Democrats Prove a Point in South

Not dead yet.

That was the defiant cry of Southern Democrats on Sunday after Sen. Mary Landrieu fought off a ferocious challenge, aided by President Bush, in Saturday’s runoff election in Louisiana.

Landrieu’s solid 52%-48% victory over Republican Suzanne Haik Terrell -- whose campaign was bolstered by recent visits by the president, Vice President Dick Cheney and other GOP heavyweights -- showed that even with Bush’s popularity in the region soaring, Democrats still could win with the formula that fueled the party’s Southern revival through the late 1990s: heavy black turnout combined with a centrist appeal that attracts just enough moderate whites for a majority.

Landrieu’s win, combined with the narrow victory of Democrat Rodney Alexander in a Republican-leaning Louisiana House district, provided a surprising coda to an election that had sent Democrats reeling across the South. The results suggested that while Bush’s popularity is an enormous force, it is not an insurmountable one.

After the Republican Southern gains in November, “Bush wanted this Louisiana election to be an exclamation point,” said Karl Struble, a Democratic consultant who worked for Landrieu. “Instead, it’s a question mark.”

Bush’s strength in the South still poses a threat to the region’s Democrats. In 2000, Bush carried all 11 states of the old Confederacy, as well as Oklahoma and Kentucky. And he continues to enjoy enormous job approval ratings in the South, which helped spur a spike in Republican turnout that carried the party to breakthroughs across the region last month.

Indeed, Democrats suffered their deepest electoral losses in the South. Republicans ousted Democratic incumbent governors in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina; won control of the state Houses of Representatives in North Carolina and Texas; captured the state Senate in Georgia; and convincingly ousted Democratic U.S. Sen. Max Cleland in Georgia.

Just as dramatically, the party easily held four Senate seats left vacant by the retirement of longtime GOP incumbents. Despite high hopes for the contests -- in North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee -- the Democratic nominee didn’t win more than 45% of the vote in any of them.

All this reversed a Democratic mini-revival across the region through the late ‘90s that saw the party recapture two U.S. Senate seats and grab a majority of governorships in the Deep South states.

Although the network exit-polling system collapsed this year, the available evidence suggested that the problem for Democrats was less a failure to turn out their core African American supporters than a crippling erosion among white voters, who are now backing Bush.

In Georgia, for instance, the Republican vote surged in virtually all-white exurban counties outside Atlanta and rural areas. In Texas, according to final Republican polls, Tony Sanchez, the Latino Democratic gubernatorial nominee; Ron Kirk, the Democratic African American Senate nominee; and John Sharp, the conservative white Democrat running for lieutenant governor, all failed to attract more than one-third of the white vote.

In all those victories, Bush’s popularity appeared to have been a critical ingredient.

“George W. Bush becoming the face of our party and changing, in effect, the social location of our party -- so we are seen as still conservative but also compassionate, and we are seen as a pro-education party -- has been critical,” says Ralph Reed, the GOP chairman in Georgia.

Yet Landrieu’s surprisingly strong victory -- her 40,000-vote margin was nearly seven times larger than her advantage in 1996, her first race -- may have shown Democrats a formula for how to cope with Bush’s appeal in the region.

Landrieu benefited not only from a large black turnout in New Orleans -- which she carried with a resounding 80% of the vote -- but also a solid performance among whites, especially blue-collar voters. Her campaign’s polling suggests she may have won as many as 38% of whites -- which combined with African American votes is enough for Democrats to win in most Southern states.

“I think it shows it is permissible to stand up to the president strongly, clearly and directly,” said Jim Jordan, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Or as Landrieu herself put it on “Fox News Sunday”: “People rejected the notion that we need to send a label to Washington. We need to send leaders to Washington.”

On the one hand, Landrieu had touted her support for Bush on many issues -- particularly the war against terrorism and his tax cut.

But she also had argued that she would oppose him when his policies hurt the state -- citing administration trade policies on steel and especially sugar as her principal examples -- and suggested that Terrell would simply toe the White House line.

“I will support the president when he is correct and ... advocating on behalf of Louisiana, but I will not be a rubber stamp for that president or any president,” Landrieu had declared at one point.

That was almost exactly the same formulation Arkansas Atty. Gen. Mark Pryor used in fashioning the Democrats’ one major bright spot in the South last month: his defeat of Republican Sen. Tim Hutchinson.

The overlap isn’t surprising; after Landrieu’s failure to win a majority in the November election forced her into Saturday’s runoff -- she took about 46% of the vote, with Terrell and two other Republicans splitting just over 50% -- she fired her campaign staff and hired Struble, the Democratic consultant who shaped Pryor’s message.

“This is not coincidental,” said Jordan. “This is putting into action learned lessons.”

For Landrieu, that argument “crystallized” (in Struble’s phrase) in her charge during the campaign’s last week that the Bush administration had reached a secret deal to increase imports of Mexican sugar -- an unattractive prospect for the state’s growers.

Landrieu criticized the administration more sharply on that issue than almost any Southern Democrat challenged the president on any front this fall.

“I believe in the last week that’s what turned it,” said Struble. “We were really building a case about her being independent and Suzie Terrell being a rubber stamp and ... [the sugar dispute] brought to life the argument we were making in a personal way.”

Mitch Bainwol, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that argument did not have nearly as much impact as Democrats believe.

Instead, he maintains the key to Landrieu’s survival was the Republican success at winning control of the Senate in November. That undercut Bush’s argument that it was imperative for voters to send him senators who would support his agenda -- which proved to be perhaps the most powerful Republican weapon this fall in states, like Louisiana, that Bush carried in 2000.

“Had this really been a race that would have determined control of the Senate, our message would have been much easier,” Bainwol said. “Then the race would have been not about what Mary Landrieu has done for Louisiana or not, but do you want [Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward M.] Kennedy or Bush to drive policy for the nation.”

Whether Landrieu truly showed Southern Democrats a way to counter Bush’s appeal probably won’t be apparent until 2004. Five Southern Democratic senators -- Ernest F. Hollings in South Carolina, John Edwards in North Carolina, Zell Miller in Georgia, John B. Breaux in Louisiana and Blanche Lambert Lincoln in Arkansas -- will all be on the ballot that year, as will Bush.

And although Landrieu’s victory probably has all five breathing easier today, they will continue to face the challenge of coexisting with a popular president from the other party who has shown himself willing, even eager, to use his prestige in campaigns against them.

“As long as Bush’s leadership is strong, he is going to put pressure on a lot of those Southerners,” says Rice University political scientist Earl Black, co-author of the recent book “The Rise of Southern Republicans.”