in his longshot bid to win the presidency and later distanced himself from Democrats, has died, a colleague said Saturday night. He was 68.
Caddell died Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina, after a stroke, according to Professor Kendra Stewart of the College of Charleston, who confirmed the death to The Associated Press.
After working with Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s, Caddell eventually drifted away from the Democratic Party and began advising supporters of Republican Donald Trump and was a contributor to Fox News for a time.
Caddell worked for 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern, then joined with Carter in the mid-1970s to develop a campaign strategy to overcome the cynicism spawned by the Vietnam War and Watergate.
In an oral history for the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, Caddell said Carter’s best bet was to present himself as an outsider who could help heal the country.
Caddell studied Southern politics at Harvard and was helpful to Carter and his close advisers as they studied how to maneuver their campaign between the competing forces of the McGovern liberals and supporters of conservative firebrand George Wallace.
Caddell, a native of Rock Hill, South Carolina, and the Georgia governor found they had many ideas in common about how he could win the presidency.
Carter won the presidency, but Caddell preferred to advise the president from outside the White House.
Caddell wrote a memo warning of a crisis of confidence that Americans were experiencing and urged Carter to address them directly about it. That became known as the “malaise” speech, though Carter never used that word.
Caddell consulted with other Democratic presidential candidates in the 1980s and was a close adviser to Joe Biden during his failed 1988 bid for the presidency.
In explaining his break from Democrats, Caddell said he thought the party was no longer “a party of the people” but had been hijacked by elites, the well-educated, Wall Street and interest groups.