GOP speaker roster to steer far from Deep South base

Preparations were underway at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, where the Republican Party will hold its convention this week. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

The high-profile, prime-time speakers that John McCain has selected to represent him in St. Paul this week, including Joe Lieberman, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Ridge, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, represent a broad cross-section of his social circle, from campaign-bus buddies to dinner companions.

But that roster of speakers does not reflect the contemporary Republican base of power as the party gathers for its quadrennial convention. Most of the leading voices will come from blue-leaning states far from the Deep South, the region that has bolstered Republican control of the White House and Congress for most of the last two decades.

As with his pick of running mate Sarah Palin, a rookie governor and former small-town mayor, the roster of prime-time convention speakers is evidence of how far McCain, a longtime legislator, is working to distance himself from the nationwide unpopularity of Republicans in Congress, where Southerners dominate the party's leadership.

"The Republican Party is more Southern than it has ever been in its history, but you won't see anything proportionate to the representation of Southern Republicans in Congress," said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. While Southerners will have a role in the convention, McCain is highlighting more moderate figures whose political careers are grounded outside of Washington, many of them from parts of the country where Republicans are increasingly a marginal political force. Northeastern and West Coast Republicans have become what Southerners have long been for the Democrats: a group with decreasing clout in party policy-making but relied on to help fill out its public image.

"These guys are modern Republicans who run in unlikely places. It's [McCain's] start to reach out to the middle," Byron Schafer, a political scientist and author of "The End of Southern Exceptionalism," said of McCain's speaking lineup.

Jennifer Blei Stockman, national chair of the Republican Majority for Choice, which supports abortion rights, put it more bluntly: "It's like a beauty contest. They put the speakers in front that will have the greatest appeal."

Since Pat Buchanan declared a "culture war" in Houston in 1992, Republicans have worked to project a softer image from their convention stages. US Representative Susan Molinari of New York was the party's 1996 keynote speaker, and four years later the convention dais was graced with a parade of minorities, including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Giuliani, Schwarzenegger, and McCain stood at Bush's side for his 2004 nomination.

This year, the disconnect between the faces of the convention and the broader party they represent is yet more stark. The South has replaced the Northeast - where the GOP failed to win a single state in the 2004 presidential race and lost nearly one-third of its congressional seats in 2006 - as the most solidly Republican region, but will hardly be represented on the dais at highly-watched times.

Each of the convention's four nights will be devoted to a different McCain campaign theme: "Service," "Reform," "Prosperity," and "Peace." Aside from President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and primary-season rivals Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney - whose appearances at the convention are matters of near-protocol - many of those scheduled to speak are close friends and political allies of McCain's, like Governor Charlie Crist of Florida and Governor Jon Huntsman of Utah.

Others appear to represent demographic groups traditionally associated with the Democratic Party, including Governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii and former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, who is African-American. Two of McCain's top Latino supporters during the primary also will speak: Senator Mel Martinez of Florida and Rosario Marin, a former US treasurer and currently secretary of California's State and Consumer Services Agency.

"We want to make sure we put forward the great diversity of the party," said Steve Duprey, a McCain adviser and former New Hampshire Republican chairman. "There is an effort to reach out to voters in traditional Democratic states, and that is consistent with the type of campaign John McCain is running."

The only politician from the Deep South, besides ex-Arkansas governor Huckabee, who was likely to have a prominent time slot is one with an unusual profile for Dixie: Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, an Oxford-educated, Indian-American Catholic.

"The program is reflective of the road traveled by the candidate on the way to the nomination," said Kathleen Shanahan, a Republican strategist from Florida and one of the convention's honorary deputy permanent chairs.

Jindal, however, announced yesterday that he - along with Governors Crist of Florida, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, and Rick Perry of Texas - will skip the convention because of the approaching Hurricane Gustav, CNN reported last night.

Despite political roots in the Sun Belt, for the last decade McCain has claimed the Northeast - and particularly New Hampshire - as a second political home. During his 2000 campaign, more than half of the states McCain won in his failed primary bid were in New England. In Massachusetts, McCain beat party favorite Bush by a ratio of nearly 2 to 1, better than he did in his home state of Arizona.

Afterward, McCain joined the Republican Main Street Partnership, an organization of party members and public officials which preaches a "principled but pragmatic" centrism, and for a time allied primarily with Northeastern moderate senators as a bridge between the two parties. In this year's primaries, McCain dominated in the Northeast and along the West Coast, as Huckabee carried much of the South and Romney took the Mountain West states.

While the marquee speakers are more liberal on social issues than McCain or Palin - Giuliani, Ridge, and Lieberman support abortion rights - Republican activists say the program does not reflect any shift in the dominant positions within their party. "This is exactly what they did at the convention in 2004," said Stockman, adding that her Republican Majority for Choice has stopped fighting the platform's abortion plank because "it wasn't worth our trouble."

"It was all smoke-and-mirrors," she said. "The party wanted to present a moderate front because they realized it would most appeal to the general electorate."

Meanwhile this year, the dominant force on the convention's agenda could be Gustav: Convention planners are closely monitoring the hurricane, which is expected to make landfall tomorrow afternoon. "It will have a very serious impact on the convention," said Shanahan. "When one part of the country is getting hurt, it's hard to have a national celebration."