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Sixty-five days from now, South Carolina voters will choose their next governor between two men from strikingly dissimilar backgrounds and equally divergent visions for the South Carolina of their dreams.

One, of course, is already there -- Mark Sanford, 46, a controversial figure even among fellow Republicans, a self-styled reformer distrustful of government who's more known for battling the Legislature than signing landmark bills into law.

Democrat Tommy Moore, 56, who won his state Senate seat in 1980 when Sanford was a college underclassman, is the quintessential team player, a believer in government who is as comfortable in the off-the-floor legislative give-and-take as Sanford is uncomfortable with it.

The Legislature will be a focal point of the campaign, predicted John Simpkins, a Charleston School of Law professor and associate director of Furman University's Richard W. Riley Institute.

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Simpkins said, "Moore may find support by campaigning as someone who can work with the Legislature, while Gov. Sanford could point to them as frustrating his ambitions for reform."

But for Moore to have a chance to win, Simpkins said he will "have to tap into voter anger (and) if Moore can find common cause with disaffected Republicans, he could eat into the governor's base in Republican strongholds like Lexington County and make a real race of it."

"Still, it remains to be seen if some Republicans hate Sanford so much that they actually would vote for a Democrat," Simpkins said. Differing standpointsDuring interviews with The Greenville News last week, each man made the Legislature central to his agenda, but from differing standpoints.

For Sanford, that means creating a more streamlined government and a more equitable power balance between the General Assembly and the executive branch through a second phase of governmental restructuring -- a decade and a half after the first -- that would mean a stronger governor and a less powerful Legislature.

"We're saying that 170 different power centers, the by-product of a legislatively dominated state, create an inward-looking political system," he said.

"If you don't have as a co-equal, third branch of government, the executive branch, that looks statewide in a way that (legislators) can't because they represent a particular district. It's a very diffused system that we believe is costly, and at times, inefficient."

Showing a more pragmatic side after nearly four years in Columbia, Sanford says that if some of his other initiatives bog down, he will accept "course corrections" and move on. He excludes tax cuts and spending restraints.

"If things that we believe in, feel strongly about, but have very little chance ... we would back away from some of those fights to put more time, more emphasis and more energy into the restructuring debate that I think will go to the heart of whether we change things or don't change things."

For Moore, it means using his 28 years in the Senate to make the system work again. Having headed conference committees that worked out legislation that had proven bitterly divisive on the House and Senate floors, Moore says he's the one to return the Governor's Office to its traditional role. Role of 'power'Moore said the question isn't who's got the power, "but what are you going to do with it, whether you're talking about the governor or the General Assembly, but especially the governor. When you can't communicate or sit down and work things out, you can't go to the people and say, 'I can work this out if I had more power.' They want to know what you're doing with what you have."

The battle will almost certainly involve the dichotomy of high unemployment, cited by Moore, and solid job growth cited by Sanford.

The men come from different places and perspectives.

Moore grew up in a mill village in Aiken County's Horse Creek Valley, a barber's son, the youngest of three brothers. He attended public schools, worked in drug stores as a teen and graduated from the University of South Carolina's Aiken branch near his home, then built a family business from scratch. The firm installs and repairs industrial boilers.

He has devoted much of his life to politics and displays a zest for the process, interplay and camaraderie.

Sanford, whose father was a doctor, was born in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and transplanted to sprawling, historic Coosaw Plantation in Beaufort County as a teen. He is a relative newcomer to politics, a man more comfortable with ideas than the hurly-burly of legislative backrooms and a self-described servant-leader with an ill-disguised disdain for political careerists.

Unlike Moore, Sanford attended private schools, Furman University and then the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business for his MBA. Then it was on to Wall Street before returning to the Lowcountry and a venture into development. Varied backgroundsWilliam Moore, a College of Charleston political scientist, said from a financial point of view, Sanford "inherited wealth and married wealth." Jenny Sullivan Sanford is the granddaughter of the founder of the Skil power tool company, and her father, John, was head of a major Philadelphia-based, northeastern real estate firm.

Sanford finished at Furman in 1983 at age 23, worked in real estate in the Charleston area, and then became a volunteer aide/driver for Democrat Phil Lader's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign. Then it was off to grad school at UVA and a summer internship at Goldman Sachs. He got the MBA in 1988 at age 28.

Post-MBA, Sanford was a financial analyst in New York before returning to Charleston in 1992 to launch his own firm, Norton and Sanford, in which he was involved in leasing, brokering and managing property. Well into 1993, he jumped into the GOP's 1st Congressional District primary, pledging to promote limited government, lower taxes and term limits. In an upset, he won, served three terms and came home.

His political career, barely 12 years old with fewer than 10 years in office, has been marked by noncomformity and winning where the experts dismissed him as a boat-rocking but inconsequential upstart.

For all his talk of being a businessman first and foremost, Sanford's business has been irregular, and by now he's spent more time in elective office than in the private sector.

Reminded that his political career now exceeds his years in the private sector, Sanford says, "You raise an interesting point," then explains that his mindset isn't that of a career politician.

"If you look at my voting record in Congress, you'll see I was bound and determined not to go back to politics," Sanford said of votes that often had him on the losing side with only a handful of others voting his way.

Among the more recent instances he cited was his veto of funding authorization for the Lexington Medical Center's heart facility, one that set off a firestorm in one of the state's strongest Republican counties.

"It was just plain (politically) destructive and it's going to be used against me in this election," said the governor. Restless DemosThe Upstate, never a treasure trove of Democratic primary votes, hasn't seen much of Moore and with the primary now almost three months back, some Democrats are getting restless.

Andy Arnold, Greenville County Democratic Party chairman, said that Moore "must do more in the Upstate" to capitalize on his strengths as a campaigner.

"He has an impressive life story, which is a great contrast to the 'silver spoon' life story of Sanford. Moore is a natural speaker. He connects to normal folks, who must actually work for a living. Unfortunately, thus far, Sen. Moore has not spent enough time in Greenville County to allow those strengths to help him," Arnold said.

But Arnold gives Moore a pass.

"I do understand that since changing campaign managers, he has become more focused and has been raising more money."

But Brandon Brown of Taylors, a Democratic state House candidate, said of Moore's lack of visibility in the state's most populous county, "If a candidate wants to be governor, he might consider shaking a few hands in Greenville."

"Check my schedule, go with me," Moore challenges, pointing to days spent on the phone, dialing for dollars, and evenings and weekends shaking hands, spreading his message.

At the possible cost of causing Democrats to fret over his visibility, Moore says he raised from $800,000 to $1 million during August, a feat for a candidate who needed 18 months to reach $1.2 million.

"It tells you that a number of businesspeople who have traditionally given money to Republicans are opening up their checkbooks," said Hollis "Chip" Felkel, a Greenville public affairs strategist with long experience in GOP campaigns. "It raises eyebrows."

But in a state where Republicans have held the governorship for 16 of the last 20 years and have won five of eight contests dating back 32 years, Moore faces demographic and financial challenges. Moore money starved?Moore emerged from his primary with $149,000 in cash after raising a modest $1.29 million. By contrast, Sanford came out of the GOP primary with $4.26 million remaining from $6.33 million raised, according to state Ethics Commission reports.

That was Moore's first victory outside his Aiken-Edgefield-McCormick-Saluda district. The other time Moore ventured beyond a safe District 25, was in 1994 when he lost a runoff for the 3rd Congressional District's Democratic nomination. The victor, Jim Bryan, lost to Republican state Representative Lindsey Graham, now a U.S. senator.

Aside from money, only two recent independent polls offer any kind of yardstick for measuring the pair's relative strength.

Going into the pivotal Labor Day weekend, Sanford had slipped in Survey USA and Rasmussen Reports.

In the former, his approval rating fell to 51 percent in July from 55 in June and his disapproval number rose to 45 percent from 37 percent.

Perhaps as ominous for an incumbent was the Rasmussen July survey that placed Sanford under 50 percent, at 47 percent vs. Moore's 38. That was down from a 51-39 bulge a month before.

If comparing their June primary showings, Sanford took 64.7 percent against an unknown, underfunded challenger, a less-than-stellar showing for an incumbent. Moore fared better among Democrats, taking 63.6 percent and more than doubling the votes of his major opponent, Florence Mayor Frank Willis, who outspent him by 42 percent.

The anybody-but-Sanford votes -- for Moore and Lovelace -- totaled 166,135. Sanford's tally was 160,238. Add Moore's two primary foes and the ABS vote was 216,386. However, the 7.3 percent turnout was among the lowest on record.

Still, Felkel says, "At this point, Sanford doesn't have to do a whole lot because Moore doesn't seem to have caught fire with anybody, even his own people. Unity unevenFar from discounting Moore's chances, state Rep. David Mack, D-Charleston, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, is buoyantly optimistic. He predicts that Moore "is going to shock a lot of people" because of Republican defections and erosion of independent voters who flocked to Sanford in 2002.

Sanford's GOP isn't exactly monolithic where he's concerned.

Republican divisions have led at least one GOP senator, Lexington's Jake Knotts, to go to the brink of an independent candidacy before backing Moore.

Other GOP lawmakers, irked by his repeated criticism, including the pigs-in-the-Statehouse incident, and their well-publicized battles, have criticized Sanford publicly in stronger terms than have been heard around the Statehouse since the more freewheeling eras of the past.

Republicans for Moore is also being cranked up, with Horry County Treasurer Lois Eargle, George Shissias of Columbia, Trey Ward of Greenville, Champ Covington of Greenville, "a lot of people who vote Republican in most cases without being card-carrying activists," Moore said.

An independent poll showing Sanford's support had dropped to under 50 percent and led Moore by only nine percentage points is a potential red flag for the governor, Felkel said.

"That's a dangerous spot for anyone. Should Moore all of a sudden accidentally get engaged and remember he's running, then he might make more of a dent," Felkel said.