In South, Romney struggles to go beyond Yankee background

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Mitt Romney may have Midwestern roots, but after four decades in Belmont, two advanced Harvard degrees, four years as Massachusetts governor, and many Red Sox games, he's a card-carrying Northeasterner whether he likes it or not.

In a country that loves Southern politicians, it is tough to run for president as a New Englander, especially in Southern states. Romney is not a garrulous, up-from-nothing Arkansan like Bill Clinton. He's no evangelical Georgia peanut farmer like Jimmy Carter. Nor is he a boots-wearing Northeasterner-turned-Texan like President Bush and his father.

Even as Romney has surged into the lead in some polls in the key primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa in recent days, he is still struggling to rise above single figures in South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida, likely to be the South's early primary battlegrounds.

Fresh off the first Southern GOP presidential debate, held last week at the University of South Carolina, Romney and his supporters are confident that he can compete below the Mason-Dixon as well. They believe his family values, message of fiscal conservatism and military strength, and methodical grass-roots work in key Southern states are already winning him many voters. Romney was back courting those voters Friday and Saturday in Georgia and South Carolina.

But some Southern Republicans, political analysts, and rivals for the GOP nomination argue that he will have difficulty overcoming the disconnect between Dixie culture and his own, and persuading Southerners that a former social moderate from Boston can be their champion in the White House.

"He's got his work cut out for him," said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. "Part of the problem here is that what it takes to be a successful Republican in a state like Massachusetts is very, very different than what it takes to win a Republican presidential nomination."

The first major test comes in South Carolina, widely expected to hold the Republicans' first Southern primary, soon after New Hampshire. How Romney fares among South Carolinians is likely to predict his success in other Southern states and in the race overall.

So Romney has spent considerable time and resources there over the past two years. From his inaugural foray to Spartanburg, S.C., in early 2005, he has gradually built a network of activists and politicians. He was a top donor and fund-raiser last year for a statewide same-sex marriage ban. He contributed money to county parties and relatively obscure candidates for office. He gave an address last year at the Citadel, the South Carolina military college.

The work has paid dividends. Romney has won the support of important county Republican leaders, topped rivals in several straw polls, and picked up key endorsements from political figures such as Senator Jim DeMint.

"I think Romney has an excellent chance of winning the South," said Henry Eldridge, the former chairman of the York County, S.C., GOP who is leaning toward Romney. "I think the reason is because he started at the grass-roots level very early . . . and he's made his issues well-known to the grass-roots-level people."

Still, Romney faces hurdles that even supporters acknowledge. For one, some southern Republican activists report unease among conservatives simply because he is from Massachusetts. Others question the sincerity of his reversals on social issues. And Southern Baptists, a powerful force in South Carolina and elsewhere, still officially consider Romney's religion, Mormonism, a cult.

These concerns may help explain why Romney is still lagging in South Carolina polls; one recent survey had him in fifth place, behind two Southerners who haven't even entered the race yet.

DeMint told reporters last week that Romney's poll showing in the South won't climb until later in the year, when more voters know him. "The key is, can he get in front of enough people so they know him?" DeMint said.

Of course, how Romney does in the South has a lot to do with his competition, and his leading opponents at this point have their own Southern problem. Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor, hails from a city perhaps even more culturally distant from the South than Boston is. He holds positions -- support of abortion rights, for example -- that are anathema to many Southern Republicans. And Romney and his team are making sure everyone knows. (DeMint called Giuliani's abortion position a "severe disadvantage.")

Romney's other leading competitor, Senator John McCain of Arizona, is doing well in South Carolina but has his own rocky history with social conservatives.

The Southern calculus changes significantly, though, if former senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee jumps in. Thompson had been a Washington lobbyist and an actor when he ran for Senate, but he rented a red pickup truck and adopted a more folksy persona on the campaign trail. Republicans say he would be a hit in the South.

If you don't count the Bushes, who emigrated from New England to Texas, the last Republican from the Northeast to win the presidency was Calvin Coolidge, a native Vermonter and Massachusetts governor who led the country more than 80 years ago. The last Northeasterner from either party to win was Brookline-born John F. Kennedy. (Many others have tried, of course, and most of them Democrats, including Senator John F. Kerry, former Vermont governor Howard Dean, and former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.)

When Romney visits different parts of the country, he sometimes comes off more as a respectful cultural anthropologist than a glad-handing politician. In Texas recently, he greeted a crowd with, "Howdy, y'all" which drew a hearty "Howdy!" in return.

"Wow, isn't that great?" Romney responded. "That's powerful. What an experience!"

But Romney advisers and supporters say he doesn't need to act like a Southerner to capture Southern votes. They say that if he comes just as he is -- they see him as a sharp and visionary leader with deep experience -- then he can win.

"You don't have to be a good old boy," said Terry Sullivan, Romney's state director in South Carolina. "It's not about being the guy that you'd like to have as your neighbor and cook a pig with. It's the guy you want to lead the country and lead the free world. And Mitt Romney has that resume."

But others say Romney may have trouble connecting.

"He is very dignified, very charismatic, very personable," said J. David Woodard, a political scientist at Clemson University in Clemson, S.C. "But it's Yankee personable. It's not [rival Mike] Huckabee personable that talks about barbecue, and dogs, and the weather, and how Alabama football is going to do. . . . No one can find anything wrong with him, but I don't see him warming the room."

But Woodard said Romney is helped by the fact that McCain and Giuliani share his "aloofness" in Southern crowds.

Lower-tier presidential candidates from the South such as Huckabee, the Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, and Jim Gilmore, a former Virginia governor, are trying -- with limited success, so far -- to exploit that perceived weakness. Asked last week if Romney could win in the South, Gilmore took aim at Romney's shifts on major issues.

"He has to persuade Southerners that his previous record in Massachusetts is null and void," Gilmore said. "He has to convince people it's a new Romney. My position is, where you been is where you're going."

Romney and his campaign are well aware of the political challenges posed by running as a Republican from the Bay State. He's said before that he would have stayed in his native Michigan had he foreseen a career in politics. He often makes fun of Massachusetts before GOP audiences. And an internal campaign strategy document, reported on in the Globe this year, listed Massachusetts as one of Romney's "bogeymen."

The day after last week's debate, Romney told reporters that his proposals to strengthen the military -- he's called for 100,000 additional troops and a guaranteed budget commitment for the Pentagon -- would have appeal in the South, as would his emphasis on family. He noted that at an earlier political event in Memphis, supporters had made shirts that read "Yankee governor, Southern values."

"The values which I have I think connect very well with the people in the South and the people in the entire country," Romney said.

Whit Ayres, a GOP political strategist who's worked in South Carolina, said that may well be enough.

"Of course Southerners like Southerners, but that doesn't mean they don't like people who are not from the South and share their values," Ayres said. "Southerners loved Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan never lived a day in his life in the South."

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.

(Correction: Because of an editing error, a photo caption that accompanied the continuation of a Page One story yesterday on presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney incorrectly said he and his wife, Ann, were walking through the University of South Carolina on Tuesday, May 22. The couple were there on Tuesday, May 15.)