Home support falls for hopefuls Graham, Edwards
By Stephen Dinan and Charles Hurt - Washington Times
Published August 12, 2003
The two Democrats running for president next year who are also up for re-election to the Senate are losing support back home because of positions they have taken on the national campaign trail.
Sen. Bob Graham of Florida and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina have cast votes and made statements unpopular back home, and polls suggest both could be vulnerable if they choose to run again for their Senate seats.
A Mason-Dixon poll last week showed Mr. Graham with his lowest approval rating in more than a decade, while in North Carolina, Rep. Richard Burr, a Republican running to unseat Mr. Edwards, has steadily closed the gap between himself and Mr. Edwards in Raleigh News-Observer polls during the last six months.
Mr. Edwards and Mr. Graham have time before public pressure or, in the case of Mr. Graham, state law, forces them to choose between their presidential or Senate bids. And with the election more than a year away, they have time to rebuild from what they say is a natural dip in the polls at home anytime a senator from a moderate state campaigns among the country's more liberal Democratic primary voters.
But Republicans are tallying up the votes and public statements and awaiting their campaigns.
"[Bob Graham] has given so many 30-second ads we wouldn't know what to do with them," said Chris Paulitz, spokesman for Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican who is running for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat. He pointed to Mr. Graham's support for a filibuster to block the confirmation of the first Hispanic federal appeals court judge and the senator's opposition to the Medicare bill that passed the Senate.
And then there are Mr. Graham's rhetorical attacks on President Bush, in which he questioned the president's honesty and suggested he should be impeached for misleading the nation into war.
"The people of Florida are starting to realize that the man running for president is not the same guy that was a two-term governor and a sitting senator that a broad cross-section of Floridians were voting for," said Paul Seago, political director for Bill McCollum, another Republican seeking the seat.
Last week's Mason-Dixon poll showed Mr. Graham with 53 percent job approval ? down from 63 percent last year.
For his part, Mr. Edwards faces similar poll numbers and the same questions about votes and rhetoric.
Visiting the site last week of the shuttered Pillowtex Corp. textile mill in Kannapolis, N.C., where 4,000 jobs were lost, Mr. Edwards had to defend his vote made several years ago to grant permanent normalized trade relations with China. Workers blame free-trade agreements for sending textile jobs overseas in recent years.
Mr. Edwards said he stood by his vote and urged that federal money be expedited to the laid-off workers.
But few episodes more clearly show the divergence between the national and local audiences than when Mr. Edwards told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's annual convention last month he was "tired of Democrats walking away from President Bill Clinton, who did an extraordinary job of lifting up and reaching out to all of the American people."
Ferrell Blount, the new chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, said Mr. Edwards can expect to see that used in a campaign: "Bill Clinton ? I don't know if I'd go so far to say despised, but he certainly is not a revered individual in the state."
Merle Black, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta who studies Southern politics, said both senators will see consequences at home, though Mr. Edwards will probably be more damaged.
"It's kind of a cultural norm in North Carolina to tend to the business at hand, and he's missed lots of votes," Mr. Black said. "His priorities during this last year have clearly been winning the Democratic presidential nomination."
As for Mr. Graham, Mr. Black said he believes the senator will forgo re-election.
Some political observers said Mr. Graham's main goal is to set himself up for a vice-presidential nomination, but Mr. Black said the national campaign has "devalued his usefulness as a vice-presidential candidate ... because he's seen as so partisan."
Jamal Simmons, spokesman for Mr. Graham's campaign, acknowledged the dip in the Florida polls, though he said it is "not a concern."
"There is some short-term reflection back home," he said. "But, ultimately, people will recognize that Bob Graham is the best candidate to take on George Bush."
Mr. Simmons said a primary reason for the slip is that Mr. Graham is traveling and talking about issues, such as ethanol production, which matters to Iowa corn farmers but is of little interest to Florida voters.
Mr. Edwards' campaign similarly was unconcerned.
"We still think it's too early for polls to have a lot of meaning. We're not paying too much attention to the polls at this point," said Jennifer Palmieri, his spokeswoman.
She also said he can defend his votes.
The China trade vote, for example, was "a very close call, but he believed in the end that there were North Carolina workers and jobs that would be protected as a result of that trade deal," she said.
Even some Republicans downplay the effect of the national campaigns.
Paul Shumaker, campaign strategist for Mr. Burr, said Mr. Edwards has risen to plenty of challenges and, even campaigning with Mr. Clinton in 1998, he beat a sitting Republican senator. Mr. Shumaker also said Mr. Edwards' national candidacy has helped the senator and Mr. Burr tap a national fund-raising base.
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