President Richard Nixon had won the 1972 election with Spiro Agnew as his running mate , but in 1973 Agnew resigned and Ford was appointed as vice president via the 25th Amendment . When Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal , Ford ascended to the presidency , becoming the only president to have never been elected to national office . He faced a strong challenge from conservative former governor Ronald Reagan of California in the Republican primaries , but Ford narrowly prevailed at the convention . Carter was little-known at the start of the Democratic primaries , but the former governor of Georgia emerged as the front-runner after his victories in the first set of primaries . Campaigning as a political moderate and Washington outsider , Carter defeated opponents such as Jerry Brown and Mo Udall to clinch the Democratic nomination
convention
1976 Republican National Convention
1976 United States presidential election