Mark Warner test-drives a new strategy for the Dems in '06.
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By Jonathan Darman
Newsweek
May 8, 2006 issue
When you're an out-of-work Southern governor with time on your hands and your eye on the presidency, driving a NASCAR pace car around a deserted speedway should probably come naturally. Or at least it did for former Virginia governor Mark Warner when he stumped for Harold Ford Jr. in April at the Bristol Motor Speedway in northeast Tennessee. Ford, like Warner a Democrat, is running for the state's open Senate seat; the trip to the track was his photo op, and he got to drive first. Ford looked nervous behind the wheel, though; passing a flock of flashbulbs, he was all clenched fists and tight shoulders, keeping his speed under 70. "I'm from the western part of the state," he said, a little defensively, after slipping from behind the driver's seat. "We race trucks."
But politics in Virginia, just a few miles to the north, had sent Warner to speedways often, and he knew the drill for navigating the track. Taking the pace-car wheel, he grinned coolly as he zoomed fast once, twice, three times around the track. "Man, governor, you have got a lead foot," a Ford aide called from the infield. Ford, too, sounded impressed: "I could take lessons from this guy."
Ford and a handful of other Democrats running statewide in the South this year are trying to do just that. With President George W. Bush's poll numbers at a record low and congressional Republicans struggling to distance themselves from White House missteps on Katrina and Iraq, Democrats are dreaming of taking back the Senate and House. To pull it off, however, they'll have to solve a vexing problem: how to get Red State voters to give them a chance. They're looking to Warner, and the Different-Kind-of-Democrat formula he used successfully in Virginia, to help them gain back the foothold in the South they've missed since the Clinton era. Warner, an unannounced but unrelenting candidate for the presidency, is happy to help, urging Dixie's Democrats to break with the national party's Bush-bashing strategy and instead emphasizing bipartisanship and values. Warner is hoping big Southern victories in 2006 will prove that his Virginia success was a preview of things to come, not just a random stroke of luck in a region grown hostile to Democrats.
Republicans currently hold a substantial 55-to-45 advantage in the Senate. In Tennessee, Ford staffers see themselves in a race for the "51st seat" essential for tipping control. Other must-win races include Missouri, where State Auditor Claire McCaskill hopes to knock off incumbent Republican Jim Talent by dramatically increasing Democratic percentages in the southern half of the state. Also on the wish list: the Virginia Senate seat held by Republican George Allen. Democrats admit this will be a tough one, but say they at least hope to slow Allen's 2008 presidential momentum with a close and costly race. Meanwhile, the small number of competitive House races has Democrats settling for targets in the heart of Bush country, like Republican Anne Northup's conservative Kentucky district. To win big in 2006, in other words, Democrats need to reach out to voters who don't like the Democratic Party very much.
That is Warner's specialty. He won the Virginia governorship in November 2001, a high point for post-9/11 Republican power. While in office, he won rural support by channeling economic development toward the state's depressed Southside. He even managed to raise taxes and see his poll numbers go up.
Now term-limited and out of office, he's exporting his strategy (and his staffers) to other Southern Dems. He's spent the past four months on airplanes, making a name for himself in rural Missouri and Tennessee, and his political action committee has peppered '06 Democrats with money. In speeches in the South, he preaches the blessings of bipartisanship. He rarely mentions the words "Bush" or "Republican" and only invokes his own party to say, "I'm proud to be a Democrat, but I'm prouder to be an American." There is "a wide swath of Reagan Democrats or independents who are up for grabs," Warner tells NEWSWEEK, "but it can't be for a Democrat who's going to preach the kind of 'us against them' '70s populism."
Warner is also telling Southern Democrats to go on the offensive on values issues and run against "cultural elitism." One unusual new target, plucked from the Republican playbook: the press. In April, "Dateline NBC" sent a camera crew to film fans at a Virginia NASCAR track reacting to a group of Muslim men. Jim Webb, a candidate for Allen's Senate seat who is being advised by Warner's top political strategists, fired off an angry letter to NBC. The network, he charged, had cavalierly assumed NASCAR fans would be intolerant. Ford, who uses Warner's media adviser, grew irritated when asked if Tennesseans would give a Democrat a chance: "People in the media don't realize these people are Americans; they don't think in terms of Democrat or Republican."
Some Democrats who've heard prophecies of a Southern renaissance before are skeptical. They think the party would be better off cutting its losses in Dixie and focusing on the Southwest and Rocky Mountain states. "The South that once was is not going to rise again for us," said one Democratic strategist who asked not to be named because he did not want to disparage his party's chances this year. "We have to find votes somewhere else."
Warner says Democrats can't survive without the South. He has a vested interest in the argument. His presidential prospects, after all, depend on beating out other would-be Southern spokesmen, like John Edwards, and running as the anti-Hillary, as a Democrat who can win in Dixie. If the message falls flat in the midterms, party leaders may look elsewhere—to other regions and other candidates.
But Southern victories in 2006 could boost Warner's profile, and provide a roadmap for his presidential run. At the Tennessee speedway event, Ford introduced a conservative Democratic state legislator to Warner, asking the legislator if he'd met "the next president of the United States." Warner could chat for only a minute but said he wanted to stay in touch. "I'll be back," he said, "and I may need to ask for your help."
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