COLUMBIA, S.C. - Former Gov. Carroll Campbell moved the state's Republican Party from the minority to dominance and used charisma and hardball to become a political leader and GOP icon.

His death Wednesday comes as the party finds plenty to divide it and no clear leader stepping forward to unite it. The divisions are everywhere: Upstate vs. Lowcountry, social conservatives vs. fiscal conservatives and whether partisans supported President Bush or Arizona Sen. John McCain in the 2000 presidential primary here.

No one has Campbell's stature to step forward and "be sort of a super statesman and regulate family squabbles" within the Republican Party, Doug Woodard, a Clemson University political scientist and GOP strategist, said.

Campbell, governor from 1987 to 1995, had a knack that most others lacked for "bargaining and meeting and greeting and coddling of egos," Woodard said.

When issues created divides while Campbell was in office, he would sit around a table with Christian conservatives, business people and party regulars and "he could lay down the law to all of them," said Neal Thigpen, a Francis Marion University political science professor and longtime Republican. "You haven't got that now."

The principle under Campbell's leadership was "you keep your divisions buried. you hide your divisions," Winthrop University political science professor Scott Huffmon said. That helped the Republican Party win elections and become dominant, he said.

If someone emerges to fill Campbell's role as party uniter, it would be a mistake to assume that person "will be like Campbell at all," Huffmon said.

"It will take a different kind of leader to unite a fractious Republican Party," he said.

It's a job that traditionally falls to governors in states.

Gov. Mark Sanford should take on that role, but "he's done just about as much as he can to disunite the party," Thigpen said.

State GOP Chairman Katon Dawson said it was an unfair rap on Sanford.

He has "been a different kind of governor," Dawson said, but he has "brought a lot of new people into the political process that we didn't have before."

While Campbell would encourage people to get behind an idea and push that through the Legislature, Sanford "put the big ideas out there and lets the (legislative) process work," Dawson said. "It has made people uncomfortable."

Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said Campbell also had a different role, leading a smaller party. Smaller parties, he said. "are always more cohesive." With Republican dominance now, "you're naturally going to have a less cohesive party simply by virtue of the fact that it's the biggest game in town." Still, he said, people tend to focus too much on disagreements without acknowledging Republicans share many common goals.

College of Charleston political science professor Bill Moore says Campbell's influence on the party diminished from the time he left office. His two Republican successors have had a difficult time influencing the party, he said.

Former Gov. David Beasley followed Campbell into the Gov.'s Mansion, but he divided the party with his stances on the Confederate flag and was less popular among fiscal conservatives than Christian conservatives, Moore said.

And Sanford, "is a maverick and takes his own positions" and those sometimes put him at odds with other Republicans, Moore said.

Beyond Sanford taking a more visible role leading his party, there are others who could take up to the task, political scientists say, including U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, House Speaker Bobby Harrell and his predecessor, U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins.

But "you've also got be willing to seize the mantle," Thigpen said.

That no one appears to be willing to do that leaves Republicans, clearly dominant in Legislature and statewide offices, in an odd position.

"If you ask who speaks for the Republican Party today, you have a choir instead of a soloist," Moore said.