THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 22, 1996 TAG: 9602220306
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
In Tuesday's leadoff presidential primary in New Hampshire, Pat Buchanan rode to victory by forging a coalition that is new in the annals of Republican politics.
The conservative commentator's defeat of the presumed front-runner, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, was widely hailed as an upset.
But not everyone was surprised.
Among those who saw it coming was a Virginia Beach-based political consultant who helped prepare the Buchanan game plan.
What is new about Buchanan's strategy, and what is giving many Republican bigwigs a bad case of the jitters, is his successful exploitation of what could become a central issue of the 1996 campaign: working Americans' fears for their jobs.
Defying mainstream GOP dogma, Buchanan lustily bashed big business for downsizing its work force and trashed free-trade treaties for sending good-paying jobs overseas.
Blue-collar voters came down on Buchanan's side - even in a state with a reviving economy and low unemployment. Exit polls showed the economy and jobs were top concerns, and Buchanan won the biggest share of those voters.
That is exactly what Guy Rodgers, in his most optimistic moments, saw happening.
Rodgers landed in Hampton Roads in 1991 as national field director for the Christian Coalition, the Chesapeake-based evangelicals' lobby founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. He had been a Midwestern organizer for Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign.
In his three years with the coalition, Rodgers oversaw a dramatic expansion of the organization's grassroots infrastructure - from three to 44 state affiliates and from 65 to almost 900 local chapters - that has made the coalition a major player in GOP politics.
In 1994, he was one of the political operatives who helped engineer the Republican takeover of Congress. Then last year, he signed on as Buchanan's national campaign manager. He parted company with the Buchanan camp several months ago. But he takes some satisfaction from his old boss' shakeup of the GOP status quo.
The plan, Rodgers said Wednesday, was to bring together three disparate groups: Christian conservatives, blue-collar ``Ronald Reagan Democrats'' and independents who supported Ross Perot in 1992.
``I'd never seen a Republican put together a coalition like that before,'' Rodgers said. ``But that was the plan.
``What Pat has been able to do is appeal to each of these groups depending upon which state he's in,'' Rodgers said. ``He really appealed to the Christian conservatives in Louisiana, Alaska and Iowa. Then in New Hampshire, it was clear the emphasis was a lot more on the trade issue - America first, that type of stuff. He's developed, I think, a pretty good instinct for which to emphasize depending on which state and constituency he's in.
``Ultimately,'' he said, ``regardless of what happens, I think Buchanan has done in '96 a similar thing to what Pat Robertson did in 1988, and that is bring issues to the forefront that a lot of the Republican Party has not wanted to address. . . .
``What has happened since the late '70s has been an evolution of the Republican Party from a country club, Eastern establishment, Rockefeller party to more of a Main Street, workingman's, small businessman's party. You still have people at the top of the Republican Party connected with the big corporations and that type of stuff, but the strength now coming up from the bottom is coming from the entrepreneurs and the Reagan Democrats.
``And then, of course, throw the evangelicals in the mix. Millions of them have flocked to the Republican Party in the last 16 years. . . . Robertson did it in terms of the evangelicals, now Buchanan is doing it in terms of small business and workingmen versus Fortune 500 companies.''
Rodgers expects to see Buchanan continue to do well in the coming weeks, particularly in the South Carolina primary March 2. In the end, though, he thinks Dole will prevail.
But another local Republican activist, 3rd District GOP Chairman Don Moon, thinks Dole has been so severely wounded by Buchanan that the third-place finisher in New Hampshire, former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, will be the ultimate beneficiary.
Like Rodgers, Moon said he wasn't surprised by Buchanan's victory Tuesday.
``He's got the greatest grassroots units I've ever seen,'' Moon said. ``He's going out shaking hands and talking to people. And he's selling people on the idea that he's the Washington outsider, in spite of the fact that he's spent all his life practically in Washington. . . .
``I'm predicting he's going to eliminate Dole, and Lamar Alexander will probably get the nomination. All the Dole people will not go with Buchanan. They'll go to whoever's left, and I think it's going to be Lamar Alexander.''
But David Hummel, 2nd District Republican chairman, isn't quite so fatalistic after watching Buchanan's victory in New Hampshire.
``It may not be a done deal by the time we get to the convention,'' Hummel said. ``If Buchanan keeps the pressure up, if he does well on Super Tuesday, all of a sudden these smaller states become more and more important.''
Super Tuesday is March 12, when seven states - six of them in the South - will hold their primaries.
Hummel has his own theory about how Buchanan pulled off his victory in New Hampshire. He thinks many voters asked themselves this question:
``Who can get past Bill Clinton, probably the most glib liar that ever stood on center stage in the political arena?
``When that man stood up there in the State of the Union address and said `The day of big government is over,' I almost fell out of my chair,'' Hummel said. ``Most conservatives know that's not his agenda, so they're very much concerned: Who can out-talk this guy?'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Guy Rodgers, a Virginia Beach-based political consultant, helped
prepare the Pat Buchanan game plan.
by CNB