WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, who for months opposed CAFTA, voted for it Wednesday night, providing a crucial boost for a treaty that would have failed had he maintained his opposition.

The Central American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminates almost all tariffs between the United States and six Latin American nations, passed 217-215.

The Springdale Republican’s switch infuriated sectors of the textile industry that had fought to defeat CAFTA. Wilson on Thursday said he concluded — as two other conservative S.C. Republicans had, publicly, days before — that side agreements to the treaty would protect S.C. textile jobs.

And he said he became increasingly convinced in the past week that CAFTA is needed to bolster security and stability within and beyond CAFTA nations.

“What you’ve got is a real threat to democracy in the region, and the way to counteract that threat is to have developing economies,” Wilson said.

CAFTA is an antidote, he said, to Latin America’s increasingly brazen radical left.

“In the Caribbean basin, you have Fidel Castro, who is attempting to destabilize the fledgling democracies of Central America,” Wilson said. “And there is a great deal of collaboration between Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.”

But for Jock Nash, a lobbyist for Spartanburg-based Milliken & Co., Wilson didn’t so much vote for democracy, but against already hard-hit S.C. textile workers. The state lost 31,708 textile and apparel manufacturing jobs from January 2001 to December 2004, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“I was dumbstruck; maybe the herd instinct had something to do with it,” Nash said of Wilson’s vote. “We lost every Republican congressman in the state of South Carolina on CAFTA.”

In the weeks leading up to the vote, half the S.C. delegation declared itself undecided about the treaty. But earlier this week, Republican U.S. Reps. Bob Inglis of Travelers Rest and Gresham Barrett of Westminster announced that side agreements among CAFTA signatories would close loopholes.

China would not be able to ship its low-priced textiles through CAFTA countries to get tariff-free treatment at the U.S. border, they said.

U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of Greenville and U.S. Rep. Henry Brown of Hanahan, both Republicans, also voted for CAFTA.

Three of the eight members of the S.C. delegation voted against it: Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of Seneca, and Democratic U.S. Reps. Jim Clyburn of Columbia and John Spratt of York.

In the hours before the late-night CAFTA vote, the House leadership and a small army of Bush administration officials walked the hallways of the Capitol looking for anti-CAFTA Republicans whose minds might be changed — possibly with sweeteners in the multibillion-dollar highway and energy bills scheduled for votes this week.

Wilson said that was not the case with him.

“I didn’t ask for anything; they didn’t offer anything,” Wilson said. “I wasn’t pressured in any way.”

But U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., who also made a last-minute switch to support CAFTA, said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., told him before the vote: “You tell me what you need, and we’re going to do it.”

Hayes said he’s still working with the administration and textile firms on just what those concessions might be.

Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.comKnight Ridder reporter Tim Funk contributed to this report.