Good piece on the southern Senate seats. Can the Republicans "run the table?"
POLITICS
Road To Realignment?
By Kirk Victor, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, June 18, 2004
A thread of irritation -- or perhaps it is anger -- runs through Ed Kilgore's voice. The Georgia-bred policy director of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council is clearly fed up with questions about whether the South is on the brink of a political realignment that will give Republicans complete domination of the region.
Mention that four Democrats have been booted out of Southern governorships in the past two years, and that Republicans this year have their sights set on picking up all five of the Senate seats that Southern Democrats are vacating, and Kilgore responds dismissively. "I have been hearing this crap since 1964, literally," Kilgore said. "What is the weight of evidence and history that the next election is always the one that matters?
"The realignment of basically rural, conservative white voters, which is what everybody keeps talking about, has pretty much ended," he insisted. "There are other demographic trends in the region that cut in both directions. We [would] have to go through two or three cycles in a row of massive Republican victories before it is safe to conclude that anything fundamental is going on."
Maybe so, but the stakes in this year's election are enormously high. Even Joe Erwin, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, says that if the GOP were to sweep the open Senate seats in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina, those pickups would constitute a decisive power shift. "If we get whacked, if we as a party get our hats handed to us, then absolutely it could be devastating," Erwin said.
But Erwin sees no chance of such a wipeout. He insists that Democrats are well positioned to retain most of those five seats, including the one in his home state, where Ernest Hollings, first elected to the Senate in 1966, is retiring. Erwin talks up the candidacy of Democratic nominee Inez Tenenbaum, now serving her second term as the state's elected superintendent of education.
As Democrats scramble to maintain their party's competitiveness in the South, Republicans have much at stake in trying to maintain and extend the inroads they have made in the 11 states of the Old Confederacy. In the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush would not have prevailed if he had not carried every Southern state, including his rival's home state of Tennessee.
In the Senate and House, the GOP needs the margins that its Southern seats provide in order to offset setbacks it has suffered elsewhere and to keep control of both chambers. The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature's insistence last year on redrawing the state's congressional districts was an undisguised effort to widen the GOP margin in the House, perhaps by as much as six seats.
The GOP's advances in the South are unstoppable, in the view of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who was elected in 2002, when his party held on to four Southern Senate seats that were up for grabs because of Republican retirements in the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Texas. Given his party's recent successes, Graham forecasts a seismic shift that will establish the GOP's ascendancy in Southern Senate races for years to come.
The 2002 election produced a "historic realignment to be historically added to," he said. "I am predicting that we run the table: South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida."
When pressed on why this year ought to yield such a breakthrough, Graham doesn't hesitate a moment. He contends that the contests in the South will become nationalized -- meaning that voters will come to see their own state's elections as referendums on the national parties and their presidential nominees -- and that once that happens, Democrats will be in profound trouble. Despite the uncertain economy, rising war casualties, and the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal, Bush remains popular throughout the region and will prove to have coattails long enough to help down-ticket candidates, Graham said. By contrast, the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, is a liberal from Massachusetts -- in other words, Graham says, a tough sell to Southern voters.
Graham is confident that on Election Day, Southerners will overwhelmingly support Bush. "I just sense the mood of the voter out there, in terms of national Democrats ... as they beat on Bush and call him a chicken hawk and they demagogue Southern judges who have lived very stellar, community-driven lives," Graham said. "They are sealing their own death warrant in the South."
Nonsense, says Kilgore. Good candidates trump party and ideology, and they potentially make Senate contests in the South very competitive, he insists. Even some GOP strategists share his view.
"Every election matters, obviously, but any fair and objective person looking at what has been going on for decades in the South would have to say that it is a competitive region," Kilgore said. "Every time the Republicans think they have it all locked up, lo and behold, they don't. I don't see any evidence that there still is some trend among previously Democratic elements of the Southern electorate toward the Republicans."
Party of Protest
Before the GOP becomes too giddy about its prospects in the South, Republicans must acknowledge they no longer have the luxury of running as outsiders.
David Rudd, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, contends that his party's success at recruiting several strong candidates gives it a leg up in this year's Senate contests. "We have attracted our very best candidates for these races. And the Republicans have not always attracted the very best candidates, from their perspective," he said. "Ultimately, the quality of the candidate is the single biggest factor in determining who wins."
In Georgia and Florida, both parties have yet to hold their Senate primaries. Republicans had a hotly contested battle in South Carolina on June 8 that has necessitated a runoff, between former Gov. David Beasley and three-term Rep. Jim DeMint. In Arkansas, GOP leaders were unable to persuade anyone with statewide name recognition to challenge freshman Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
Louisiana has an unusual "open primary" in which voters will choose among both Democratic and Republican candidates on November 2. If nobody wins more than 50 percent of the vote, a December runoff will be held between the top two vote-getters, regardless of party. Earlier this year, at a gathering of Senate Democrats, Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who is retiring after 18 years in the Senate, all but guaranteed his listeners that his favorite -- Rep. Chris John, D-La. -- will prevail, according to someone who was present.
The colorful Breaux was emphatic in an interview that Louisiana is not about to break its habit of supporting Democrats. "Louisiana is the only state in the United States of America that has never elected a Republican United States senator," he said. "Now, they appointed one -- those people from up North appointed one after the Civil War.... But we have never elected a Republican senator in history. In that sense, we are unique."
For his part, Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition operative and veteran Republican strategist who is the Southeast regional chairman for Bush's re-election campaign, isn't predicting that the GOP will win every high-profile Southern contest. And he echoes the idea that candidate quality, not just party affiliation, will help determine some key contests. "There will be races where we should win and we [will] come up short, because they have a superior candidate -- and vice versa," he said. The "vice versa" happened, according to Reed, "in 2002 in Georgia, where we had the strongest gubernatorial candidate that we had fielded since the 1960s."
That gubernatorial race produced a stunning upset, as Republican Sonny Perdue knocked off incumbent Roy Barnes, whose name had been bandied about as a possible Democratic presidential or vice presidential candidate. Reed, who was then Georgia's Republican state party chairman, helped to engineer that GOP breakthrough, as well as the defeat of Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was easily beaten by Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss.
Those striking GOP victories reverberated throughout the South. "Barnes's loss and the election of the first Republican in well over a century to the governorship was the demarcation point for Georgia [that it was truly becoming a Republican state], as it has been for so many Southern states," said Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia. "The first Republican governor means so much -- far more than the first Republican senator."
The fallout from Perdue's win continues. Things got so bad for Democrats in Georgia that, at one point a few months ago, Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, vice chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, resorted to joking about the seeming impossibility of finding a credible Democrat to vie for the seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Zell Miller. "We're now looking for volunteers to run in Georgia," Stabenow said, laughing, as she asked reporters to raise a hand if they were interested in throwing their hats into the ring. Since then, several candidates, including Rep. Denise Majette, D-Ga., who is just completing her first term in Congress, and wealthy businessman Cliff Oxford, who has never held political office, have emerged as leading contenders for the party's nomination in what is widely expected to be a steeply uphill battle for Democrats.
"For a variety of reasons -- demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural -- the South is moving inexorably and irreversibly in the direction of being the most Republican region in the country," Reed said. "Notice I did not say 'a one-party region.' I said, 'the most Republican region.' ... It is a long-term transition."
When asked about GOP successes in gubernatorial and Senate races in the past two years in Dixie, Kilgore declared that he has a message for Republicans: Before becoming too giddy about GOP prospects in the South, acknowledge that Republicans there no longer have the luxury of running as outsiders.
"The more Republicans have to actually govern or defend a national government, the harder it will be for them to nail down any kind of enduring majority," he predicted. "They can't just be the party of protest anymore. They actually have to do something. The record on that is pretty mixed. We'll see how Sonny Perdue does in 2006," when he has to run for re-election as governor.
Democratic Drawbacks
"A white, male Southern Democrat has to do everything right and has to be almost a political overachiever just to have a chance."
Kilgore is steadfastly confident that Democrats will remain competitive in the South this year. But Bob Clement and Joe Turnham, a pair of battle-scarred Southern politicians who lost to Republicans two years ago, are far less upbeat.
Former Rep. Clement, who was the Tennessee Democrats' nominee for an open Senate seat, lost by 10 points to former Republican Gov. Lamar Alexander, a two-time presidential candidate. Clement says that having a "D" by his name on the ballot hurt him.
A staunch Democrat whose father was a three-term governor of the state, Clement even goes so far as to say that he would have won if he and Alexander had reversed their party labels on the ballot.
"It was unbelievable," he said. "Everywhere I would go, people would say, 'Bob Clement, we think a lot of you, you've been a great congressman, but we have to stand by our president,' " he said. "The national Democrat Party, in recent years, has written off the South. And I think that is a huge mistake, which has cost us dearly."
Turnham, an Alabaman who failed in two runs for a congressional seat, is just as adamant that Southern Democrats are at a huge disadvantage because of being associated with the politics of the national Democratic Party.
A former chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party whose father was a longtime state legislator, Turnham came within 2 percentage points in 2002 of defeating a far-better-funded Republican, Mike Rogers, in a battle for an open House seat.
Like many other Southern Democrats, Turnham now speaks of the balancing act that candidates like him must perform to have a shot at winning: They must maintain a solid grip on the Democratic base, which means holding on to about 90 percent of the black vote, while making a pitch that's capable of attracting enough white swing voters to eke out a win. Obviously, that's no easy task.
"I saw firsthand -- a white, male Southern Democrat has to do everything right and has to be almost a political overachiever just to have a chance," Turnham said. "You have to continue to appeal to your base voters, and at the same time, you have to reflect the genuine issues of the heartlands of your state and district. What I have seen is a continual nationalization of party perception, which generically hurts Democrats in the South."
Despite the odds, Turnham jumped into the race in 2002, four years after his first loss. An evangelical Christian who talks easily about the importance of faith to his life, the 44-year-old Auburn, Ala., businessman seemed to have the perfect profile for a Democratic candidate in the Deep South. In his effort to appeal to rural voters, Turnham proposed a Congressional NASCAR Caucus and even challenged his opponent to prove that he really had hunting and fishing licenses.
"Here I was, a Methodist lay speaker, I was going to sponsor a constitutional amendment to protect the wording of the Pledge [of Allegiance], I was pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, and endorsed by Democrats for Life ... but when somebody sends 30 direct-mail pieces out and it is, 'Joe Turnham and Ted Kennedy,' and 'Joe Turnham and Barney Frank,' and 'Joe Turnham and Nancy Pelosi' ... it still works" in Republicans' favor, he said.
What did he learn? "You just know that people in your own family and your own church and your own community that know you, love you, and will ask you out to dinner, will not vote for you. It is a cultural phenomenon."
When the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee asked Turnham which national Democratic figure they should send down to campaign with him, his short answer was, nobody. "The only popular surrogate I had campaigning for me in all my literature was a former Auburn football coach, Coach Pat Dye. He coached Bo Jackson and won a bunch of SEC [Southeastern Conference] championships. My opponent brought George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney, Speaker [Dennis] Hastert, Charlton Heston, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Karl Rove. I had one ex-Auburn football coach."
Republican Revival
This year's Democratic Senate candidates have obviously already decided that, if they are to remain competitive, they must show independence from their national party.
What makes the stories of Clement and Turnham powerful is that they show how far the Republican Party has come in the South. After all, Democrats once held such a stranglehold on the region that running as a Republican was like signing that death warrant that Lindsey Graham spoke of.
When Democrat John F. Kennedy captured seven of the 11 Southern states in the process of winning the White House in 1960, all 22 of the Old Confederacy's senators were Democrats, and Republicans had managed victories in only 7 percent of Southern House seats, according to The Rise of Southern Republicans by Earl Black, a political science professor at Rice University, and his twin brother, Merle, a professor of government and politics at Emory University. At that time, the Republican Party was "still seen as the political instrument of the mysterious and hated North," the Black brothers wrote.
The shift to a competitive two-party system in the South began, at least on the presidential level, in 1964, when two lightning bolts struck. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a fervent states'-rights advocate who had run for president on the segregationist "Dixiecrat" ticket in 1948, dumped his Democratic allegiance. And the presidential campaign of Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., a fierce opponent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, won in five Southern states. Republicans have continued to make headway in the region ever since.
The Black brothers, who chronicled this shift, note that the 1964 presidential contest marked the first time that more Southern whites voted Republican than Democratic -- a pattern that has not since been broken. Twenty years after Goldwater began tapping the South for the GOP, President Reagan was re-elected by a landslide over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale. Reagan won at least 60 percent of the vote in every Southern state, except Tennessee, where he received 58 percent.
"Reagan's presidency made the Republican Party seem respectable, reasonable, and quite useful to many white Southerners who had been taught from birth to revere Democrats and despise Republicans," the Blacks wrote.
Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton at least temporarily slowed the erosion of Southerners' support for Democrats in presidential contests by capturing three Southern states -- Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee -- plus the border states of Kentucky and Missouri in both 1992 and 1996.
Still, the movement of younger white Southern men to the GOP banner has been one of the most unsettling trends for Democrats, Merle Black said in an interview. "Young white males have relatively little interest in the Democratic Party. They don't see the Democratic Party championing any of their issues," he said. "That creates more of a problem for Democrats in getting the share of the white vote they need to put together with the constant that is the African-American vote."
Nevertheless, Black echoed Kilgore's notion that the GOP is far from achieving such dominance in the South as to have the automatic upper hand there. "The Republicans have become a competitive minority party, but they haven't become a majority party -- an unchallengeable majority party, the way it was historically for the Democrats," he said.
This year's Democratic Senate candidates have obviously already decided that, if they are to remain competitive, they must show independence from their national party. They are not about to allow themselves to be labeled as being outside the South's mainstream.
For example, when freshman Sen. Lincoln of Arkansas was asked in an interview why she had not endorsed Kerry, she suggested that such a move was just a formality. She certainly intends to support Kerry, she said.
But would she welcome Kerry down to her state to campaign with her? She replied, "It is important for Arkansans to see me standing on my own two feet, not campaigning with Senator Kerry. They want to know that I am going to be standing up for Arkansas, and I have pledged to them that I would do that. And I always have. My moderate and independent voting record reflects that."
Similarly, Merle Black said that he "was struck by what I was reading about Inez Tenenbaum," the Democratic Senate nominee in South Carolina. "She seems to be going out of her way to emphasize conservative positions that she is taking. She is with Bush on Iraq. She is with Bush on family and [gay] marriage. I can't remember a Democratic candidate who kicked off a campaign that way."
And in Louisiana, the Democratic Party establishment's favorite candidate for the seat that Sen. John Breaux is vacating parts company with Kerry on a range of social issues. Chris John supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, is staunchly anti-abortion, and backs drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. His voting record on gun issues has earned top grades from the National Rifle Association.
Such decisions by Southern Democrats to stress values that differ from those of their party's presidential nominee come as no surprise to Scott Keeter, associate director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which has been surveying voters' attitudes on such issues since 1987. Pew's findings suggest that Southern attitudes remain distinctive on questions of race -- such as whether the country has gone too far in pushing racial equality -- and on gay rights.
"The South is more culturally conservative. It has become more so over time, relative to the rest of the country, or at least as cultural issues have become more and more important in defining who the parties are," Keeter said in an interview. "The presence of a Southern evangelical on the ticket for the Republicans and a Massachusetts liberal for the Democrats on the ticket presents among the more difficult contrasts for the Democratic Party in the South."
Given that contrast, Republican Sen. Graham of South Carolina insists that Tenenbaum's effort to distance herself from national Democrats is pointless. "She is a nice person, but let me tell you, Bush is going to win our state by double digits, and we are going to nationalize this [Senate] race," he said. "It is not about her view of the world. It is about the view of the world of the party she is supporting. If she wins, then the chance of Ted Kennedy becoming [a committee] chairman is real. If we pick up the seat, the chance of Ted Kennedy becoming chairman is less likely.... If you like President Bush, you think he is doing a good job, and you want him to stay as president, then the best thing you can do is to send somebody up to the Senate to help me help him."
Massaging the Message
"For a long time, the Democratic Party seemed to abdicate God and flag. We can't do that anymore for fear of offending one or two people."
Howard Dean, a New England Yankee, former governor of Vermont, and erstwhile front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, caused a furor when he spoke a few months ago about the need for his party's candidates to appeal to "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."
Unfortunately for Dean, his inept wording reeked of insensitivity and condescension. But when asked about Dean's notion that Democrats must take the initiative to broaden their party's reach, Breaux agreed. "I may have been the last one in my state that got a majority of whites as a Democrat," he said. "The party has to understand ... you can get 100 percent of the base, which is traditionally African-Americans, labor, and environmentalists, but it is not enough to win an election. To those who think that it is, they make a fatal mistake."
But how can Democrats expand their appeal? Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina, contends that bread-and-butter issues are the key.
"Dean was right that economics gives Democrats an opening to talk to white Southern males, particularly the working class, who feel especially aggrieved and anxious because of the economic transition -- the decline in tobacco, textiles, and furniture, and that kind of stuff. But he was wrong in his approach.
"In approaching Southern voters, you've got to show -- and it has to be genuine -- some cultural affinity," Guillory said. "It isn't that you just talk about NASCAR dads -- you have to look comfortable in going to a NASCAR race. But it isn't just going to a NASCAR race -- it's being a believer, a churchgoer, not being out of sync with family values. It doesn't mean that you have to be a rock-ribbed conservative, but Southern voters want to know who your spouse is."
Guillory, a leading student of Southern politics, added that the "recent history of the South, politically, is that Southern voters, particularly white male Southern voters, won't listen to Democrats on economic issues unless they feel comfortable on the cultural issues. That doesn't mean that they have to agree down the line, but they have to have some sense that this candidate is OK."
At least one of this year's Southern Senate contests -- the North Carolina tug-of-war between Democrat Erskine Bowles, who served as Clinton's White House chief of staff, and Republican Rep. Richard Burr -- has recently focused on the economic issues, especially those involving trade and tobacco. Both contenders had at one time unequivocally supported trade pacts, but after the state's textile and manufacturing sectors got hammered and lost thousands of jobs, the candidates switched to a more skeptical approach.
If the debate continues to be economic, Bowles, who lost a Senate race two years ago to Republican Elizabeth Dole, will probably benefit more. After all, to the extent that emotionally laden cultural issues are not front and center, Democrats have a better shot at going on the offensive and highlighting job losses in the state in the past three years.
"There is a group of Religious Right people in the South who are not so blinded by the social issues and ideological concerns of gay marriage and abortion and gun control and who are uncomfortable with things like the [Bush] administration's policies on the economy, the environment, and Iraq, and even on civil liberties," said Jack Fleer, a professor emeritus of political science at Wake Forest University. "They recognize that their economic interests may not be well served by the policies of the administration. That's the case that has to be made by Bowles or even John Kerry if he were to campaign in this region."
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who is retiring this year after three terms, also contended that Democrats are well positioned to connect with Southern voters. "The South still has [some of the] poorer states in the country," he said in an interview. "Things like putting the focus on repealing the estate tax, repealing the dividend tax, cutting high-income taxpayers' tax rates don't benefit the vast majority of Southerners. They would be better off with doing something with the payroll tax. That message is going to eventually prevail."
At the same time, Erwin, the South Carolina Democratic Party chairman, insists that Democrats must not run away from a debate on values. "For a long time, the Democratic Party seemed to abdicate God and flag," he said. "We can't do that anymore for fear of offending one or two people. Most of us are God-fearing people, God-loving people, and we are damn proud, too, to wrap ourselves in the American flag or in our state flag."
Losing Clout
After the votes are tallied on Election Day 2004, the Old Confederacy will have more first-term senators than at any other time in recent history.
The one certainty about Election Day 2004 is that after the votes are tallied, the Old Confederacy will have far more first-term senators than at any other time in recent history. In the past two election cycles, nine incumbents have retired, including Thurmond, who was first elected in 1956; Hollings, who took his Senate seat in 1966; Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who arrived in 1972; and Breaux and Bob Graham, who were both elected in 1986.
When the Senate convenes next year, at least 13 of its Southerners will be in their first terms. It is a stunning transformation for a region that has produced such unforgettable senators as Sam Ervin, D-N.C., whose twitching eyebrows, soothing cadence, and judicious manner made him famous during the Watergate hearings; Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, D-Texas, the legendary arm-twister; and powerful Armed Services Chairman Richard Russell, D-Ga.
Gone are the days when Southern senators so dominated the chamber that they could wield their committee gavels to block any legislation that didn't suit their fancy and, for example, hold off advances toward racial equality. Next year, only two Southerners, Republicans Thad Cochran of Mississippi and John Warner of Virginia, are certain to be in the Senate for more than three terms. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who is seeking a fourth term and is heavily favored, will probably be the third. Cochran is chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee. Warner heads Armed Services, and Shelby leads the Banking Committee. No other Southerners head major Senate committees.
Obviously, two-term Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has plenty of swat as Senate majority leader, but he is still learning the ropes, having risen to his current leadership position just a year and a half ago, after Trent Lott of Mississippi stepped down in response to a firestorm over his having praised Thurmond's 1948 segregationist campaign. And Frist is already a lame duck; he has said he will not seek re-election in 2006.
Over the course of Breaux's congressional career, which started in 1972 with his election to the House, Southern strength has greatly diminished in Congress. "When I was in [the House]," he recalled, "Russell Long was chairman of the Finance Committee. Allen Ellender was chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Hale Boggs was majority leader.... That was a huge amount of clout. My one state -- we controlled raising the money, and we controlled spending the money. You give that power to two people from Louisiana, and you can imagine the damage we can do. We don't have that anymore."
But Ralph Reed said that what is happening in the South is simply the inevitable changing of the guard. "What you are seeing is a passing of the torch to a new generation, but you still have people out there like Warner and Lott, and certainly Frist as majority leader," he said. "If you look at some of the senators coming up or look at the possible Class of 2004, at least in my party, it would not be a stretch to say that we could be looking at the beginning of some very long and distinguished careers in the Senate."
Maybe so, but certainly for the time being, the distinctive Southern flavor that the Senate once had is gone.
"It used to be that we always sent the people back forever, and they were all chairmen," Breaux said, as he almost nostalgically rattled off other names of former chairmen with whom he served, including former Sens. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, of Finance, and Sam Nunn, D-Ga., of Armed Services, and Rep. Wilbur Mills, D-Ark., of the House Ways and Means Committee. "Now if you look over the list of chairmen, you don't see a lot of y'alls in there."
Staff Correspondent Richard E. Cohen contributed to this report.
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