Jody Powell, White House press secretary turned PR exec, dies

Jody Powell, who began his career as driver to then gubernatorial candidate Jimmy Carter and six years later became White House Press Secretary, has died. He was 65. “With a Southerner’s gift for gab, a fondness for bourbon and genuinely close relationship with the president, he was well-liked by the reporters who covered the Carter White House,” wrote Politico ’s Jonathan Martin. In the 1980s, Powell founded the PR firm Powell Tate with former Nancy Reagan press secretary Sheila …