Candidates tap S.C.'s economic hurt

GREER -- A testament to the new Southern economy rises on a bluff above I-85 in Greer.

The sleek, metallic silver BMW plant employs 4,700 and serves gourmet coffees in the employees' cafeteria. Every year, 140,000 Z4 roadsters and X5 sport utility vehicles roll off its assembly line. The factory has transformed the region into an automotive hub, drawing in 40 other factories built by BMW suppliers.

The German automaker's success inspires only resentment among some of the 175 workers who've survived layoffs at a Mount Vernon Mills textile plant in nearby Spartanburg. James Moore, 41, known to all as "Bo," is angry about the tax breaks given to entice companies such as BMW to invest here. He questions President Bush's decision to visit BMW in November to talk about jobs.

"Why pick a place like BMW, when they're flourishing? Why go there? Come here. Talk to Mount Vernon Mills, where people have been laid off," he said. "That's where he needs to come."

The Democratic presidential candidates are trying to tap into this bitterness as the primary battle comes to South Carolina and six other states Tuesday. To varying degrees, they promise to take a tougher line than Bush has on blocking imports.

"Massive manufacturing layoffs have taken a heavy toll, and it's time we had a president willing to take a stand," Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina said at a campaign stop in early January. "I am here today in Spartanburg, in the heart of South Carolina's ravaged textile country, to pledge to you that I'm with you in this fight."

But even as trade has emerged as an issue in the campaign, economic shifts suggest the opponents of free trade will dwindle.

South Carolina is changing from an economy dominated by family owned textile mills to one that depends on tourists and retirees on the coast, an explosion of foreign-built factories inland and the steady growth in health-care jobs.

A growing number of South Carolinians are benefiting from the international economy, while others in fields such as health care aren't much affected. The movement of skilled jobs overseas -- sending X-rays via the Internet to India for analysis, for example -- is a potential issue, but so far, the loss of such jobs has been limited.

Workers in these newer fields may sympathize with textile workers, but many oppose calls to protect those jobs.

On the coast, an influx of retirees from the north is changing the views of the electorate. Complaints from newcomers in Myrtle Beach, S.C., helped lead to restrictions on the tacky billboards that once were synonymous with the oceanfront city.

Myrtle Beach thrived on textile workers and coal miners from West Virginia, who brought their families for summer vacation. Now the budget motels that served them are giving way to luxury high-rises for the new retirees and tourists.

"The exporting of jobs to other countries does not affect us anywhere near where it would have 30 years ago," said Gary Loftus, the director of the Coastal Federal Center for Economic and Community Development at Coastal Carolina University in nearby Conway.

"It's a totally different town than the one I grew up in," said Randal Wallace, 33, a member of Myrtle Beach's City Council.

Nowhere is change more evident than in the westernmost corner of South Carolina, in the heart of the North Carolina-to-Georgia textile belt. Some 235 foreign companies have invested in the 10-county region. Their factories churn out everything from BMW sport utility vehicles and Michelin tires to Fuji film and disposable cameras.

Henry Campbell, a 43-year-old assembly line worker, worries that steps to shield U.S. industry from import competition might invite retaliation against American exports. BMW exports 60 percent of the vehicles it produces in South Carolina, with Germany and Great Britain the largest markets.

"You're in a worldwide market, and you try to do things to keep your people competitive or give them an edge, and then you got the rest of the world kicking us about it," said Campbell, who joined BMW after 17 years in textiles. "So I think what the president and our congressmen and senators try to do is balance the relations with other countries through trade and at, the same time, kind of take care of home. ... It's going to be a give-and-take thing."

Lane Gist, 49, left a factory that made weighing scales to join BMW. Last year, her former factory shut down and moved production overseas.

"All those people have lost their jobs and everything, and I can understand how they're feeling about it, because I feel like if I had stayed there, I'd be in the same situation they are in," she said. "I know I would really have been mad about it."

But Gist, who sports a white BMW-logo mock turtleneck as she sprays water at the window seals on a convertible Z4 roadster to check for leaks, said workers needed to adapt if they didn't want to get left behind.

"They have to change," she said. "They have to go to school or whatever they need to get these jobs. It's not just going to drop in their laps like that."

A typical worker at BMW earns $23 an hour, about double that of a textile mill worker. But there aren't enough BMW-type jobs to replace all those lost in textiles, said Mark Vitner, an economist with Wavchovia Securities in Charlotte, N.C.

The sluggish economy of the past three years has accelerated the decline of textiles, while slowing the growth of replacement jobs in other areas. South Carolina has about 80,000 fewer jobs than it did in 2000. Those job losses have pushed trade and jobs into this year's campaign.

"The new jobs are high-paying, but we had staggering job losses in textiles that mitigated the gains," said Sam Konduros, president of the Upstate Alliance, a regional economic-development organization. "In terms of job-for-job replacement, that'll be a long-term challenge."

Textile industry leaders have organized around the issue. Factories have held voter registration drives, and an industry group sponsored billboards reading, "Lost your job to free trade and offshoring yet? Vote."

Roger Chastain, the president of Greenville, N.C.-based Mount Vernon Mills, voted for Bush in 2000. This year, he may not.

"I've had many people tell me they're not going to vote Republican," Chastain said. "There is some bitterness here. They may see some benefits from the (president's) tax cuts, but they are seeing a whole way of life being destroyed."

Sharon Alexander, a 34-year-old customer sales representative at a Mount Vernon subsidiary, usually votes Republican. This year, she said, she might abstain to avoid supporting Bush.

"My opinion on free trade is no, absolutely not," said Alexander, who works at PhilChem, a 28-employee company in Greer that produces chemicals to strengthen yarn before weaving. "That may be a protectionist view, but we kind of need to look after ourselves."

State Democratic Chairman Joe Erwin is doing his utmost to capitalize on the textile industry's effort. He hopes to draw back some of the white voters who left the Democratic Party years ago over the race issue.

But even Erwin knows textiles aren't the future. His advertising firm operates out of a snazzy office in redeveloped downtown Greenville, where an upscale northern Italian restaurant serving truffle risotto typifies the new South.

"History tells us it's a last stand," he said of the efforts of Chastain and others to keep the industry afloat. "It happened in New England before. That's why the (textile) jobs came here."

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