The U.S. senator from Massachusetts has done it on at least three occasions. Each time it landed him in political hot water. You'd think he would have learned.

Last March at a California fund-raiser, Kerry spelled out how he could lose all 11 states of the old Confederacy and still beat President Bush.

Al Gore proved that you can get elected president of the United States without winning one Southern state if he had won New Hampshire, he said, referring to the narrow miss in 2000.

Democrats have to stop looking at the small solution that the country is compartmentalized in that way.

In a recent appearance on ABC's "Good Morning, America," he was asked about rival John Edwards' claim that the U.S. senator from North Carolina is more electable with his base in the South.

Kerry disputed Edwards' assertion and repeated the Gore example.

If that weren't enough, the senator told a New Hampshire audience yet again Saturday that Democrats didn't have to appeal to Southern voters to win the presidency.

"Everybody always makes the mistake of looking South," he said in response to a question about winning the region.

S.C. Democrats were encouraged when Kerry kicked off his presidential campaign Sept. 2 at the U.S.S. Yorktown in Mount Pleasant.

Many were hopeful he would make the South a focal point. That sentiment evaporated.

Kerry hasn't been in the state since Sept. 21.

Soon thereafter, Kerry folded his ground operation here and dispatched staffers to Arizona and Iowa. The feeling among voters here was he had side-stepped South Carolina for greener pastures elsewhere.

Kerry will travel to South Carolina for tonight's debate and will attend an event Friday. That's about it.

Can he win without the South? Mathematically, it's possible, but whether he could pull it off is another question. He would have to sweep practically everything else.

"His math is perfect," says Rice University political scientist Earl Black. "But it's not the math that's a problem, it's Kerry's judgment.

"It doesn't make sense to be talking about how a Democratic candidate doesn't need to carry any Southern state. ... It creates a problem for Kerry that could have been avoided. Replaying those Kerry comments in South Carolina is going to make it hard for him to take advantage of any momentum coming out of New Hampshire."

The 11 states generally described as Southern - South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida - hold 153 electoral votes in 2004. It takes 270 of the 538 total electoral votes to win.

"If Kerry were to write off the South, he would need to win 70 percent of the [non-Southern] electoral vote," Black says.

"I'll let Kerry make the case for how he gets there without any Southern states," Edwards says. "I think it's very hard. No Democrat has won the presidency without the South."

Former state Democratic Chairman Dick Harpootlian says Kerry is sending the wrong message if he believes he can avoid campaigning in the South.

"He has got to be able to play in Middle America," he says.

Kerry rejects the notion he has written off any region. "We're going after every vote we can get," he says.

Democratic voters may want to ask Kerry whether he'll be back after Tuesday, assuming he's the nominee. Better get a good look at him now.

Contact Bandy, a political reporter for The (Columbia) State, at 1-800-288-2727.

email this

print this