Pitting the Old and the New in S. Carolina GOP Politics

When George W. Bush made fundamentalist Bob Jones University here his first stop after losing the New Hampshire primary last week, he paid homage to the traditional power of religious conservatives in South Carolina Republican politics.

Only a few miles away, John McCain earlier this week collected an endorsement from Greenville Mayor Knox H. White that symbolized the continued emergence of a new power in the state GOP.

White, a 45-year-old lawyer, personifies the generally conservative but pragmatic young professionals filling condominiums downtown and the affluent subdivisions sprouting outside the city.

This vibrant growth, replicated outside Charleston and especially Columbia, is changing the character of the South Carolina Republican Party--and raising the voice of less ideological voters, the kind who flocked to McCain in his breakthrough New Hampshire victory.

“Republican primaries in South Carolina have always been a contest to see who is the most Republican--a mad dash to the right,” says Trey Walker, a former state party executive director now running McCain’s effort here. “That was conventional wisdom. But the problem is in 2000 that’s changed. South Carolina is a very different South Carolina.”

The state’s traditional powers are still providing Texas Gov. Bush with considerable assets here: a politically potent conservative Christian movement suspicious of McCain and a GOP establishment accustomed to supporting the presidential front-runner.

Economic Changes Fuel Party’s Growth

But the growth of less-partisan and more-independent voters here--combined with McCain’s appeals to older veterans and college students--has given the senator a surprisingly powerful base that’s brought him neck-and-neck with Bush in the latest state polls.

Even so, it won’t be easy for McCain to overcome Bush’s entrenched advantages. With Bush, as well as local conservative leaders and talk radio hosts, relentlessly pummeling McCain as insufficiently conservative on issues from abortion to taxes, the result in this pivotal Feb. 19 primary may turn on whether a decade of rising affluence has changed this state as much as the McCain camp thinks--or hopes.

Economically, the change is unmistakable. South Carolina still has significant pockets of rural poverty--some of them north and west of the bustling growth along the Interstate 85 corridor that connects Greenville with neighboring Spartanburg. The state’s median income remains about 8% below the national average. Likewise its school spending per student is well below the national average, a remnant of the low-service, low-tax politics that defined the state during the era when low-wage textile manufacturing dominated its economy.

But on all these fronts, the state is gaining ground. Over the last decade, it has attracted more than $42 billion in new business investment, vastly more than in the 1980s and much of it from foreign companies. As textiles have declined, they have been replaced by better-paying, higher-skill manufacturing and service jobs: The big employers in the state now include names like Bridgestone/Firestone, Michelin, Honda and Fuji.

Here in the upstate, where textiles once ruled, a sparkling BMW plant in Spartanburg has become the symbol of the region’s changing identity--and an engine of its prosperity.

In a steady evolution dating to the 1970s, this economic change has transformed the state’s politics. The state GOP, once built on conservative former Democrats who bolted their party over civil rights, has grown into a much more middle-class, business-oriented party as embodied by Carroll A. Campbell Jr., the Republican governor from 1986 to 1994, who looked as though he stepped out of a corporate boardroom. (Now a Washington lobbyist, Campbell is spearheading Bush’s efforts in the state.)

Republican politics here remain well to the right of those in New Hampshire, where McCain overwhelmed Bush. Almost half of the voters in New Hampshire’s GOP primary described themselves as moderate or liberal; in the 1996 primary here, two-thirds of GOP voters called themselves conservative. Christian conservatives cast about one-eighth of the ballots in New Hampshire; here in 1996, the figure was more than 1 in 3. The powerful resistance to the removal of the Confederate flag from the state Capitol underscores the strength of the state’s socially conservative roots.

But neither is the state as monolithically conservative as is often assumed. The blue- and white-collar families drawn by the new jobs, many of them from other states, have created an audience for targeted government activism, particularly to improve the public schools.

And while the political divisions between suburbanites and Christian conservatives aren’t as sharp here as in states like California--because many of the young families filling the South Carolina cul-de-sacs also consider themselves evangelicals--Republican voters have generally preferred candidates who stress economic rather than social issues.

When Bush began his campaign last summer, he seemed a perfect fit for the state’s new Republican model, offering a message that balanced limits on government with new proposals to reform the public schools.

But with Bush now blurring his message--sometimes emphasizing his reform agenda, sometimes portraying himself as more conservative than McCain--the Arizona senator has made the stronger first impression with the least partisan elements of this coalition. That’s critical because the state does not register by party, which means that any registered voter can participate in the GOP primary.

McCain has openly appealed to blue-collar “Reagan Democrats,” who have often voted Republican, especially in federal elections. More important, a Time/CNN poll last weekend that put the two contenders in a virtual dead heat showed McCain leading Bush substantially among independents, moderates and voters born outside the state.

Bush’s advantages are the inverse of McCain’s. Bush is relying heavily on his solid support from the GOP establishment: from venerable Sen. Strom Thurmond to most of the legislative leadership and statewide officials. That still counts for something in a state GOP that’s had a strong top-down tradition of backing the anointed candidate, not only in presidential primaries but also in local politics. “I wouldn’t say there was any historic streak of independence here for McCain to play into,” acknowledges White, a former aide to Campbell.

Bush’s second big potential advantage is religious conservatives. In this community, enthusiasm for Bush may be less important than antipathy toward McCain, who faces doubts about his commitment to banning abortion and even is confronting charges (fueled on talk radio) that he provided beer to underage students at his early morning arrival rally after New Hampshire. (His campaign denies the accusation.) National and state anti-abortion groups, which endorsed Bush this week, are running radio ads attacking McCain.

Independents, Democrats Play a Role

The question isn’t whether Bush carries traditional Republicans and social conservatives, the issue is whether he carries them by enough to offset McCain’s advantages with moderates, transplants, and independents--the groups growing as the state prospers. In 1996, independents cast 26% of the ballots in the GOP primary here, and Democrats 5%; most local analysts expect McCain’s crossover appeal to swell those numbers next week, especially since the Democratic primary won’t be held until March.

“We don’t have any Democratic competition, so there is a high probability that a good many Democrats and independents may be voting,” says James L. Guth, a political scientist at Greenville’s Furman University. “And they are a wild card for McCain.”

With Steve Forbes’ official departure from the race Thursday, South Carolina is looming as the state that could tip the balance for the remainder of the GOP contest between McCain and Bush. And the balance here may tip on whether McCain can reap the political benefit of the economic and social changes steadily redefining the state.