Greg Schneiders, a Democratic political adviser who began as a struggling Capitol Hill bar owner and made his way into President Jimmy Carter’s inner circle, taking on roles that included helping create the disaster relief agency FEMA, died May 8 at his home in Key Largo, Florida. He was 77.

Schneiders had a heart attack while sleeping, said his son, Nate Schneiders.

Among the countless “how I got into politics” stories in Washington, Schneiders’ was one of tough lessons and lucky timing. In 1974, he had just sold two failing drinking spots that he co-owned: a saloon called Whitby’s on Capitol Hill and Georgetown Beef Co., a beer and burger joint.

He went on unemployment, with a stack of debts following him and his business partner, a friend from their days at Georgetown University.

“I never intended to do it for the rest of my life,” Schneiders told The Washington Post. “But no one in my family had ever run a business. I was enchanted by it.”

While visiting his brother near Boston, he attended a Carter campaign rally at a time when the former Georgia governor was still regarded as a long shot for the Democratic nomination. Schneiders was impressed by Carter and offered the candidate his services. He knew little about campaigning but had a gift for speechwriting and what he called intuitive people skills that he honed as a bar owner.

He began at the bottom, helping load campaign buses and keeping track of luggage. Being on the road, however, put him in close contact with the candidate. Soon, Schneiders was added to a team, led by chief strategist Hamilton Jordan, that wwas tasked with crafting Carter’s image and finding ways to use his homespun qualities, including his peanut farmer days, to break out from the Democratic field.

“Carter was having difficulty overcoming a sense that he was different,” Schneiders recalled, “that people didn’t really know who he was or what made him tick.”

After Carter’s victory over incumbent Gerald Ford in 1976 – in a campaign that included anger over Ford’s pardoning of his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, from potential Watergate crimes – Schneiders watched from the window of a friend’s office on Inauguration Day in January 1977 when the president-elect and Rosalynn Carter walked up Pennsylvania Avenue.

Schneiders entered the White House as a speechwriter and deputy communications director and later had roles including head of special projects, a portfolio that made Schneiders part of Carter’s top initiatives. Among them were efforts by Carter to bring various disaster-response groups under one umbrella.

That led to the creation in 1979 of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. Schneiders often served as Carter’s personal representative at major natural disasters, including touring Johnstown, Pennsylvania, after devastating flooding in July 1977 that claimed more than 80 lives.

“The politics of disaster relief are amazingly straightforward,” Schneiders said years after leaving the White House “It’s an amalgam of ambulance-chasing and pork barrel. You show up, express your concern and promise money – and you will be rewarded with votes.”

In July 1979, Schneiders drafted a cautionary memo to Carter. He had read the president’s upcoming speech and was troubled. Carter would say, in a nationally televised speech, that the nation was suffering from a “crisis of confidence” to combat double-digit inflation and rising fuel prices, partly caused by supply disruptions after the Iranian Revolution.

Carter’s image was already battered by the hostage crisis in Tehran, where 52 Americans were held captive by Iranian militants at the U.S. Embassy. Schneiders predicted that the exasperated tone of Carter’s address would give his opponents more ammunition against him in the 1980 presidential race.

“Look carefully at each self-deprecating remark and each negative comment about America,” Schneiders wrote in the memo, which became part of the archives at the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta. “We’d hear them thrown back ad nauseam during a campaign.”

His premonition proved correct. Republican candidate Ronald Reagan seized on Carter’s “malaise” speech – even though Carter never used that word.

Schneiders was among a small group of Carter administration insiders to learn the results of internal polling during the closing days of the 1980 campaign, showing Reagan surging to a 10-point lead. Schneiders was by the president’s side on Air Force One when the pollster, Patrick Caddell, told Carter it appeared that reelection was out of reach.

After Carter’s defeat, Schneiders advised the Senate minority leader, Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and helped direct the unsuccessful Democratic presidential campaigns of astronaut-turned-senator John Glenn in 1984 and Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt in 1988.

Schneiders later founded a Washington-based consulting firm, Prime Group, which assisted in communications strategies for nonprofit organizations and corporate clients.

On the campaign trail, Schneiders said it was common to put on weight from constant snacking, evenings at the bar and lack of exercise. He marveled at how Carter never seemed to add an extra pound.

“He used to kid me about the fact that I was gaining weight and he was not,” Schneiders recalled in an oral history with a presidential historian. They only time Carter indulged was during a dinner with Rosalynn, Schneiders recalled: “They would have a dinner together and have a bottle of wine or something.”

Gregory Stephen Schneiders was born in Detroit on April 15, 1947. His father was a psychologist, and his mother was a homemaker.

Schneiders was a few credits short of graduating from Georgetown in late 1969 when he used a $20,000 loan arranged by his mother to help buy Chadwick’s bar. (He had worked as the bar manager at Chadwick’s, which was renamed Whitby’s.) During the Carter administration, Schneiders finished the credits needed and received his Georgetown degree.

In addition to his son, survivors include his wife of 48 years, the former Marie Hartnett; another son, Luke; three sisters; a brother; and four grandchildren.

Schneiders had a lifelong fascination with the craft of political polling, including how questions were framed and how results were interpreted. He believed his time as a bartender was a bonus.

“Owning a bar teaches you about business. Tending bar teaches you about people – who they are, what they believe or feel, and why,” he said in a 2020 interview with an education-focused news site, The 74. “To be a good bartender, you have to be a good listener, which involves the same skill set as being a good opinion researcher.”

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