S. Carolina Crucial Test in GOP Race

Their race now deep in chaos, the Republican presidential candidates headed here Wednesday for Saturday’s primary--a contest looming as a defining moment in their struggle for the nomination.

“The elimination process is going to begin in earnest in South Carolina,” commentator Patrick J. Buchanan said Wednesday.

Likewise, Robert Lighthizer, a senior advisor to Sen. Bob Dole, said, “If you don’t win South Carolina, you go on and try to do the best you can, but you are truly injured.”

Indeed, if Dole’s back is now against the wall in the GOP race, this is the wall.

After losing to publishing magnate Steve Forbes in the Arizona primary Tuesday, and falling to Buchanan last week in the New Hampshire primary, Dole badly needs a victory here to regain his equilibrium.

With that in mind, Dole campaigned on Wednesday at a new BMW plant in Greer, highlighting the fruits of international trade. By contrast, Buchanan was at an abandoned furniture-finishing plant in Clearwater, S.C., reminding voters of lost jobs. Meanwhile, Forbes campaigned in New York and Pittsburgh, Pa., and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander was in his home state and Georgia.

The four will participate today in a 9 a.m. PST debate in Columbia, the state capital.

With all the unpredictable twists and turns the GOP race has already taken, few analysts are willing to declare any single contest decisive. But a defeat here might be a mortal blow to Dole, who has long viewed South Carolina as his “firewall”--the fortress where he could either seal the nomination or make his last stand.

Even though South Carolina offers only a modest prize of 37 delegates to the winner, the stakes, in fact, are significant for all the candidates.

As the first Southern state to vote, South Carolina’s decision will reverberate through a region that has become the cornerstone of the new Republican political coalition--and will dominate the primary calendar for the next two weeks. With contests looming in Georgia, Texas, Florida and other Southern states, a poor showing here could deflate Buchanan or leave Alexander virtually on life support.

Though the calculus of this campaign seems to change almost hourly, at this point most local observers see South Carolina as a two-man contest between Buchanan and Dole, with Alexander and Forbes trailing. “Buchanan is the competition here,” said Warren Tompkins, a local political strategist who is directing Dole’s effort here and across the South. Two independent polls made public on Wednesday show Dole leading Buchanan in South Carolina by at least 11 percentage points.

Proving Ground

With both a powerful religious-conservative community and a thriving suburban middle class--as well as an economy experiencing both the prosperity and pain associated with globalization--South Carolina is a key test. It will measure as well as any state so far where the balance of power inside the GOP lies on issues such as trade, international engagement, and the lengths to which the party should stress opposition to abortion.

After his disappointing third-place finish in Arizona, Buchanan is targeting his twin message of economic protectionism and cultural conservatism at disaffected blue-collar workers in this state’s declining textile industry and its burgeoning ranks of religious conservatives. On Wednesday night, Buchanan turned out a large and enthusiastic crowd at an evangelical church outside Spartanburg.

As with Gov. Steve Merrill in New Hampshire, Dole here is depending heavily on support from Gov. David Beasley and his popular predecessor, Carroll A. Campbell Jr., who both star in Dole television commercials and deliver the sharpest jabs to Buchanan at the Dole rallies. The strength of their organization is the principal reason most local observers still consider Dole the favorite here.

“If Dole can’t win a plurality victory in South Carolina, I don’t see him winning in any other Southern state,” said Earl Black, a professor of political science at Rice University who earlier taught for many years here. “Because there isn’t any other state where he has an organization that is that experienced.”

Yet the composition of the state’s Republican electorate makes this prime territory for Buchanan. So far, Buchanan has run best with religious activists and other conservatives and weakest with moderates. In South Carolina, religious conservatives constitute between one-fourth and one-third of the vote and nearly two-thirds of all GOP primary voters classify themselves as conservatives of one stripe or another. By contrast, in New Hampshire just over half the GOP electorate described themselves as moderates, and only 10% as born-again Christians.

Competing for an electorate that already tilts to the right, Dole could once again find himself caught in the vise that frustrated him in Arizona and New Hampshire.

On one side, Dole faces the surging challenge from Buchanan for the support of religious activists and other die-hard conservatives. On the other front, the Kansas senator faces the risk that Alexander and even the rejuvenated Forbes will peel away suburban voters cool to Buchanan on both social and economic grounds.

Both Forbes and Alexander are staking their hopes in South Carolina on battling Dole for the young families who are filing into new subdivisions outside cities such as Greenville, Columbia and Charleston.

Since an early dusting of ads, Forbes has had little presence here, but he could gain a boost from his victory in Arizona and his customary calling card: a large purchase of television commercials in the final days before the vote.

Role of Moderates

As a social moderate and former U.S. education secretary, Alexander has a profile that could be appealing to many of these young suburban families; but until now, he has invested little time or money in the state, and surveys indicate that he remains an indistinct figure even to many broadly attracted to him.

“If I had to pick one thing to say about Alexander, I really couldn’t,” said Tony Sampedro, an Air Force pilot who attended a Dole rally Tuesday in Charleston.

The extent to which Alexander and Forbes draw moderate votes away from Dole is likely to be one key to the result Saturday. Two other questions will also be critical.

One is how large an advantage Buchanan accumulates among religious conservatives. Dole does not need to win social conservatives to win the state, but he does need to prevent them from moving overwhelmingly behind Buchanan.

Dole has substantial support from the local leaders in the influential Christian Coalition, but almost everyone here agrees that it is Buchanan’s uncompromising anti-abortion message that is stirring enthusiasm at the grass roots. “The generals are with Dole,” said Dan Griffith, Buchanan’s state coordinator, “but the troops are with us.”

The second pivot here will be the resonance of Buchanan’s message of economic nationalism. By any important measure, South Carolina has a more prosperous and diversified economy than it had 20, or even 10, years ago, and much of that success derives from its growing integration into the international market.

Exports from the state have more than doubled since 1988. From 1986 through 1995, foreign companies invested more than $9 billion in the state, gilding once parochial textile towns with a new international sheen. BMW, which announced a $200-million expansion here on Tuesday, is building its Z3 convertible in a gleaming new factory near Spartanburg--its only plant outside of Germany. Michelin Corp.’s North American headquarters is just down the road, along the bustling Interstate 85 corridor in Greenville. And in Florence County, where textiles have long been central, Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. is constructing a large new pharmaceutical factory.

The state Commerce Department says foreign firms now employ 85,000 people in South Carolina; industries dependent on exports employ another 80,000. “There are lots of people making a lot of money, and a lot of that is tied to the international economy,” said Doug Woodward, an economist at the University of South Carolina.

All of this international investment has helped South Carolina keep nearly 25% of its work force in manufacturing jobs--one of the highest percentages in the country.

“A lot of people are doing better,” said Bette Cox, who runs a small business and chairs the Christian Coalition in Florence County. “But at least that many or more are worried because if their [textile] mill hasn’t closed, they can see it coming down the pike.”

Economic Anxiety

That anxiety is Buchanan’s target as he calls for the United States to renounce the North American Free Trade Agreement and slap new tariffs on imports from China, Japan and the Third World. Buchanan’s message has won him support from several textile industry leaders, led by Roger Milliken, the chairman of Milliken & Co., which is still a leading employer in the state. Milliken, an ardent NAFTA opponent, is a co-chairman of Buchanan’s national campaign.

Almost all political analysts here agree that protectionism appeals to only a minority of primary voters: Dole learned that in 1988 when his call for measures to protect the textile industry didn’t prevent George Bush from flattening him in the primary.

Though promising to stand up to foreign trading partners more aggressively than President Clinton, Dole and his camp now argue that Buchanan’s economic agenda “would be devastating to South Carolina,” as former Gov. Campbell put it. To underline the point, Dole visited the new BMW plant on Wednesday afternoon; Alexander is due there today.

The traffic jam at BMW, though, illuminates the dynamic boosting Buchanan. In this crowded field, he doesn’t need a majority to agree with his economic and social agenda, just a plurality.

Even with his opponents dividing the center, Buchanan’s fate here may turn on whether he can attract blue-collar, high school-educated manufacturing workers to the polls. These voters are receptive to both elements of his message but haven’t traditionally voted in large numbers in the GOP primary. In 1992, only one-fourth of those voting in the Republican presidential primary here had a high school education or less, according to exit polls.

Because voters in South Carolina don’t register by party, the primary is open to all voters who wish to attend. But it is rare that candidates for any office significantly alter the mix of who usually turns out at the polls.

“That is the new $64,000 question down here: Will Buchanan bring into the primary people who don’t ordinarily vote in a Republican primary?” said Trey Walker, the executive director of the state GOP.

Buchanan, chastened by his showing in Arizona, tried to revive his standing in the race with a renewed emphasis on trade and corporate disloyalty, campaigning in Georgia and South Carolina and speaking to workers concerned about their jobs.

Appearing in the driving rain outside the long-closed plant in Clearwater, he lashed out at corporate interests who dispose of entire factories in order to find cheaper labor overseas.

“There are losers in this go-go global economy. There are losers in these layoffs as well as winners,” he said. “Someone in this country has to speak up for the losers here.”

Meanwhile, Alexander on Wednesday returned to the Blount County Courthouse in Maryville, Tenn.--exactly a year to the day that he announced his candidacy--to cast his absentee ballot in the Tennessee primary March 12.

Alexander conceded that he needs to do better in the overall GOP contest--and fast. “I need to make a strong showing in South Carolina and Georgia,” he said. “But so do the others.” He said it is Dole, not him, who “ought to be thinking about stepping aside.”

Times staff writers Ed Chen, Stephen Braun and Marc Lacey contributed to this story.

* THE WRONG CALL: TV officials are embarrassed and Dole aides angry over vote projections for Arizona. F1