The Nation's Pulse/The New New South
Barnes, John A.
THE NATION'S PULSE THE NEW NEW SOUTH by John A. Barnes Party realignment, the major goal that has eluded Republicans for the past seventeen years, is once again a gleam in their eye. From the...
...The Republicans were also the party of the country club and the Eastern Establishment, people incapable of identifying with the concerns of ordinary folks...
...In Florida, establishment-party types have formed an "Anybody but Martinez" organization...
...But the picture isn't one of unrelieved bliss...
...And for once the Republican party has stopped merely talking about realignment and is actually trying to achieve it...
...I don't want to get caught in a position anymore where I have to endorse someone whose philosophy is 180 degrees different from mine," he says...
...Both Reagan and the polls were partly right...
...From the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt, key Democrats have decided to cut ties of blood and tradition and declare themselves Republicans...
...The truth is that Florida and the South have lost their voice in the Democratic party...
...today, sixty-one of sixty-eight judgeships are in GOP hands...
...As their affluence grew, more and more Southerners identified with the party whose policies promoted economic growth instead of redistribution...
...The election results showed what might be called a "split-level" realignment: a virtual Republican lock on the presidency, with Democratic candidates unable to rely on a single state of the Union (including Massachusetts...
...In 1978, no Republican sat on the state bench in Dallas...
...That will change slowly, not overnight...
...Andy Ireland, who was first elected as a Democrat in 1976, then switched and won ' re-election as a Republican last year...
...The far-left antics of Jesse Jackson in Cuba and elsewhere on the campaign trail didn't help either...
...The results could be impressive In Florida, for example, where just three years ago Democrats outnumbered Republicans two to one, the registration drive could whittle the ratio to three to two by fall...
...And voters, especially in the South, are starting to follow...
...The Democratic party in the South continues to be the party of the establishment at the local level," says Hastings Wyman, editor of the respected Southern Political Report...
...Democrats had generally commanded the loyalty of Christian fundamentalist since the campaigns of William Jennings Bryan...
...Our views are not heard, not heeded, not wanted...
...Lloyd Dog-gett...
...The increase in GOP identification among voters is explained by some as a temporary polling phenomenon caused by a natural bias in favor of the winning candidate's party...
...But fellow Texan and House Majority Leader Jim Wright would have none of it and threw his weight behind Doggett...
...After co-sponsoring the Reagan tax cuts in 1981, Hance had made an active effort to get back in his party's good graces...
...Tom Loeffler or former Governor William Clements instead...
...If everything turns out right," President Reagan said a week before Election Day, the 1984 elections could mark "the beginnings of a new phenomenon many observers have been talking about”an historic electoral realignment...
...But a wave of defections by local officials this year may finally give the Republicans the boost they've been seeking...
...Attracted by the region's low taxes, mild weather, and lack of unionization, business flocked South and West after the 1960s...
...before they'd pull the lever for a Republican...
...John A. Barnes is national political correspondent in Washington for syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak...
...This stuff about there being room in the Democratic party for everybody is just one big cliche," says Florida Rep...
...In short, the Republicans are steadily chipping away at the Democratic majority...
...The House stayed Democratic, of course, but primarily because new political technologies have made it possible for congressmen to deliver rapidly the constituency services so many voters consider vital...
...In Texas, many old-line Republicans are incensed that a newcomer like Hance can switch parties and run for governor...
...Democratic National Chairman Paul Kirk, who has had to spend much of his time trying to put out the fire, writes off the high-level defectors as "political opportunists" and labels their actions "a transparent public relations gimmick...
...By running on "traditional values," Republicans have drawn away those voters who've become disillusioned with the Democrats' support of abortion and homosexual rights...
...In addition to four new House seats in both states, Republicans picked up sixteen state House seats in Texas and nineteen in North Carolina, plus dozens of local judgeships...
...They're backing Rep...
...The national party keeps digging itself into a deeper hole, and it takes real valor to stay with them...
...Well, whatever their motives, it is clear that Hance and his fellow-converts are not switching parties so they can lose votes...
...His rating from conservative groups”from the 40's to the low 70's on a scale of 100”is low compared to some of his colleagues, many of whom have rated in the 80's and 90's...
...From the Carolinas to Texas, identification with the Democrats dropped to a historic low of 33 percent and has stayed depressed since then...
...And "Operation Open Door" notwithstanding, there remains intra-party resistance to the crossovers...
...Then there's religion...
...But the South's growing conversion to Republicanism hasn't been based entirely on a reaction against the policies of the national Democratic party...
...But the memories of the war and Reconstruction faded and were replaced by a new reality: prosperity...
...Until now, Republicans in the South have had problems electing officials below the gubernatorial level because of most voters' reluctance to be left out of the action in local politics, which have been primarily Democratic...
...34 percent called themselves Independents...
...The opportunities for the party to break through in the South, and then nationally, are better now than they have been in decades.ow than they have been in decades...
...former Governor Ed King of Massachusetts...
...And that has other Southern Democrats worried...
...Of the recent defections, Kent Hance's is especially intriguing (and especially discomfiting to Democrats) because he is not nearly as conservative as many other Southerners who have so far remained in the party...
...Kent Hance of Texas...
...Many of these switches were provoked by a surge last November in straight ticket GOP voting, particularly in North Carolina and Texas...
...It's estimated that Southern ministers registered more than 2 million members of their flocks for the Republican party last year, more than offsetting Jesse Jackson's efforts to register black voters...
...All except Knox are considered strong candidates for governor in their states next year, and Knox may run for the Senate if Senator John East (R-N.C...
...What pushed Hance finally to the Republicans was his loss in the 1984 Senate primary to a card-carrying liberal, state Sen...
...A post-election New York Times/CBS poll showed that the Democratic party lost an incredible 22 percent of its Southern voters to the* Republicans between 1980 and 1984...
...and a narrowly divided Senate, with the Republican majority weighted towards the South and West...
...The Democrats are keeping their majority by inertia...
...Fully 10 percent of white Democrats said they had shifted to the Republicans between 1980 and 1984, as well as a surprising 2 percent of blacks...
...The result was a breed known as the "yellow dog Democrats," or Southerners who claimed they would vote for a yellow dog...
...The national committee's "Operation Open Door," budgeted at $500,000, is aimed at registering several hundred thousand new Republicans in Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina...
...The GOP has won the vast majority of "open" seats (ones with no incumbent) over the last several elections...
...Some recent polls even show the Democrats gaining back some of their lost ground, especially among younger voters...
...A four point surge towards the Republicans just after President Eisenhower's re-election in 1956, for instance, dissipated within a year...
...Mayor Robert Martinez of Tampa, Florida...
...Hance's loss convinced him that someone of moderate-to-conservative views belonged in the other party...
...Kent Hance, along with most of the other well-known converts, says the main reason for the Southern shift is the proliferation of "special interests" that have swung the Democratic party to the left in the past fifteen years...
...So far this year, six major Democratic present or former officeholders have announced their conversion to the GOP: former "Boll Weevil" Rep...
...It was even better among younger voters, with a November New York Times/CBS poll showing 37 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 25 identifying with the GOP, as opposed to 29 percent with the Democrats...
...Predicting the nation's future political dynamic is a risky proposition at best...
...In South Carolina, two Republican congressmen, Carroll Campbell and Tom Hartnett, will likely slug it out for governor in a divisive primary next year, possibly losing both seats to Democrats...
...steps down...
...The polls told the story: A Gallup survey showed the gap between voters calling themselves Republicans and those calling themselves Democrats had shrunk from 25 percent in 1978 to less than 2 percent, the smallest such spread since 1946...
...Several prominent mayors and city council members in Mississippi who switched to the Republicans were defeated in local elections last June (although the total number of local Republican elected officials in that state increased slightly...
...While the high-level switches have received most of the attention, probably more important to the realignment have been the switches of local officials, such as town council members and local sheriffs...
...George Christian, a Texas lobbyist and former press secretary to Lyndon Johnson, says the Hance switch was "a real coup for the Republicans...
...For decades following the Civil War, Southerners viewed the Republicans bitterly as the party of Civil War and oppressive Reconstruction...
...The GOP has had a few assets of its own, too...
...and Mayor Frank Fasi of Honolulu, Hawaii...
...But the Republican party below the Mason-Dixon line seems well on its way to achieving critical mass, in both the number of politicians willing to run on the ticket and of voters willing to support them...
...A changed image, for one thing...
...Most observers, liberal and conservative, agree that the tipping point for the Republicans in the South was the nomination last year of the all-liberal, all-Northern ticket of Mondale and Ferraro...
...The Reagan Revolution does not match the Roosevelt Revolution in its impact on the party system," says James Sundquist of the Brookings Institution, "but it has brought about the greatest realignment in five decades” and the realigning forces are still at work...
...It shows what a strain it is for conservative Texas Democrats to stay in the party...
...Wayne County, Michigan Executive William Lucas...
...former Mayor Eddie Knox of Charlotte, North Carolina...
...That worked for the century after the Civil War, as long as the South was a poor, backward region cut off from the mainstream of America...
...Recently, Reby Cary, a black former Texas state representative, led twenty-three other Fort Worth area black leaders into the registration office to become Republicans...
...In the South, however, the Republican gains are holding steady...
...The GOP's gains in the South continue to be evolutionary, not revolutionary...
Vol. 18 • September 1985 • No. 9
