ORANGEBURG - The retired Rev. Eugene Wright thought a Democrat was a Democrat until he moved to South Carolina 15 years ago.

The Baptist minister wanted to use his experience from 40 years of activism in Washington to organize a local group of clergy and address the needs of young people, such as jobs, culture and recreation.

"I'm sad to say that didn't materialize," said Wright, 81. "The leadership was not ready for change. They were stuck in the Democratic conservative mode."

As nine Democratic presidential candidates bring their criticism of the U.S. war in Iraq, support of labor unions and benefits for same-sex couples to South Carolina, Wright says a good question is whether the White House hopefuls could be at odds with what people think of as typical Democrats.

During the next six months, Democrats in South Carolina will get a lot of attention leading up to the state's presidential primary Feb. 3. It's the first test in the South and in a state with a large population of black voters.

Like other Southern states, South Carolina has held on to remnants of the old, conservative Democratic Party, staying away from issues that have become commonplace in other parts of the country.

"It's the kind of thing where even your most liberal South Carolina Democrat might say, 'Well, I believe in keeping abortion legal in principle, but I might not agree with it.' And that's a far cry from [a] Massachusetts Democrat," said Scott Huffmon, a political scientist at Winthrop University.

Sally Howard, an Horry County member of the state Democratic Party's executive committee, said among Democrats there's a wide range of opinions on social issues.

But "financial and fiscally, we'd probably be every bit as conservative as a Republican," she said.

Religion also folds into Democratic ideology in the South, Huffmon said. "That naturally breeds slightly more conservative attitudes on social issues."

Bill Moore, a political scientist at the College of Charleston, said to keep in mind that many Democratic activists came from black churches.

"The issues like prayer in school, for example, black Democrats are strongly supportive. The issue of gay rights, you find them not supportive," Moore said.

State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg and a former House minority leader, said Democrats in South Carolina like to think they're different from other Democrats across the country.

"That's based on the perception of Democrats as these left-leaning liberals, which is not the case," she said.

"My advice to all of the presidential candidates has been to talk about issues that working people care about," she said. "I don't want Democrats to get sidelined by discussions of civil unions and labor unions and all of that."

Waring Howe, a Charleston County member of the state Democratic Party's executive committee, said candidates likely won't focus on issues of gay rights or abortion, but they have to talk about them.

"There are a whole lot of very diverse subgroups, constituency groups in our party, than there is in the Republican Party," he said. "To not mention some of those issues would perhaps say to those subgroups that we don't know you're there, we don't care about these issues that affect you on a daily basis."

Rice University political scientist Earl Black said there is a different strategy to tackle South Carolina's primary than the other early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, but it's not conservative vs. liberal.

The critical difference for candidates in South Carolina will be among blacks, who make up almost 30 percent of the population and could account for half of those who vote in the primary, he said.