COLUMBIA -- South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford predicts that as the state's black middle class grows, more black residents will gravitate to the Republican Party.

"Political parties ideally ought to be about ideas," the governor said last week. "I don't think crime is a black or white issue, or that health care is a black or white issue, or that a child's ability to get a good education is a black or white issue."

Sanford's statement on the role of race in political parties sounds similar to that which is increasingly expressed by black Democratic candidates for statewide office, including Steve Benjamin, who lost his race for state attorney general in 2002, and Rich Wade, who lost a bid for secretary of state the same year.

The two consistently delivered the same message during their campaigns, whether addressing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the Rotary Club.

"Some people thrive on racial politics," Benjamin said. "But we ran a winning campaign, a strong message-based campaign that appealed to every voter, regardless of race or socio-economics."

The same approach was taken by Gerald Malloy, a black Democrat who defeated several well-connected white candidates in a competitive state Senate race in 2002 to replace Sen. Ed Saleeby after his death. Malloy even beat Saleeby's son.

Malloy's election wasn't the result of running in a district drawn to guarantee proportional minority representation; he was elected in a majority-white district.

Joiquim Barnes, the state Democratic Party's director of party organization, said he doesn't believe his party will lose black support due to the shift in emphasis by black candidates. Racial disparities are embedded in nearly every issue, Democrats say.

Nor is Barnes worried that money and prosperity will prompt middle-class blacks to join the Republican Party.

"If that was the case, all of us would have been Republicans in the Clinton years," he said.

But Starletta Hairston, a first-term member of the Beaufort County Council and one of a handful of black Republican officeholders in the state, agrees with Sanford.

"I don't see the future of the Republican Party as being all white," she said.

The Hilton Head Island resident won her 2002 election in a mixed-race district.

"I'd always voted Democrat because that is what my family did and what was expected of me," Hairston said. "But after I became involved in the community 10 years ago, I started looking more closely at politics, at what people were saying and who was effective."

Hairston said she shares with Republicans a belief in small government, lower taxes and individual initiative. The Bush administration's appointment of Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice to top jobs convinced her the party appreciated minorities. Some of Hairston's black friends, however, were not similarly swayed.

"When I ran for office, people told me, 'Starletta, I love you, but I can't vote for a Republican,' " Hairston said.

State Republican Party Executive Director Luke Byars said blacks "owe it to themselves to look at what the Republican Party has to offer."

"We welcome different views -- that's what we thrive on," Byars said.

The Republican Party's control of both chambers of the legislature and victories by eight out of 10 candidates for statewide office last year is attracting some blacks to the party, he said.

"They see the Democratic Party withering on the vine," Byars said.

He said a rash of defections by white Democrats to the Republican Party over the past decade is further proof. About a dozen House members and several prominent senators have switched parties.

Former Democratic candidate Benjamin said those who focus on past losses by black candidates for state office "miss the point entirely."

The 33-year-old Columbia lawyer pointed out that his supporters contributed $1.1 million to his campaign, hundreds of thousands more than the amount raised by his white Republican opponent, Henry McMaster. And, while the 44.5 percent of the vote Benjamin got was not enough to win, it was more than any black candidate for statewide office ever has received in a general election.

By contrast, Milton Kimpson, a black candidate for secretary of state in 1994 won less than 36 percent of the statewide vote. In the 1990 election, black gubernatorial candidate Theo Mitchell won less than 29 percent of the vote. Going back to the 1978 and 1986 elections, Jim Clyburn, now a U.S. congressmen for the black-majority 6th District, couldn't even win his party's nomination for statewide office.

A study by the Joint Center for Policy and Economic Studies, a Washington organization specializing in African-American politics, shows that aside from statewide office, South Carolina blacks have made extraordinary political strides the past few decades.

In 2000, the year the study was conducted, there were 540 blacks serving in elected positions on school boards, city and county councils and in the S.C. legislature. The figure is 10 times what it is was in 1970.

"My friends blame me for being too much of the eternal optimist, but I think we're heading in the right direction," Benjamin said.