Former President Carter target of scorn, shock, disbelief
At least one member of an independent panel said Carter was the reason he voted to reverse a Pentagon recommendation to close the Naval Submarine Base New London — which would have shifted six subs and 3,367 jobs to Georgia’s Kings Bay base.
“What was he thinking?” asked Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue.
Carter, the only president ever to serve as a submariner, sent a letter to the Base Closure and Realignment Commission last week, pleading to keep open the Groton, Conn., base where he had been stationed as a young engineer in the 1950s.
The Pentagon had estimated that shifting fast-attack submarines, a maintenance facility and the Naval Submarine School from Connecticut to Georgia would grow the overall work force in St. Marys, a coastal town of 14,000, by 22 percent — the largest predicted percentage gain for any military community in the nation.
“You just hate to have an ex-president, a Navy guy and a Georgian going against the home team,” said Rep. Jack Kingston, a Republican whose southeast Georgia district includes Kings Bay.
In St. Marys, the decision has been the talk of the town. Mayor Deborah Hase says people are not pleased with Carter.
“It was a surprise. It was a shock that he would write that letter,” Hase said. “You could fit four Groton bases on the Kings Bay base. It’s cheaper to live here.”
Carter issued a brief statement, saying the panel’s decision Wednesday “was made on the merits of the case and not due to any political influences” and that Kings Bay would “continue to provide increasing services to our nation’s defense.”
His press secretary said Thursday that Carter would not comment any further on the matter. Yet political experts said the statement alone speaks loudly on the way Carter has dealt with political issues throughout his career — he weighs the evidence and acts, no matter what the political cost.
“Carter’s approach is to try to decide what was best for the nation,” said Merle Black, professor of politics at Emory University in Atlanta. “He was trained as an engineer — his approach was to study a problem and reach his own conclusions and proceed. It’s Carter being Carter.”
As president, Carter was always careful to not make decisions that could be perceived as parochial and he fought to protect that image when the Kings Bay base was created in 1978 while he was in the White House.
“Throughout Carter’s career, he’s paid a lot of political price for this approach,” Black said. “I can’t imagine he’s very popular in south Georgia this morning. What’s unusual is he seems more concerned about the south Connecticut economy than the south Georgia economy.”
In his letter to the base closure panel, Carter said he feared that closing the Groton base would result in “a loss of some of the proud submariners heritage of our historic association with service and training in New London.”
“I don’t profess to speak for other active and retired submariners, but I believe that, overwhelmingly, the consensus would be that transferring the submarine forces from New London would be militarily deleterious,” he wrote.
The 80-year-old Carter, a former Georgia governor who still lives in rural Plains, didn’t make his opinions known before visiting Kings Bay two weeks ago to dive in the new submarine USS Jimmy Carter. The sub was built at Groton’s Electric Boat shipyards and commissioned at the Groton base. The sub ride came just days before Carter sent his letter to the panel.
“He was a great president and everything, but it’s just pretty bizarre he would say that, being from Georgia,” said Karen Landry, executive assistant at the Camden-Kings Bay Chamber of Commerce.