Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 9, 1992 TAG: 9203090152
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BROWNSVILLE, TENN. LENGTH: Long
So it's no surprise that the current generations of Haywoods sum up several views of their west Tennessee neighbors on the 1992 presidential race:
An expectation that Republican George Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton will be strong regional favorites in Super Tuesday balloting this week.
An uneasiness, ranging from skepticism to outright dislike, about both.
A grudging sense, given the family's deep Democratic roots, that Bush - though vulnerable - would best any of the Democratic field in an election held today.
"I'm a staunch Democrat, but I don't like Clinton," said 83-year-old Rosa Haywood, an outspoken, independent lady who read the law during the Depression to become the county's first woman attorney. As for Bush, "he's an old wimp. He doesn't stand for foot."
On the eve of the nation's only semi-regional primary - a day in which seven Southern and border states will join four others in electing national convention delegates - there is a strong sense of alienation across Dixie.
Many who intend to vote for Clinton on Tuesday say they will do so only because no one better is in the field. Many who expect to vote for Bush in November use identical words.
"I'd be open to a Democrat," said Blanche Baxter, a retired Brownsville teacher worried about the fate of more than 300 workers soon to be laid off from a local plant. "Like everybody else, I think we're in a mess."
But Baxter said she has surveyed the candidates, "and I just don't see anybody who'd do any better than Bush."
Interviews throughout the region disclose widespread discontent with the president, focused largely on the economy but extending to his abandonment of a "no-new-taxes" pledge and his turnabout on a civil rights bill that some think gives unfair advantage to minority job seekers.
Buchanan may get 30-40% of Republican votes
As he has been elsewhere, conservative ex-commentator Pat Buchanan will be the beneficiary of such sentiments Tuesday, possibly capturing 30-40 percent of the Republican vote in several Southern states. But despite the enthusiasm of Buchanan's workers, his protest vote seems to be settling into a pattern.
"He probably can get in that [30 percent] range just about anywhere he wants to, but it's not leading to any delegates," said Earl Black, a South Carolina political scientist who has written extensively about Southern politics.
Questions about Clinton may cost him some votes
On the Democratic side, Gov. Clinton of Arkansas is virtually certain to control his home region, with only his margins of victory in dispute. But there is broad uncertainty, even among his supporters, about whether Clinton can hold up under personal attacks if he becomes the nominee. Many join
Robert Burch of Spring Hill, Tenn., in worrying that allegations of draft dodging and infidelity will haunt Clinton in the fall. A 27-year-old autoworker who relocated from New Jersey to work at General Motors' much-heralded Saturn plant, Burch likes what he hears from Clinton.
But he wonders if former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas might prove a safer choice because "he doesn't have the ghosts in his closet."
"Clinton is extremely lucky" that the field lacks an alternative with Southern appeal, said Kent Tedin, a pollster and chairman of the political science department at the University of Houston. "If there was an Al Gore in the race," he said, referring to Tennessee's senior Democratic senator, Clinton would "be back in Little Rock."
In the Southern and border states voting Tuesday - Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas - Tsongas can perhaps do best in Florida, interviews and regional polls suggest. And the Sunshine State's diverse population offers Buchanan a possible, if unlikely, avenue for embarrassing the president, political analysts say.
Buchanan backers also hope to do well in economically depressed Louisiana, where they are bidding for a plurality in a three-way race with Bush and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Because the state's primary is closed to non-Republicans, however, conservative Democrats cannot cross over to boost Buchanan, as they did last week in Georgia.
The most striking feature of the Southern political landscape is the extent to which political activists have been locked up by Bush and Clinton. In state after state, almost the entire party apparatus is backing their respective front-runner.
The result is that each man should emerge from Super Tuesday with a substantial, and potentially insurmountable, delegate lead.
South's patchwork politics on display in Tennessee Tennessee - where the Clinton for President committee occupies space at state Democratic headquarters and the Bush campaign is set up at state GOP headquarters - offers clues about how that came to be. The state's voters also reflect a variety of Southern political traditions.
East Tennessee, which sided with the Union during the Civil War, is home to one of the region's oldest, feistiest Republican parties. West Tennessee, where half of the state's 16 percent black population is concentrated and where cotton once was king, is more typical of the old South. And middle Tennessee has been home to a racially moderate, economically populist Democratic politics typified by former Sens. Albert Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver.
Clinton's lock on the Democratic side of this equation stems from his address, his adoption last fall of a Southern strategy, and an almost total void - until last week - of competition.
Since Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder dropped out of the race in January, and to a large degree even before that, Clinton has been the only candidate to pay attention to the South. Armed with a modest Southern accent and moderate credentials, he made the rounds in Nashville, Atlanta, Tallahassee and Baton Rouge, tapping longtime political contacts and signing up politicians along the way.
In Tennessee alone, his reward includes support from the governor, the six-man Democratic congressional delegation, and the majority of Democratic legislators.
Tsongas has done little to organize supporters By contrast, Tsongas - Clinton's primary opponent - appears to be relying on spontaneous combustion. His most prominent Tennessee backer is a former attorney general who left office in the mid-1980s. His campaign, which polls show making inroads among highly educated voters, liberals, and younger women, had no state office until Saturday.
Asked last week if Clinton had inherited the Gore organization in the state, state House Majority Leader Jimmy Naifeh replied: `He's got the organizations of all of the Democrats."
Central to Clinton's Southern success is support from an impressive array of black leaders. He won their support "by default," said Ronald Walters, a Howard University political scientist and former Southern regional director for the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Black leaders "opted for someone who can be elected over someone who represents their interests," such as Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, Walters said.
Among Republicans, Bush has long enjoyed a reservoir of Southern support. In 1988, when it appeared he might be badly wounded by early primary results, a firewall of support in Super Tuesday primaries helped assure his nomination.
Much of the devotion dates to his years as vice president (1980-88), when Bush worked arduously to build the Southern Republican Party.
"He's very supportive of the party. He was an excellent vice president, and Mrs. Bush is very popular. It's just his image, the moderation," said Faye Childs, Bush's Nashville office manager.
Every Republican in the legislature has endorsed Bush, and his campaign is headed by the elder statesman of the Tennessee GOP, former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker.
Against that array is the Buchanan brigade, mostly volunteers and including some who got their political start with Virginia Beach television evangelist's Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign. Most are unknown in GOP circles.
Feeling betrayed by Bush on taxes, racial quotas and other emotional issues, the Buchanan backers are angry and capable of causing havoc beyond their apparent numbers.
If the Republican machinery treats Buchanan unfairly, "we will spurn Bush like a mad dog," promised Lyle Simpson, a 38-year-old salesman and former Robertson supporter who is heading the Buchanan effort in Tennessee.
But Simpson acknowledges that if Bush is the party's nominee, his protest will be a write-in vote for Buchanan, not a more-damaging ballot for a Democrat.
Indeed, numerous voters across Tennessee indicated last week that if they support Bush this fall, it will be for lack of a viable alternative.
"I don't see him making any progress," said 25-year-old Jan Haywood of Brownsville, explaining why she won't repeat her 1988 vote for Bush this year. Haywood - who manages the courthouse-square law office of her husband and his aunt, Rosa Haywood - said she views Clinton as "an overgrown fraternity boy," and had planned to back Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who withdrew from the race last week.
"We need someone who's very stable, level-headed, family-oriented," she said. With Kerry "out of it, I'd probably have to leave George Bush in."
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POLITICS
by CNB