Hugh “Sonny” Carter Jr., who helped organize the “Peanut Brigade” that helped elect his cousin Jimmy to the White House and later enforced the president’s frugal ways in the West Wing, has died. He was 80.
The Carter Center, the 39th president’s post-White House organization for advocating democracy and fighting disease in the developing world, did not release a cause of death.
Hugh Carter was among the many extended family members who campaigned alongside Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter and their children early in the 1976 presidential campaign, when the Georgia Democrat was considered a longshot candidate. After Jimmy Carter won, he assigned Hugh Carter the task of curtailing waste among White House staffers. The job earned him the nickname “Cousin Cheap.”
Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson and chairman of The Carter Center’s governing board, called Hugh Carter “crucial in my grandfather’s election” and, without referencing his old nickname, said his cousin “skillfully implemented true zero-based budgeting in my grandfather’s White House.”
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