S.C. primary helps push Southern issues

By holding an early presidential primary this year, S.C. Democrats hoped to inject a distinctly Southern viewpoint into the national campaign. So with a Kennedy Democrat from Massachusetts on the inside track to the party’s nomination, did they fail?

Not necessarily, party leaders say.

If U.S. Sen. John Kerry, winner of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, wins the nomination, he might yet transcend his Northeastern roots and prove himself as a mainstream Democrat. That would better position him for a run against President Bush, S.C. Democrats say — and he’d have the Palmetto State to thank.

Polls show Kerry is in a tight race with U.S. Sen. John Edwards, a North Carolinian born in Seneca, as Tuesday’s S.C. primary approaches. The Edwards campaign hopes a win in South Carolina slows Kerry’s momentum and forces a two-man race.

Beyond the immediate prospect of Tuesday’s vote, however, Democratic leaders say the state’s decision to hold an early primary has given Southerners a voice in the nominating process, no matter who wins the primary, the Democratic nomination or the White House in November.

“We’re not trying to guarantee anything,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, who endorsed Kerry on Thursday. “We’re trying to have a process that will allow the voters of South Carolina to have some say-so in the selection of this nominee, and we will have that on Feb. 3. That cannot possibly be taken away.”

Clyburn and other party leaders said the S.C. primary has forced candidates to talk about issues with particular appeal to South Carolinians.

It also forces them “to strive for what I consider to be sometimes a tricky balance between reaching out to African-American voters and reaching out to white Southern voters,” Clyburn said.

More than one-fourth of the state’s registered voters are minorities, and most of those vote as Democrats. That distinguishes the S.C. electorate from Iowa and New Hampshire, both overwhelmingly white.

Former Gov. Jim Hodges, a Democrat who has campaigned for retired Gen. Wesley Clark, said in May 2001 that South Carolina was the logical place for an early primary. As governor at the time, he lobbied national party leaders to give the Palmetto State an early primary slot.

“It will give Southern states a voice in the selection of a nominee, and I believe lead to the selection of a moderate candidate,” he said then.

Last week, Hodges said the vote is far from decided because support for the candidates doesn’t appear to run deep. But, he said, the primary will succeed no matter who wins the nomination because Southern voters are no longer being ignored.

“It’s had its desired impact in that they are talking about issues that we care about,” Hodges said.

As an example, Hodges said the primary has forced the candidates to engage in an extended discussion of trade and the loss of manufacturing jobs, issues that were not front and center during the 2000 campaign.

“They have all been required to hear South Carolinians out on the impact some of the trade policies have had on our state and on some of the manufacturing job losses,” Hodges said.

That might be so, according to Scott Huffmon, political science professor at Winthrop University. But it falls short of what S.C. Democrats hoped for when they pushed for an early primary.

“The deal was, for crying out loud, we’ve got to stop getting these ultraliberals from the Northeast,” he said.

Whether Kerry fits that description is another question. The Wall Street Journal last week said he was “hard to typecast,” and Kerry himself resists the label.

“Sure, I’m liberal on some things,” he told The State’s editorial board Friday. “But I’m also very conservative about some things.”

Noting he had supported welfare reform, more police on the streets and balancing the budget, Kerry turned the labeling game on its head — and against the Bush administration.

“I don’t think there’s anything conservative about this administration on the deficit,” Kerry said. “There’s nothing conservative about their treatment of the Constitution with (Attorney General) John Ashcroft. There’s nothing conservative about them in their crossing the line between church and state. You can run down a long list.

“This is pretty radical.”

Nevertheless, Huffmon said Kerry will have to overcome the Northeastern liberal stereotype to win in November. He said Southerners “have been guilty of something we accuse Northerners of, and that’s buying into stereotypes and not looking past them.”

Kerry hasn’t been shy about his association with the Kennedys. He campaigned with U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts in Iowa and New Hampshire and invokes President Kennedy’s name everywhere he goes.

Having an early primary probably fulfilled party leaders’ wishes to inject a Southern voice into the debate, Huffmon said. But, he said, “I don’t think they expected a Northeasterner to be the person who is the front-runner by now.”

Kevin Geddings, a political consultant and Hodges’ former chief of staff, acknowledged that the goal in pushing for the early primary was to have a more moderate nominee. But he said the process still will force the eventual nominee to pay attention to S.C. voters on issues like gun control — which he said didn’t happen four years ago.

“I would argue it’s given him some sensitivity about those issues, unlike what Gore did in 2000 and which may have caused him to lose states like West Virginia and Arkansas and Tennessee,” Geddings said. “The effect of South Carolina is going to be to moderate John Kerry.”

Four years ago, Gore said one lesson of the Columbine shootings is that people must stand up to the National Rifle Association “and the gun control people and get guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.”

Kerry also has drawn the NRA’s ire for his gun control stances. But Kerry, speaking in Mount Pleasant last year, stressed that he’s a lifelong hunter who supports the Second Amendment.

Huffmon agreed that having the primary has affected the way candidates frame issues. Without it, he said, the economic emphasis might have been on the deficit rather than on jobs and trade.

“We’ve added a Southern flavor if we haven’t made it a full Southern meal,” he said.

But, Huffmon said, Kerry’s emergence as a solid front-runner before the S.C. primary might be a function of the candidates involved. The same setup four years from now could produce a different result, he said.

“A lot of it has to do with which candidates are put in the mix,” he said. “That’s one of those unknowns that changes election cycle to election cycle.”

Huffmon said Kerry will have to do well in the South to win the White House if he wins the nomination. He scoffed at Kerry’s statement Thursday that he was talking about a mathematical formulation, rather than strategy, when he said a Democrat could win without the South.

“I haven’t seen backpedaling like that since the circus,” Huffmon said.

If Kerry is the Democratic candidate, Huffmon said, he has to find a way to win some Southern states — or he loses the general election.

A different outcome, he said, “would be thwarting the history of modern electoral politics.”

Staff writer Lee Bandy contributed to this article. Reach Stroud at (803) 771-8375 or sstroud@thestate.com.