a multi-county Georgia senatorial constituency while the rotation agreements were in use. In 1958 Sanders chaired a Senate committee which investigated potential corruption in the Rural Roads Authority during Governor Marvin Griffin's tenure. The committee found that the authority spent too much money on construction projects, located new roads without proper consideration, and was ineffective at maintaining existing roads. It recommended that the agency be dissolved and that future rural road projects be allocated based on population density, all financed with a pay-as-you-go system. Lieutenant Governor Ernest Vandiver became political allies with Sanders as a result of his committee work and made him Senate floor leader in 1959. Vandiver became governor, and that year a federal judge ordered the Atlanta Board of Education to draft a plan to racially desegregate schools. Vandiver called 60 people to the Governor's Mansion to discuss either proceeding with desegregation or closing the schools. Only Sanders and House floor leader Frank Twitty advised desegregation, the former fearing that suspending schools "would have created a generation of illiterates." Vandiver ultimately had schools closed only temporarily while the Georgia General Assembly revised state segregation statutes. He opposed a proposal to make the school issue subject to a statewide referendum. With the governor's support, Sanders served as president pro tempore of the Senate from 1960 to 1962. Gubernatorial career 1962 election Sanders decided to make a bid for higher office in 1962. Initially mulling over a potential race for the office of lieutenant governor which had a retiring incumbent, he had doubts when a similarly-named Atlanta attorney, Carl F. Sanders, declared his candidacy. Carl E. Sanders suspected that the other man had been planted to confuse voters and spoil his chances by another candidate, Peter Zack Geer. Geer denied the allegation. Carl E. Sanders then decided to run for governor. At the time he launched his candidacy in late April, Georgia used the county unit system in its primaries, whereby the candidate who won the majority in most counties secured the party nomination, instead of the candidate which earned the majority of all votes across the state. This system greatly limited the chances of urban candidates for decades. Several weeks into the primary, federal courts declared this method unconstitutional, and left the nomination to be decided by popular vote. Sanders campaigned on "a platform of progress", pledging to improve education, reorganize the State Highway Department, revamp mental health