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Politics

South Carolina GOP voters look to be won over

Candidates sprint for the line in a tight, paint swapping finish.

By WES ALLISON, Times Staff Writer
Published December 28, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [AP photo] Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, speaking during the Republican Debate at University of South Carolina's Koger Center in May, has pulled ahead in polls in South Carolina, but several other candidates aren't far behind.

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- This time of year, during the frenzied first round of presidential politicking, Katon Dawson finds himself speaking to one Republican event or another almost every evening, even on Wednesday, which is church night. He always asks the audience for a show of hands: Who's still wrestling over their picks for the nomination?

"Over a third of them, a hand comes up every night -- every night," said Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, who keeps changing his mind, too. "They're looking at who can win, who's going to show them a vision, and who can right the ship that they sense is listing a little bit."

None of the Republican candidates has done that yet, but the reward looms large for the man who does. For all the credit Iowa and New Hampshire take for vetting presidential candidates, they often choose losers.

By contrast, no one has won the Republican nomination for president without winning South Carolina since the state held its first primary in 1980.

Democratic voters in the state are almost evenly split between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, with John Edwards a distant third, polls show. Among Republicans, however, some polls show more than half of the likely primary voters are undecided or open to changing their minds, just three weeks before the Jan. 19 election.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has pulled ahead in recent weeks, but four others, as they say in NASCAR, are trading paint in the pack just behind him: Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain.

Dawson, an animated auto parts supplier from Columbia, said Republicans are struggling to choose because all the candidates are just so dang impressive.

That's one explanation. Another is that none really suits them.

On a cool morning last week, Jeff Hesla joined about a hundred folks in the parking lot of the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office to see Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, lambaste illegal immigration -- a smoking-hot topic here -- and Huckabee's onetime plan to let the children of illegal immigrants apply for scholarships to Arkansas' public colleges.

Hesla was impressed with Romney's polish, but was not sold. He also likes Giuliani for his leadership after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, and for the way he's known for bringing order to the city in the 1990s.

"There are strengths and weaknesses for each of the candidates, positives and negatives," Hesla, 53, a real estate developer, said as the crowd broke up. "That's why they are all over the map."

* * *

The shorthand on Republican politics here is this: South Carolina is Guns, God and Git 'er Done, Confederate battle flags and NASCAR fanatics, Bible Belt fundamentalism and simmering racial strife.

To some extent, the state does play to that stereotype. The woman chosen this month to lead the state Board of Education teaches her children at home and has no intention of sending them to public schools. Good luck buying beer on Sunday, except on the coast and in Columbia. The Confederate battle flag flies outside the state Capitol.

But South Carolina is more diverse than it first appears, with three distinct regions: the Upstate, a manufacturing hub that includes the mountains, the Piedmont and Greenville County, the seat of Republican power; the Midlands, a broad swath of farmland and struggling old cotton and tobacco towns as well as Columbia, the capital; and the coastal Lowcountry, which is less conservative and boasts a strong Democratic Party infrastructure.

About all that holds the state together is a love of boiled peanuts and high school football. Even the barbecue sauce is different tomato-based in the Upstate, mustard-based in the Lowcountry.

Meanwhile, Republican voters range from evangelicals to retirees to farmers to business folks. Party leaders argue that makes it a better laboratory for presidential politics than Iowa and New Hampshire.

"We're a lot larger than those two states and, plus, we are more conservative than both of those states," said Samuel Harms, chairman of the Greenville County Republican Party, the state's largest. "We're the bellwether state for the candidate who can reach out to the base, especially in the Southern states. You've got to win the Southern states if you want to be president of the United States."

In past primary elections, a favorite candidate has emerged among the state's Republican establishment, or maybe two. This year, state party leaders are as fractured as the electorate. The four members of Congress from the Republican-heavy Upstate -- two senators, two House members -- are each endorsing a different candidate. Gov. Mark Sanford, a popular two-term Republican, hasn't endorsed anyone.

Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University, a beacon of evangelicalism, endorsed Romney, though polls show evangelicals are wary of his Mormon faith. The South Carolina Citizens for Life, the state chapter of antiabortion giant National Right-to-Life Committee Inc., endorsed Thompson. So did the president of Gun Owners of South Carolina.

"In the past, it's been easier for mainstream Republicans to make a choice because it was clear who the Republican establishment favored," said Jim Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville and an expert in conservative Republican politics. "But this time, there's no one."

The result is the candidates are fighting as if their political lives depend on it. In some cases, they do.

According to interviews with independent political analysts, neutral Republican operators and campaign strategists in the state, Thompson, who isn't shining in Iowa or New Hampshire, probably needs to win South Carolina to stay in the race.

Romney is seen as the best organized here, with 16 full-time staffers, while McCain -- who placed second to George W. Bush in 2000 -- is close behind. Both have visited often and are advertising heavily; each needs South Carolina to establish credibility as a national candidate, especially if they don't win Iowa or New Hampshire.

Some polls show Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning congressman from Texas, with as much as 10 percent of the Republican vote, but it's not clear which frontrunner he's hurting.

Giuliani, who has polled as high as second and as low as fourth, is doing far better for a Yankee who favors abortion and gay rights than anyone here imagined, Republican leaders say.

Meanwhile, Huckabee's surge in popularity in Iowa has helped him pull ahead here. He has strong credentials as both a former Southern Baptist preacher and as an experienced Southern governor, but as in other states, his operation is the least robust of the major candidates.

Huckabee's competitors are praying that even if he wins in Iowa, their superior fundraising and organization will overwhelm him later. They're clearly worried about it.

"He's the flavor of the month," said Barry Wynn of Spartanburg, a former state GOP chairman who is directing Giuliani's campaign in the state, "but it might last through South Carolina."

* * *

Among the undecided Republican voters watching Romney in Spartanburg last week was Benjamin Eastep, 71, who holds his politicians to a particularly high standard.

Nearly 30 years ago, Eastep was struggling to find work after losing his job when he received a form letter from U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, a Republican legend, seeking support.

Eastep stuffed Thurmond's self-addressed stamped envelope with his own letter explaining that he had been out of work six months, despite visiting 125 businesses and regularly bugging the state unemployment office.

A few days later, the unemployment office called. "Mr. Thurmond tells us you need a job," the man said.

"I been you telling you that for six months," Eastep said he told him. "They said, 'Yeah, but Mr. Thurmond told us to find you a job, or find us one.'"

Eastep was at work in the automotive field days later. When he considers the candidates before him now, he doesn't see anyone "that's in tune with the people" the way Thurmond was.

Unlike in 2000, South Carolina Republicans voters don't seem primarily concerned with cultural issues such as gay marriage and abortion. That's clearly part of the consideration, but voters say they want someone who can address a myriad of problems: the loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, an unsettled, dangerous world, an influx of illegal immigrants from Latin America.

"I think they should be a Christian, but they need to be able to handle the affairs -- security, immigration, health care. He's got to have the ability to handle world affairs," Eastep said.

As Eastep left Romney's rally, he carried a handful of brochures and a blue Romney yard sign to his black Nissan pickup. There was already a "Huckabee for President" sticker on the bumper. He chuckled.

"I've got Romney's sign here," he said, "but I'm going to hold it back for later."

Wes Allison can be reached at allison@sptimes.com or (202) 463-0577.

[Last modified December 27, 2007, 22:37:13]