SPARTANBURG, S.C. - A coalition of Southern textile executives is sending a message to President Bush that the South might not be all that solidly behind his re-election bid if he isn't behind protecting the industry from Chinese imports.

About 30 senior executives of textile companies on Tuesday announced a campaign to lobby for limits on textile products China can send to the United States each year. The executives represent companies such as Springs Industries, Milliken and Co. and Avondale Mills.

The campaign comes nearly three weeks after a group of textile organizations petitioned the Bush administration to cap certain textile imports.

The Chinese "safeguard" proposed Tuesday would apply to cotton and manmade dressing gowns, brassieres, gloves and knit fabrics and would limit those imports to 7.5 percent growth each year, said Auggie Tantillo, coordinator of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition.

The textile leaders - all of whom said they voted for Bush in 2000 - warn that they will strongly consider campaigning for one of nine Democratic presidential if Bush doesn't address jobs lost to foreign trade.

"I think Bush can forget that the Solid South is solid anymore and that he's running a real risk of losing the next election," said Roger Chastain, president of Mount Vernon Mills in Greenville. "Anybody that's for correcting some of the problems such as what Dick Gephardt has brought forward, yes, we're listening to it."

Gephardt, a Missouri congressman, is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination to challenge Bush in 2004.

While Gephardt has pushed the trade issue, which is considered critical in textile-rich states like South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, other Democrats are missing the boat, some industry leaders say.

"I changed from the Republican party to the Democratic party simply because of trade and I think the Democratic party is really missing quite an opportunity to pick up this issue," said Ron Daugherty, who owns Miami Thread, a spinning mill in Drexel, N.C., that employs about 20 people.

Daugherty says that's about half of the number of workers he employed before the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Textile leaders say free trade with China has flooded the U.S. market with low-priced textile and apparel goods and driven jobs to other countries.

Nearly 300,000 textile jobs have been lost since 2001, according the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition. In South Carolina, about 10,000 textile and related jobs were lost from June 2001 through June 2003, according to research at the University of South Carolina Moore School of Business.

"We're angry and we're fed up that our U.S. government is ignoring these massive American job losses, while other countries and our free trade policies toward those countries create hundreds of thousands even millions of jobs in these other countries like China," said Richard Dillard, director of director of public affairs for Spartanburg-based Milliken and Co.

U.S. free trade agreements are hurting other industries, Tantillo said. Overall, 2.6 million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past three years and that, Tantillo said, should be a campaign issue.

"Democrat, Republican - we don't care," he said. "It has to be a centerpiece of the discussion as we go into the election cycle."