Posted on Sun, Aug. 27, 2006

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Moore, Sanford need home-front support

By AARON GOULD SHEININ

asheinin@thestate.com

Tommy Moore’s challenge is essentially to find 64,282 votes. That was the margin of victory in 2002 for Mark Sanford, the Republican who defeated incumbent Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges.

Starting in 1996, Republicans have received 52 percent of the votes cast in races for U.S. Senate and governor.

So where does Moore, a Democratic state senator from Aiken County, find the votes he needs?

Traditional swing counties are in play, but gathering enough to win won’t be easy.

There are a few places he can look. There are also places where Sanford may do better than four years ago.

WHERE MOORE MIGHT GAIN VOTES

• His district. Over the past three election cycles, Moore has picked up nearly twice as many votes in winning his Senate seat as his opponents. He has averaged more than 19,000 votes in winning District 25; his opponents have averaged about 10,000.

In 2002, Sanford won Moore’s Senate district, which includes parts of Aiken, Saluda, McCormick and Edgefield counties. Sanford received only 10,774 votes in the district, about 1,100 more than Hodges.

If Moore receives his average vote from his district, he’ll pick up 9,000 votes.

• His county. As for the rest of Aiken County, getting a local boy’s advantage would be huge. Republicans have averaged 65 percent of the Aiken County vote for governor and U.S. Senate since 1996. If Moore can eat into that GOP advantage — but not necessarily carry the county — he will have done what no Democrat has done in ages.

• Lexington County. Much has been said about Moore’s chances in Lexington County, where Sanford has had his political problems. But if Moore is to do well there, he’ll have to reverse an awfully strong trend.

Democrats have averaged only 37 percent of the vote in the Republican stronghold, and have been beaten there by a total of 112,704 votes since 1996.

Winning the county is a long shot for Moore, but chances are he’ll do better there than most Democrats.

• Richland County. Inez Tenenbaum received more than 80,000 votes in the Democratic stronghold in her 2004 U.S. Senate bid. That’s more than 20,000 more votes than any statewide candidate received in the county since before 1996.

In comparison, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alex Sanders, former U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings, Hodges and 1996 Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elliott Close received between 51,000 and 57,000 votes.

That means Tenenbaum got at least 20,000 more votes than any other Democrat in Richland County. Moore needs to figure out how and replicate the result. Some of the increase might be explained by typically higher turnout for the 2004 presidential election.

But that doesn’t explain all the difference. In the 2000 presidential election, 15,000 fewer votes were cast. In 1996, a whopping 38,000 fewer people voted.

However, Moore can’t count on any presidential lift this year.

WHERE SANFORD MIGHT GAIN VOTES

• Lancaster County. Hodges was born and raised in Lancaster County and represented the area in the State House before running for governor in 1998. Hodges and the Democrats handily carried Lancaster — until 2004. Without a local boy on the ballot, Lancaster voted for Republican Jim DeMint over Tenenbaum. Sanford is likely to pick up votes.

• Laurens County. Once solidly Democratic, it is considered a swing county. The trend is Republican.

• Kershaw County. Hodges and Hollings both won Kershaw County in 1998, but Republicans have dominated since. DeMint beat Tenenbaum there by more than 3,000 votes, and there is little sense that will change this year.

• Charleston County. Tenenbaum managed to win Charleston County in 2004 and took 65,000 votes there. But Sanford has lived in the county for years, and Charlestonians, generally, take care of their own. Sanford beat Hodges there by nearly 10,000 votes

Reach Gould Sheinin at (803) 771-8658.