Democrats shun party label in the South Considered a handicap in effort to retake the conservative region
By William M. Welch
USA TODAY
LEXINGTON, S.C. -- Nearly 40 years have passed since Preston Callison lost a race for Congress, yet the lesson remains with him today. For a Democrat to win in South Carolina, he says, the key is: ''Don't act like one.''
That's a formula the party's candidate for the U.S. Senate, Alex Sanders, and other Democrats in Southern states are trying to follow in this year's elections. For Sanders, the party label can be a handicap in his uphill campaign for the seat Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond has held since 1954.
Sanders mentions the revered Thurmond, the oldest and longest-serving senator in history, only slightly less often than his Republican opponent, Rep. Lindsey Graham. He calls Thurmond, 99, who presaged a Southern realignment when he switched parties in 1964, the ''ultimate independent.'' And Sanders asserts that he's an independent, too. ''I haven't been a very good Democrat,'' he says.
Across the South this election year, Democrats are following similar playbooks in races that could hold the key to a Senate majority. Hard-fought races are found in seven states of the Old Confederacy -- Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Democrats have historic openings in three of those states because of the retirements of entrenched Republicans who rally the party's conservative base: Thurmond, Jesse Helms in North Carolina and Phil Gramm in Texas. With the Senate evenly divided, each contest is critical.
''We cannot take the Senate back if we lose here,'' Graham tells Republicans.
Waving a liberal banner may work in Minnesota. There, former vice president Walter Mondale, who lost 49 states in the 1984 presidential election, has taken over the late senator Paul Wellstone's left-leaning campaign. But it doesn't get candidates very far in the South. Since Hubert Humphrey ran for president in 1968, Democrats here have become skilled at running away from their national party's leaders. This year, most are keeping their distance from former president Bill Clinton and Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
Lessons from 2000
In 2000, President Bush carried the South. Only in Florida was the outcome close. So this year, even Ron Kirk, a black ex-mayor of Dallas; Mark Pryor, the son of a liberal Arkansas senator; and Erskine Bowles of North Carolina, Clinton's former chief of staff, are sounding conservative.
* In North Carolina, Bowles has kept Clinton far from the state. Recent polls show him within striking distance of Republican Elizabeth Dole, who once led by more than 30 percentage points.
* In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Max Cleland touts his support for Bush on tax cuts and a possible war against Iraq. Those stands are important, because Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss is attacking Cleland as weak on defense -- a tough sell, since Cleland lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam.
* In Bush's home state of Texas, Kirk backed Bush's position on Iraq and has said he would support the president ''probably more times than not.'' He is running close behind Republican John Cornyn, the state's attorney general.
* In Tennessee, Democratic Rep. Bob Clement has followed a conservative course in his race against former governor Lamar Alexander. He backs Bush's tax cuts and declares: ''I'm no rubber stamp for one president or one party.''
* In Louisiana, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu also backed Bush on Iraq and tax cuts. She calls herself an ''independent voice.'' She has a big lead in polls against three Republican opponents but needs 50% to avoid a runoff.
* In Arkansas, Pryor has called for more tax cuts and has appeared in TV ads wearing camouflage and carrying a hunting rifle. There, Clinton has been used to boost turnout among black voters, a near-solid bloc that's essential for Democrats because a majority of white voters drifted to the GOP in the last three decades. Pryor has a slight lead over Republican Sen. Tim Hutchinson.
Clinton helped rejuvenate Southern Democrats with his victory a decade ago. He showed how they could win back independent voters by stressing fiscal discipline, economic growth and moderate positions on crime and welfare. But as his administration grew more liberal and he was engulfed in a sex scandal, he became as much an outcast as other national Democrats in his home region.
The Democrats' former dominance of the South was forged in the aftermath of the Civil War and solidified during Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. It began to crumble as the civil rights movement gave blacks the right to vote. White conservatives left the party over such issues as race, guns, crime, defense and the death penalty. Thurmond's switch from Democrat to Republican was followed by Richard Nixon's successful ''Southern strategy'' in the 1968 presidential race. By the Reagan era of the 1980s, the transformation of Southern politics was complete.
What remains is a competitive two-party system in most Southern states, says Merle Black, co-author of The Rise of Southern Republicans. Republicans have an advantage in presidential races, but each party must appeal beyond its base to independent voters. Most of those are white, centrist -- and female. Democrats have been most successful running for state offices and keeping their distance from the national party.
Wooing black voters
Southern Democrats depend on minority voters as their base; they need a large black turnout to win. Here in South Carolina, where blacks make up 27% of the voting-age population, they expect to win nine in every 10 black votes. They are focusing their get-out-the-vote efforts on black voters and targeting them with ads on predominantly black radio stations. In North Carolina, Bowles is running ads on African-American stations that feature Clinton, something he avoids in mainstream media. Similarly, Republicans use Christian radio to target social conservatives.
''You run two different campaigns. One gets reported on, and one doesn't,'' says Black, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta. ''Very different messages are being communicated'' by the same campaign.
Republicans are making an effort to win some of the black vote, but expectations are low. ''Up north, maybe. Not here,'' says Barry Walker Sr., owner of a soul food and jazz restaurant in Columbia, S.C. ''They'll all vote Democratic.''
John Land, a 28-year Democratic state senator from Manning, in South Carolina's tidal region, says the racial voting pattern is clear to both parties. He figures if Democrats can turn out a large enough black vote, Sanders and Gov. Jim Hodges can win election with as little as one-third of the white vote. But even that modest percentage of white voters, he says, ''is very tough.''
Racial considerations are never far from the surface here. Preston Callison attributes his loss in a Democratic primary four decades ago to his support for school desegregation. That issue has long since faded, but he says there remains ''a residue'' that polarizes the electorate.
''You're dealing with a state that, dating back to the Civil War, felt it was important for the federal government not to tell us what to do down here,'' says Andy Taylor, host of a radio talk show heard on 10 South Carolina stations every afternoon. ''This state is still fighting the Civil War in some ways.''
South Carolina's Graham, 47, a four-term congressman, was one of the impeachment managers who prosecuted Clinton in 1998. He depicts his opponent, Sanders, as a liberal by association, naming him along with Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Edward Kennedy. ''Their agenda is not your agenda,'' Graham tells voters.
Graham was joined last week by Bush's White House chief of staff, Andy Card, who went to college in South Carolina. Addressing a large gathering of Republicans on the moss-draped yard of a Civil War-era home in Florence, Card said electing Graham would give Bush ''the echo he needs'' in the Senate.
An avuncular spinner of yarns and quick with a quip, Sanders, a 64-year-old former state senator, judge and college president, seems to have stepped from another era. To some, he recalls Sam Ervin, the late Democratic senator from North Carolina. Sanders carries a card in his pocket with his motto: ''Save more. Spend less. Live modestly.''
''I want to go to Washington and show them we in South Carolina are not ignorant racists,'' Sanders says. ''We are decent people, and our values are the best hope for this country.''
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