When Jimmy Carter 'lost,' then won the 1976 Wisconsin Primary

Editor's note: This is a modified version of a story that was first published in the Journal Sentinel Green Sheet on March 21, 2016.

Jimmy Carter really did have reason to smile the morning of April 7, 1976.

The Georgia governor was basking in his big upset victory in the 1976 Wisconsin Democratic Primary. It wasn't just that he'd squeaked past Arizona Congressman Morris Udall, who had made an all-out push to win the state and revive his standing in the race for the party's presidential nomination.

It was that everyone had said he'd lost — including Carter himself.

The first edition of the Milwaukee Sentinel on April 7, 1976, the day after the primary, led with the headline, "Carter upset by Udall." The early edition of The Milwaukee Journal, too, called the vote for Udall, as did ABC and NBC. Udall made a victory speech, calling it "a very, very good win." The Journal reported that Carter, in a "tentative" losing statement, said the real "underreported" story was his "dramatic move upward in the national Gallup Polls."

Then it got more dramatic: The late-night vote count turned in Carter's favor.

The next day, someone gave Carter a copy of the first-edition Sentinel, and the moment was dutifully caught by an Associated Press photographer.

Jimmy Carter's 'Dewey Defeats Truman' moment

It was Harry Truman's Chicago Tribune moment all over again, when the Chicago paper's "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline — and the photo capturing Truman's celebration of it — underscored Truman's unlikely 1948 victory.

The Journal ran the photograph of Carter holding the Sentinel on the front page of its final edition on April 7, 1976. Considering the bitter rivalry between the two newspapers at the time — even though both papers, the predecessors of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, were owned by what was then the Journal Company — the caption that ran with the photo was almost magnanimous in acknowledging that other media outlets, including The Journal, had made a similar mistake.

That said, the picture did run on Page 1.

The photograph seen around the world

The Sentinel's final edition on April 7, 1976, got the story right — the banner headline starts "Carter edges out Udall," and notes that President Gerald Ford easily beat Ronald Reagan in the Republican primary.

But it's also clear that it was a scramble. In a rare sight for a newspaper printed after World War II, the story starts out, in bold type:

"BULLETIN!"

"Jimmy Carter won the Wisconsin Democratic primary early Wednesday. With 95% of the precincts reporting, Carter had 258,444 votes to Morris K. Udall's 253,790."

The headline on the inside page where the story continued is unchanged from the earlier edition: "Carter, Udall decision in doubt; Ford a winner."

The AP photograph made its way around the world, running in scores of newspapers. It also helped solidify Carter's status as the Democratic front-runner, especially after the rough-and-tumble nature of the Wisconsin primary that year.

1976 Wisconsin Primary was an ugly fight

Carter came into Wisconsin on a roll. More than a dozen candidates competed in the Democratic race in 1976, but Carter won five of the first seven contests, quickly winnowing the field. His closest rivals were Udall and George Wallace, who, four years after being paralyzed after being shot by assassin wannabe (and Milwaukee native) Arthur Bremer, was making a fourth and final run for the White House.

RELATED:8 other times Wisconsin presidential primaries went a little off the rails

The presidential race — the first after Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War — had more than its share of ugliness. While campaigning in Wisconsin, Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat from Washington, was spit on at the Madison airport by a protester who targeted the presidential wannabe because Jackson had been considered a "hawk" on the Vietnam War. At a campaign stop in Madison, Wallace was met by a group of about a dozen wheelchair-pushing hecklers, some of whom were wearing masks with the face of Bremer — the man who put him in a wheelchair four years before.

Carter, of course, rode the narrow victory in Wisconsin to the Democratic nomination, and election as the 39th U.S. president.

Udall never again sought national office. But he kept a framed copy of that first-edition Milwaukee Sentinel on his wall for years. In an article by Congressional Quarterly's Rhodes Cook, republished in the Sept. 3, 1990, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Udall was quoted as saying he kept it "as a warning never to take anything for granted — especially if it's in the first edition."