Bush, McCain Caught in Big Squeeze

With the stakes high and confidence about the outcome low, voters in the South Carolina GOP primary today will hand victory to either George W. Bush and John McCain--concluding a contest of extraordinary drama and tension that looms as a turning point in the Republican presidential race.

The final flurry of late polls all showed Bush leading in the staunchly conservative state his campaign has long touted as its “firewall,” a place where Bush could block, and perhaps cripple, McCain’s insurgent campaign.

But with the margins narrow in most of the surveys--and the campaigns uncertain about how many independents and Democrats would turn out to vote in today’s primary--both candidates spent Friday barreling across the state in a frantic quest to mobilize their supporters and convert the undecided.

Like a vise, the combination of high stakes and tight polls has intensified the pressure on both camps. Not since President Ford defeated Ronald Reagan by fewer than 1,600 votes in the 1976 New Hampshire Republican primary has it seemed possible that a primary of such significance could be decided by such a small margin.

Since McCain’s victory in New Hampshire on Feb. 1, the Arizona senator and Bush have staged an epic 18-day duel here that is likely to be remembered as one of the most compelling single presidential primaries ever.

Each has generated huge crowds at times, each has touched a genuine chord with distinct groups of voters, and each has been pressed to his physical and mental limits by the sheer pace and intensity of the contest. Even without reading any polls, the importance of the race and the uncertainty of the outcome are written plainly in the sleep-deprived faces and anxious expressions of senior strategists like Bush’s Karl Rove and McCain’s John Weaver.

“The primary process always has been and will be a crucible that tests the mettle of the candidates, and this one is a classic,” says Mark McKinnon, Bush’s chief media strategist.

South Carolina is unlikely to decide the race by itself: Two more critical contests are Tuesday in Arizona, where McCain holds a wide lead, and Michigan, where he leads narrowly. The candidates will also face a coast-to-coast competition March 7, headlined by primaries in New York and California.

But the South Carolina result is likely to provide the winner with a powerful burst of momentum that could ripple through later contests, especially if McCain upsets Bush here. “We’re going to elect the next president of the United States on Saturday,” insisted J. Sam Daniels, the executive director of the state GOP.

The candidates spent Friday in ways that fully reflected pressure building to today’s vote. Campaigning as feverishly as on any other single day since launching his bid last summer, Bush began his morning with television interviews on CBS and ABC before 7 and then careened among four rallies, a news conference and wall-to-wall interviews with local media that consumed virtually every moment of traveling time until 11 at night.

“Tomorrow’s a big day in American politics,” Bush said at Presbyterian College in Clinton, where hundreds of supporters, many hanging from balconies, waved blue and white pompons. “Tomorrow, South Carolina can send a strong message about what our party stands for.”

McCain kept an equally brisk pace of appearances and interviews on a day highlighted by a raucous noontime rally that filled a gymnasium at the College of Charleston here. “If we win tomorrow, and we will win, there is no way that we can be stopped,” McCain declared.

The contest has evoked strong emotions in the voters as well. Outside McCain’s rally at the gym, a fierce verbal exchange between McCain supporters and a conservative heckler at times seemed on the verge of moving from words to fists.

In several small cities and towns this week, the candidates have drawn crowds that strained the limits of the available venues; Friday morning, a long line of people snaked almost around the block waiting to enter McCain’s Charleston rally. Bush attracted so many people to a rally at Clemson University that the crowd spilled out of Tillman Auditorium and onto the lawn.

Officials in both camps say that all signs point toward a turnout far larger than 1996’s record 276,741. Requests for absentee ballots already have been running high across the state. And with today’s weather expected to be warm and sunny in most of the state, experts are anticipating turnout to reach 350,000--perhaps considerably more.

“This is going to be more like a general election than a primary; that’s the dynamic you have in there right now,” said Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, as confetti flew and rock music blared at the end of the Charleston rally.

What’s made the race so memorable is that, to a remarkable extent, both candidates have succeeded here in what they set out to do. After running slightly behind McCain among New Hampshire Republicans (while being swamped among independents), Bush made a determined effort to challenge McCain’s conservative credentials and consolidate the Republican base in South Carolina.

All polls suggest Bush has done that at least as well as his campaign could have hoped: he has opened up leads ranging from 20 to 25 percentage points among Republicans in the state, depending on the survey.

But McCain has also achieved his principal goal of continuing to mobilize a centrist coalition of independents, Democrats and moderate Republicans with a maverick message of political reform. “Republican politics have been changed forever,” insisted Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has helped lead McCain’s effort here.

The sharply contrasting nature of the two men’s support makes the race particularly hard to forecast, pollsters say. Polls released Thursday and Friday all showed Bush leading, by margins ranging from 2 to 12 percentage points. But many analysts still consider the race much too close to call.

Two factors encourage that caution. One is a technical point of polling. Though Bush leads in all surveys, only one--a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Thursday night--shows him attracting more than 50% of the vote. That’s significant because, traditionally, most voters undecided this late break away from the front-runner. That phenomenon means that, even though Bush leads, he can’t breathe easily as long as most surveys find his support stuck around 45%.

The larger uncertainty is the composition of the electorate today. In 1996, independents and Democrats--who can vote in the primary--cast a little under one-third of all votes in the GOP race. With McCain’s enormous appeal to crossover voters, almost everyone expects that percentage to rise this time; how high could determine who wins. Alan Keyes, meanwhile, trails with only single-digit support.

Bush and McCain seemed to be pulling out all stops in their final push for votes. Bush took the unusual step of having his wife, Laura, introduce him at a relatively modestly attended rally in Charleston on Thursday night. On Friday, she even mingled with reporters on his press plane.

At his rallies Friday, Bush sometimes adopted the cadences of a pulpit-pounding minister, speaking in clipped sentences and impassioned tones as he exhorted his supporters to vote.

Traveling with his wife, four youngest children and an entourage of top officials and supporters from Arizona, South Carolina and New Hampshire, McCain cruised past the salt marshes and old rice plantations of the Lowcountry, making his most impassioned pleas yet for Democratic and independent votes to reshape the Grand Old Party.

“Remember the Reagan Democrats? Remember them? Remember those who helped us govern? Welcome back. Come back. Come back, Reagan Democrats,” he thundered at a rally of about 800 senior citizens at a retirement community near Hilton Head.

Times staff writer T. Christian Miller contributed to this story.

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