
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992                   TAG: 9203080106
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: JUAN WILLIAMS THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BUBBA JUST FACE IN CROWD IN NEW SOUTH

The American theory of presidential politics for the last two decades has gone more or less like this: Win over Bubba, the stereotypical white Southern male, and you will win the South and thereby rack up a base of electoral-college votes that allows you to win the national election.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush all followed that theory into the White House.

But last week's Georgia primary gave the nation a first look at the South of the 1990s, with the result that the Bubba Theory needs some revision: Some political surprises have been lurking below the Mason-Dixon line, surprises that will doubtless be on display again this coming Super Tuesday.

Southern social stereotypes are being transformed. Not only redneck Bubbas, but twittering Scarlett-like belles and gentry Rhetts have joined the middle class, moved into the suburbs and shop at the mall off the interstate.

The most politically interesting aspect of their transformation is that these mainstays of the Old South are coming to accept black political power as part of life. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's win in Georgia was based on unflagging support from black Democrats - 70 percent, according to exit polls - as well as a near-monopoly of endorsements from the Southern political establishment. That would have been an unlikely alliance in the Old South, but increasingly it is the reality of new Southern politics.

"There's enough Bubbas still around," said John Hope Franklin, the Duke University historian, "but there is this new white crowd, too, and a large number of black voters. In local and statewide elections you can see the muscle of black voters. Look at the attitude of Southern white senators on the vote for [Supreme Court nominee Clarence] Thomas."

Clinton's victory is more than a replay of Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign, an earlier case of a Southern governor who attracted black support. Rather, the social and ideological changes suggested by the Georgia results were apparent in the 1990 Senate contest in North Carolina, in which incumbent Republican Jesse Helms was challenged by Harvey Gantt. Although Gantt, a black Democrat, lost the election, he attracted a record 40 percent of the white vote.

What has happened to shift the South's fertile political soil for Republicans and Democrats is largely that new and different types of people keep showing up. The South gained 11 million new residents during the 1980s - more than any other part of the nation - and is expected to continue to attract more newcomers than the East, Midwest or West in the 1990s, according to Census Bureau statistics.

Southerners are now approaching statistical parity with the rest of the country: As many are college-educated and live and work away from the farm as other Americans. Many Southerners work for such big Southern-based companies as Walmart, Holiday Inn, Coca Cola, Federal Express, Delta Airlines and Cable News Network.

"It's getting harder to talk about the South as being so separate and different from the rest of the country," notes Willie Morris, the novelist. "Seems to me the South joined the American mainstream. Or the mainstream joined the South."

Bill Ferris, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, believes that, "As the South goes, so goes the country, because the issues here are clearly defined. From racism and racial violence to poverty and illiteracy and the role of women, it is all etched clearly across our landscape."

Keywords:
POLITICS WAL-MART

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