Race to test Tenenbaum's toughness, rural values

e-mail this story More details INEZ MOORE TENENBAUM Born: March 8, 1951, Hawkinsville, Ga. Education: B.S., 1972; master's, University of Georgia, 1974; University of South Carolina School of Law, 1986. Career: Teacher, Augusta, Ga., 1972-75; S.C. Department of Social Services, 1975-77; director of research, state House Medical, Military and Municipal Affairs Committee, 1977-83; attorney, 1986-92; founder and president, South Carolina Center for Family Policy, 1992-96. Politics: Lost Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, 1994; elected state superintendent of education, 1998; re-elected, 2002. Residence: Lexington. Husband: Samuel J. Tenenbaum. Children: None. Religion: Methodist. Favorite leisure activities: Running and hiking. Book on her nightstand: "Fighting Back," by E.J. Dionne. Favorite food: Peach cobbler with ice cream.

Tenenbaum, South Carolina's Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, needs people like Hamilton, a 36-year-old former city planner.

Hamilton is a Republican who voted for George Bush in 2000 and Lindsey Graham for the Senate in 2002.

Now she's undecided.

"I came out just to see what she was going to do for my age group."

If Tenenbaum is to win Nov. 2 and help her party regain Senate control nationally and retain its viability in South Carolina, she needs to attract thousands more Lisa Hamiltons to her self-described "independent" candidacy against Republican U.S. 4th District Rep. Jim DeMint.

Tenenbaum, 53, has an intensity not entirely broken by an easy laugh, all the while exuding a steely vivaciousness.

A product of small-town Georgia and big-time politics in South Carolina, Tenenbaum's uphill but strong candidacy is a test for the GOP's ever-growing dominance of state politics.

Inez Moore Tenenbaum, friends and family say, isn't one to quit or walk away from a fight.

As a toddler in Puerto Rico, where her petty officer dad was stationed in the early 1950s, she overcame a brush with polio. In 1998, she bounced back from a primary defeat for lieutenant governor four years before to win the race for state education superintendent.

In that job, she's had battles with a Republican-held General Assembly.

"She's always been a fighter," said her younger sister, Judy Hill, who just retired from teaching in their hometown.

Dick Harpootlian, former state Democratic Party chairman, first met Tenenbaum 30 years ago.

Then and now, he sees her as "a very opinionated, very strong-willed, tough-as-nails lady. She can take the gut punch and can move on. That's rare in a politician, man or woman."

Tenenbaum tends to learn from failure.

"She gets her teeth kicked in, gets up, dusts herself off and goes to work," Harpootlian said.

Now, with U.S. Senate control on the line and 38-year Democratic Sen. Ernest Hollings retiring, Tenenbaum finds herself the object of national attention in one of 2004's most watched campaigns.

Small-town values

Spend time with Tenenbaum and it won't be long before her two passions show through: education and growing up in a large family in Pineview, Ga., a town so small it lost its only traffic light for lack of traffic.

"I could write a book, 'Everything I Learned in Life, I Learned in Pineview,'" she says.

From school to the Methodist church to swimming in Bluff Creek, "I never had a boring day in Pineview."

Patriotism, too, was a part of family life, instilled by her father, a World War II veteran who struggled at farming before enlisting in the Cold War Navy. "It was part of his life; never once did I hear him complain," she said.

It was a family of farmers and, as time progressed, teachers. Gatherings revolved around talk of crops, church and putting up the winter's vegetables. When Tenenbaum was born in 1951, she was part of the fourth generation of Moores then alive.

Politically, the family voted for Democrats locally but usually Republicans for president.

Tenenbaum's mother, a Rhodes, was the first in the family to graduate from college. Both Tenenbaum's sisters are educators, as are many of her first cousins.

"Education was very important to our family, and every generation tried to do better than the next one," she said.

As a child, the family usually moved to her father's next duty station, from Puerto Rico to Memphis to California. There were layovers in Pineview during his overseas postings, and when she was in sixth grade, he retired and resettled in their hometown.

From adolescent cheerleader captain, homecoming queen and academic honor society member, adulthood has seen Tenenbaum become a teacher, legislative aide, lawyer, wife, and politician on the cusp of national standing.

Her move toward the Senate surprised some who expected her to run for governor in 2006.

The Senate, she says, "is a bigger arena where I can do more good."

Citing a "mission in life to work with children and families in South Carolina, to improve their lives and give people better opportunities," Tenenbaum said, "when this came up ... I thought long and hard."

To become a senator in a heavily Republican state, Tenenbaum is casting herself in South Carolina's fiercely independent mold as a moderate who supports capital punishment, the war in Iraq and a ban on late-term abortions while opposing gay marriage.

Sharp differences

She and DeMint have shown sharp differences on trade and the economy, Tenenbaum emerging as a protectionist, the Republican more free trader.

But she's running in a presidential year, always a tough time for down-ballot Democrats.

Stuart Rothenberg, writing in the Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call, observed that "in South Carolina, the GOP grip has become strong enough that a credible Republican open-seat nominee begins with a significant advantage."

Bruce Ransom, a Clemson University political scientist, shares the view of Tenenbaum as underdog.

"If she is going to pull out a victory, she must be viewed as a legitimate moderate to conservative candidate who is able to address South Carolina issues, but more importantly, national and international issues that DeMint, the policy wonk, will use to demonstrate his credentials and Tenenbaum's limitations."

Tenenbaum hasn't hesitated to chide the GOP — and her own party.

"The Democratic and Republican parties ought to be ashamed not to get together and work out a plan for affordable health insurance," Tenenbaum said, triggering a wave of nodding heads during a stop in Clinton at Whiteford's drive-in.

She convinced Joe Nixon, Presbyterian College's retired vice president for student life, an independent who leans Democratic.

"The impression I have formed is her independent slant," he said. "She's not tied, strictly aligned with the Democratic platform, but has her own views."

Republicans aren't giving her a pass.

"Why is Mrs. Tenenbaum so embarrassed to be a Democrat?" asked Terry Sullivan, DeMint's campaign manager.

First campaign

Tenenbaum's first taste of politics was in Jimmy Carter's 1970 campaign for Georgia governor, out of friendship as much as anything: A high school pal had married Carter's middle son, Chip.

After teaching first-graders for three years in Augusta, following her 1972 graduation from the University of Georgia, Tenenbaum chucked the $6,000 job for twice as much licensing Head Start programs for the Department of the Social Services in Columbia.

By 1976, when Carter ran for president, she was living in Columbia. As a Carter volunteer, she met her husband, Lexington steel executive Samuel Tenenbaum. Then Gov. Dick Riley married them in the Executive Mansion garden in 1984.

This is her fifth campaign as a candidate. She failed to win the nomination for lieutenant governor in 1994, but has been elected twice as superintendent of education, in 1998 and 2002. Tenenbaum brushed aside a Senate primary challenge from a perennial candidate.

Democratic consultant Kevin Geddings said that as a politician, she is "one of the most talented Democratic activists in the state (who) hasn't been afraid to take on the state's more conservative mindset. I think when this election is over she will change how South Carolinians view liberals."

Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. met Tenenbaum in his early years in office when she was a young legislative committee aide. He described her as "independent and ... able to convey herself as less partisan."

Greenville lawyer Rex Carter, who hired Tenenbaum for that staff job when he was speaker of the state House of Representatives, recalled her as "bright, enthusiastic, friendly, always smiling, intensely interested in other people."

Contrary to earlier speculation by some, husband Sam has remained in the background, largely unseen and unheard.

For all of her steel, friends say she has had a softening effect on her husband of 20 years.

Her husband, now retired but heavily involved in community activities, is liberal and outspoken about it. He is a bear of a man who, as his wife says, "dominates" any room he enters.

But Harpootlian said, "Inez hasn't been shaped by Sam, he's been shaped by her. Knowing both of them for the past 30 years, she's gotten more focused, tougher. He's become more demure, if you will."

The couple

Harpootlian said the couple are "very much in love, and he wouldn't do anything to hurt her. Anytime he's said something publicly that came back to bite her, he's regretted it and shown it."

Sam Tenenbaum said, "I was brought up to be forthright and honest." But, yes, his wife and time have smoothed away his rougher edges, he said.

Tenenbaum said her husband is "doing what he's always done in my campaigns, stays in the background. He's always been active in politics and with his exuberant personality, when he walks into a room, he dominates it. But he realizes if I'm going to run, I have to be the candidate."

When they disagree, it's "more (on) style than substance."

The Tenenbaums have no children, but six dogs and four cats roam their homes.

"We both loved animals growing up," she says.

Sister Judy attests to that. "She was always a softy when it came to animals. When 'Lassie' came on TV Sunday nights, we always knew Inez was going to cry, no matter that we knew Lassie was going to be OK and on the next Sunday."

Tenenbaum's days begin at 4:45 a.m., then it's off to the gym. Politics or official duties fill the balance of a day to dark and beyond.

When she's at the couple's new — and now for sale — vacation retreat near Caesars Head, there's time for hiking and renewing kitchen skills eroded by foam plates of campaign trail barbecue and rubber chicken.

Back at the Holiday Inn, Lisa Hamilton said she had arrived "looking for approachability, someone who can go to Washington and make a difference."

After meeting and hearing Tenenbaum, Hamilton said the candidate was "on target (because) jobs are the common denominator."

Now, Hamilton wants to hear more of DeMint. The deal is still pending.

Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-4883.