When Lynchburg native Carter Elliott IV was the campaign manager for former Lynchburg City Councilor Beau Wright on his successful 2018 campaign for council, it was far from the then-20-year-old’s first encounter with politics.
Still a college student balancing a double major and managing a campaign for city council at the time, Elliott’s history in politics dates back to before he could even cast a legal ballot in an election.
“I knocked like a couple hundred doors at 11 years old for [President Barack] Obama, [Sen. Mark] Warner and [U.S. Rep. Tom] Perriello,” Elliott said in a recent interview about volunteering in the 2008 election.
Elliott, now 25, seemed destined to work in politics, and said his earliest memories come from tagging along with his grandfather, Carter Elliott Jr., a former Campbell County Board of Supervisors member, to local democratic committee meetings.
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“My aunt worked for Perriello’s office. My uncle worked for [Gov.] Chuck Robb and [U.S. Rep.] Don Beyer,” Elliott said, also noting his grandfather’s time on the board of supervisors, and that he was the “last elected Democrat in a county that’s now 70% to 30%” Republican.
“Pretty much my dad is the only one who wasn’t in it,” he added.
A fourth-generation dairy farmer in Campbell County and 2015 Rustburg High School graduate, Elliott was raised on Campbell County’s Seven Oaks farm, an Elliott family-owned estate that dates back about 150 years.
Growing up on the farm in rural Virginia, Elliott sees the irony in being a Democrat, but said his grandfather was “definitely the reason” he became one.
“Like I grew up shooting clay pigeons with a shotgun,” Elliott said. “I grew up with a healthy appreciation for the Second Amendment; obviously I believe in the well regulated part.”
“I had a lot of really cool people to look up to,” he added, naming the likes of his grandfather, Lynchburg luminaries Elliot and Rosel Schewel, and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who he calls his “political hero.”
These days, Elliott works as the press secretary for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, serving as one of the youngest gubernatorial press secretaries in the country, just 15 years after knocking on doors as a pre-teen for candidates in Lynchburg.
Working as a 25-year-old in a field that some spend decades trying to break in to, Elliott hearkened back to a time on the farm with his grandfather and father where he made a “several thousand dollar mistake” of running over a tree branch and damaging one of the tractors on the farm. Elliott said that was the time he learned the importance of honesty and hard work.
“My grandfather would say, all you got to do is three things to make me happy: You just got to work hard. You got to tell the truth. And you got to tell me when you mess up. And as long as you do those three things, you’re gonna succeed.”
“I really put that to the test that day,” he said about running over the tree branch. “... When you grew up on a farm, you learn a lot of things. You learn how to work a lot of hours. You learn how to do tough tasks, you learn how to multitask. And politics is no different.”
Prior to becoming the press secretary for Moore, Elliott acquired a long list of experience working on campaigns ranging from city council in Lynchburg to U.S. Senate and gubernatorial candidates.
To name a few, Elliott has worked with Sen. Warner, 2018 5th District Democratic candidate Leslie Cockburn, served as a campaign fellow for former Gov. Ralph Northam, Senate candidate Alex Lasry of Wisconsin, and, most notably for him, as the political coordinator for McAuliffe’s 2021 gubernatorial campaign.
“It was a dream come true,” Elliott said about his biggest “pinch me moment”: the opportunity to work for McAuliffe. “I mean, he is like eat, sleep, breathe and helping Virginia. I did everything I could to get on his team. I called everyone I knew, ... like anything I could do to try to get my foot in the door I was trying to do.”
That campaign featured his personal “favorite memory of all-time,” bringing McAuliffe to his alma mater, the University of Lynchburg.
“I didn’t go to a big school but I went to a very active school. Bringing him to my alma mater and having him speak in front of a couple 100 students, two weeks before the end of the election. I mean, it was just surreal. I mean, the guy went to JoJo’s [Pizza] with us, played cornhole, had a beer, and then went over and spoke to a bunch of Hornets,” Elliott said about McAuliffe’s visit to the school.
McAuliffe shares the same kind of love for Elliott for the time he spent working on his campaign.
“I always tell people ‘sleep when you’re dead’ and Carter follows that same mantra,” McAuliffe said. “I loved having him on my team and happy he’s helping my good friend Wes Moore — even if he’s on the wrong side of the Potomac.”
Leaving his home in Virginia to work in Annapolis for Moore, deemed by many to be a rising star in the Democratic Party, Elliott said the decision was extremely hard for a little while.
“But you know, one of the things I came to terms with is that sometimes in order to grow, you have to leave home,” he said.
As a press secretary, Elliott joked, “Yeah, well, you know, my first job was shoveling cow manure. Some people say that’s still what I do today.” But the “17 or 18 hour days” are rewarding he said, citing the ability to see people he works for touching the lives of people in their state.
“It’s really cool getting to see the impression that he’s going to leave on the state, and he’s really working to create a Maryland that leaves nobody behind. It’s cool to play a small role in helping with that,” he said.
Moore said Elliott brings “enthusiasm, energy, and most importantly, a little bit of humor to everything he does.”
“It’s why he’s such an important part of the team,” Moore added. “I know he loves his home state of Virginia, but we are grateful to have him here helping us create a better Maryland. And part of making this Maryland’s decade will be converting him into a [University of Maryland] Terps fan.”
Elliott, admitting he went winless in elections from his successful campaign with Wright for City Council in 2018 to Moore’s victory in 2022, said the nature of the field is to “get beat up.”
“It’s really like the old cliché, you know. You just got to get back up and keep fighting. But along the way, I got to work for these incredible people,” he said.
Although he’s a proud Democrat, Elliott believes bipartisanship is important, even important enough for him to help launch a Republicans club at the University of Lynchburg while he was in school.
“When you work together and do those things, you find out that you have a lot more in common than you differ,” he said. “And it’s the same way like that anywhere you go.”
Reflecting on growing up in Central Virginia, Elliott said “there’s no way I would be anywhere close to where I am” if not for this community.
“If I went to college in D.C., or if I went to college in Blacksburg at [Virginia] Tech, I just wouldn’t have had that same opportunity to do these things. And I really, really feel indebted to like the community and the city,” he added.
Wright, Elliott’s first full-time boss on the campaign trail, said about his old campaign manager, “Farming runs in his blood, and I think that’s why he’s such a hard working, no nonsense, get stuff done kind of guy.
“And I think that partly explains why he’s done so well in politics — he gets what it means to be from and of a place, and that it takes all kinds of people from all different political views to make a community successful.”
Joking again about his losing record in elections, Elliott said, “you learn very quickly in politics is that you can’t plan your future effectively,” pointing to the fact he’s lived in five cities and three states in the last calendar year.
But growing up in a Methodist home, Elliott said he confidently knows that in the next 10 years he wants to “do all the good you can, for all the people you can, all the times you can, in any way you can.
“I don’t know where I’m going to be. I don’t know what I’m gonna be doing. But I want to be doing that.”