Nearing his 100th birthday and in hospice care since February 2023, the former president Jimmy Carter reportedly has one goal: voting for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter told his son Chip this week, as his grandson Jason Carter recounted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Harris, Carter’s fellow Democrat, will face the Republican Trump for the presidency on 5 November. Carter’s 100th birthday will fall on 1 October.
A Democrat who was in the White House from 1977 to 1981, Carter is the oldest living president. In ill health for several years, his family announced that he entered hospice care on 18 February 2023. Many took that announcement to mean Carter was near the end of his life.
And the next month, the current president, Joe Biden, said he had been asked to deliver Carter’s eulogy.
Biden also said Carter’s doctors had “found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough”.
In October 2023, as the White House celebrated Carter’s 99th birthday, the former Democratic National Committee chairperson Donna Brazile said the former Georgia governor was “a towering, old southern oak … as good as they come and tough as they come”.
The following month, Carter’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, died aged 96. The couple, who campaigned for human rights and mental health reform, were married for 77 years, through Jimmy Carter’s time in the US navy, in Georgia state politics, in the White House and in a post-presidency widely regarded as one of the most productive.
In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel peace prize, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.
In 2021, he told the Associated Press the secret to a long life was “to marry the right person”.
On Saturday, the Journal-Constitution said Jason Carter said his grandfather had in recent days been “more alert and interested in politics and the war in Gaza”, the latter a tricky issue for Harris to navigate, not least as she nears a decision on her vice-presidential pick.
Jason Carter said his grandfather a few days ago voiced his wish to vote for Harris, who has served as Biden’s vice-president. Jimmy Carter expressed his support for Harris when Chip Carter asked if he was trying to make it to 100.
As the Journal-Constitution noted, early voting in Georgia begins on 15 October – two weeks past the former president’s centenarian birthday.
• This article was amended on 4 August 2024. Jimmy Carter will turn 100 one month before the November election, not two weeks before.
