Can Democrats Hold Fast in Dixie?

By Rhodes Cook
CQ Senior Staff Writer

The Democrats' chances of regaining control of Congress this fall may hinge on the answer to a simple question: Can Democrats play defense in the South?

Throughout the presidency of Bill Clinton, they haven't done a very good job of it. Democratic hemorrhaging in the South (defined by Congressional Quarterly as the 11 states of the old Confederacy plus Kentucky and Oklahoma) is a prime reason the party lost control of both houses of Congress two years ago. And there are plenty more targets for Republicans to aim at this fall, with Democratic incumbents vacating four Senate and 19 House seats from Virginia to Texas.

The stakes in the region are high. Should the Republicans continue to gain seats in the South, they could be positioned to establish long-term control of Congress, much as the Democrats did when their numbers on Capitol Hill were buttressed by a solid Democratic South. But, should the Democrats successfully hold the line in Dixie this November, a competitive two-party South may be in the offing - and with it a Congress that swings back and forth between the two major parties for years to come.

It is not a case of "can" the Democrats play defense in the South, says Washington and Lee University political scientist William F. Connelly Jr. He adds, "They must."

Republicans have dominated presidential voting in the region since 1968. But it was not until the 1994 elections that they won a majority of Southern House and Senate seats across the region for the first time since Reconstruction. With a half dozen Democratic members of Congress from Dixie bolting to the GOP since then, Republicans now control nearly 60 percent of Southern congressional seats.

But there are signs that Republican momentum in the region may be ebbing, at least temporarily. The tide may have turned in late 1995 when Democrat Paul E. Patton won a hotly contested governor's race in Kentucky by exploiting voter concern with the fate of Medicare and the unpopularity of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Although Patton collected only 51 percent of the vote, his election showed the saliency of both themes, which are being pressed by Democrats this year across the country, including in the South.

Meanwhile, Southern Republicans have been showing the internal friction that often accompanies a growing party. In Texas, one of last year's House party switchers, Greg Laughlin, lost his 1996 primary to a former congressman with deeper roots in the Republican Party. In Virginia, Sen. John W. Warner had to weather a bitter primary challenge from his party's right wing, angered by Warner's refusal to back the state GOP's 1994 Senate nominee, Oliver L. North. And in South Carolina, the 93-year-old patriarch of the modern Republican Party in the South, Sen. Strom Thurmond, won barely 60 percent of the primary vote against opposition that argued it was time for a change.

Thurmond and Warner are favored to win re-election this fall. But Republican candidates across the South are expecting little help from the top of the ticket.

Recent GOP presidential candidates have often swept the region by painting Democrats as big-government liberals. But, says University of North Carolina-Charlotte political scientist Ted Arrington: "Wedge issues are not working as well this time. Clinton can't be pinned down."

The all-Southern Democratic ticket of Clinton and Al Gore carried five Southern states in 1992 and could do even better this year, with states such as Florida, North Carolina and Virginia considered within range.

Republican nominee Bob Dole is expected to run well across the Deep South, which includes the three states where George Bush drew his highest share of the vote in 1992 - Mississippi, South Carolina and Alabama. Yet even in Mississippi, says the publisher of the Scott County Times (Miss.), Sidney L. Salter, "people are holding their nose." Dole is seen as too old and hostile to women, says Salter. "The grumpy uncle thing kicks in."

As for GOP vice presidential candidate Jack F. Kemp, he may add less to the ticket in the South than in other regions, with his public questioning of the party's generation-old, race-based "Southern strategy." Says Salter: "The bottom line is that the presidential race will have little, if any, effect on congressional races."

Ultimately, 1996 may end up as a year of missed opportunity for Southern Republicans. Yet the forces that have fueled the GOP advance in the region are still around - a growing, tax- conscious middle-class, a socially conservative culture, and the volatile issue of race.

Still, many political observers see the South as less likely to become a solidly Republican bastion than a competitive two- party region. As Auburn University at Montgomery political scientist Bradley Moody notes, party labels are not as important in the South as they once were. "You can have a Republican sweep in 1994, and Democrats (can) turn around and do very well in 1996," he says.

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