Edwards is getting a closer look in N.H.

BEDFORD, N.H.

AS A MARK of seriousness, it was unmistakable. US Senator John Edwards surprised the political world this week by ruling out a run for reelection to his North Carolina seat, an option widely assumed to be his fallback if his presidential campaign sputters. "I obviously feel very optimistic or I wouldn't have made that decision," Edwards says, noting that he is now ahead (albeit very narrowly) in South Carolina, site of the most important early Southern primary, and making progress in Iowa and New Hampshire.

By boldly burning his bridge, the first-term senator, who will formally announce for president on Tuesday, has underscored his determination. That hasn't gone unnoticed in New Hampshire, where Edwards is in the hunt for third place.

With most media watching the duel between former Vermont governor Howard Dean and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, little attention has been paid to the battle for bronze. Still, finishing a solid third is important for those candidates hoping to survive Iowa and New Hampshire and then jump-start their campaigns in the Feb. 3 round of primaries.

A new Boston Globe poll has three of those hopefuls -- Edwards, US Representative Richard Gephardt of Missouri, and Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman -- bunched in single digits.

However, among New Hampshire observers, there's a sense that Lieberman is fading and Gephardt is stalled. And increasingly that it's Edwards, the new face, who is earning an interested look as the campaign quickens.

"He is in the mix, and his window of opportunity is right now," says Senator Lou D'Allesandro, Democrat of Manchester, who is uncommitted in the race.

To be sure, Edwards hasn't yet found the perfect pitch. His twangy Southern warmth sometimes overheats into cornpone, and his focus may be too weighted toward the working class for a relatively well-heeled state.

Still, the North Carolinian has put forth an interesting mix of ideas to expand educational opportunities, boost savings, promote "fair trade" policies, close tax loopholes, and target business-development funds to regions suffering trade-related job loss.

Meanwhile, his status as a Southerner adds extra electoral weight to a resume otherwise seen as somewhat slender. Consider the political picture painted by William Mayer, professor of political science at Northeastern University, and editor of (and contributor to) "The Making of the Presidential Candidates 2004." The last non-Southern Democrat to win the presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Since then, triumphant Democratic Southerners number three: LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. And the three non-Southerners -- George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Mike Dukakis -- nominated since 1972? "Not only did all three fail to carry a single Southern state, not one even came within 10 percentage points of carrying one of those states," notes Mayer.

A non-Southern candidate risks conceding to the Republicans a base that includes the 11 states of the old Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, 13 states that total 168 electoral votes, says Mayer. To that total, add some other regularly Republican states from the Midwest, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountain West. Including those that George W. Bush won by at least 9 percentage points in 2000 puts another 11 states, with 55 electoral votes, in the GOP column.

"Assuming national conditions are approximately what they are today, with a non-Southern candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket, the Republicans have a pretty safe, solid base of 223 electoral votes" of the required 270, Mayer says.

Now, there's always a risk of reading too much into results from a handful of elections. And yet that data does make a certain strategic argument for a Southerner. Interestingly, it's an argument Edwards isn't inclined to make for himself. Meeting with reporters after a Tuesday speech to a New England Council breakfast, Edward saw biography, not geography, as destiny, saying his real strength was his roots in the working class.

"If I am on a stage with George Bush in 2004, I can make the most powerful case about him leaving those people behind," Edwards says.

So is a Democrat from the South more electable than the candidates from the North? "I think I can beat George Bush," Edwards said. "I'll let voters decide what they think about the other."

Maybe the modesty, like the math, is a Southern thing.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.